The Celtic Peasant is building an analog synthesizer keyboard controller to be used with the Electronic Peasant's SynthCase projects.
First an old organ, with two 3 1/2 Octave keyboards, was purchased for $25.00. The organ was broken down and the keyboards were salvaged for this project. The next step was to remove all wiring from the assembly and clean all of the keys. Once I had that completed I sawed through the metal and wooden supports to create a 5 octave keyboard. Here is the final result:
With the keyboard ready I populated the pcbs that I am using in the controller - Ray Wilson's Single Bus Keyboard Controller and the Oscillator Driver section of Juergen Haible's Living VCO pcb.
We are combining the two boards and adding additional features. The next step is to breadboard the circuit (a first for me) under the tutelage of The Peasant. Using the modified schematic, the population of the pcbs above will proceed and I will be using perfboard to complete the new design (another first for me). Pictures of all of the populated boards will be provided once the construction process is further along.
For the keyboard itself I had to match 67 100R resistors to .05% (I matched a few more than I needed to be on the safe side). They will not be soldered to the key connections until the keyboard itself is mounted in the case.
Both the casing for the keyboard and the control panel have been designed. The wood has been purchased and is ready to be cut to size and assembled.
The pieces for the case were cut to size and the sanding began.
With the sanding done the two major pieces were placed together to ensure they fit - final sanding was done at this point and then the metal backing for the panel and the keyboards were placed in to check and see that everything else was fitting as it should.
The panel graphics were completed and sent to the printer. We were excited to see they came out exactly as we hoped
and one last look at all the woodworking and graphics together so we could pick out a stain - which turned out to be a process of mixing two stains together until we achieved the exact color we wanted.
The staining and some finishing touches have been done and will be seen a little later in this project page.
Now on to the fun times ... breadboarding! My first experience with that, guided by the designer of the joy stick control portion, The Electronic Peasant, has just been completed.
Now that it has been determined that the design is working, the schematics are being drawn up. There will still be a little more breadboarding needed for the additions to the existing boards, so that will be done next. After that I will be drilling the holes for the parts to be placed in the control panel.
In order to drill the holes, I first had to carefully place the graphics sheet on the metal panel, secure them together with tape and use a Center Punch to mark the location of each hole to be drilled.
The punching has been completed ....
and now I am ready to drill. The holes were drilled according to the size required for each particular type of part. Some holes had to be filed a little larger. The large rectangular holes for the mod wheels required extensive filing. It was nice to bring the drillpress up from our workshop and work on this outside.
The holes have been completed and standoffs attached for mounting the mod wheels. The front of the panel was then filed so that the graphics sheet would have an even surface to attach to.
After the graphics sheet was glued onto the panel each hole was trimmed to size with a sharp knife.
Putting the parts onto the panel was rewarding and entailed alot more planning and detail than I expected. I learned the importance of placement of the parts keeping the wiring in mind and juggling to ensure no parts would be rubbing against the panel, especially in the case of the mod wheels.
Banana jacks, LED bezels, switches, knobs and wheels all mounted, the last item was the joystick. The joystick had to be taken apart so that it could be mounted. Before mounting it I soldered wires to the pots as they would be hard to access once installed. The Electronic Peasant helped with the wiring of the Z-axis as that was little advanced for me at the moment.
Then I mounted the completed panel onto the top of the keyboard case.
Next will be the final touches on the case, including mounting the keys into the base of the cabinet, hinging the lid onto the case, installing the power entry module and cosmetic finishing touches.
Once that is completed the fun part will begin ... building circuits on stripboard and wiring everything together.
