Etherwave Mods

Hey everybody,
I just came across the "Understand, Customizing, and Hot-Rodding Your Etherwave Theremin" article from Moog Music. Has anyone here ever tried building any of these circuits? I've done mods all over my Theremax but I'm a little more hesitant to crack open the Etherwave and start soldering. I'm particularly interested in the CV outputs, which is the most complicated circuit in the article. The CV outs on the Theremax are really sluggish. What would it be like controlling a synth with a Etherwave? I don't know has anyone tried?

No one, huh? Well, I'm going to give it a shot. I'll post a progress report when there is anything to post besides failure. If I screw something up and my Etherwave stops working, you may never hear from me again.

[i]No one, huh?[/i]

It seems very possible. Same question met with stony silence over in the moog forums. When I contacted the UK company recommended on the moog website to get a price on them doing the mod they said they'd get back to me and then nada. Googling appropriate keywords suggests the silence is global. I found one guy had decided against doing it because of difficulty in obtaining some components.

Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to give moog a ring first and ask if they got any feedback from people who have done the mod.

At the moment my preferred solution involves longing for a Nord G2.

You can replace a couple of capacitors on the Tmax to take the lag out of the CV outs. Follow this link for detail info:

http://thereminworld.com/forum.asp?cmd=p&T=1828&F=1

Thanks, I'll try that.
I'm still interested in the Etherwave CV's, Particularly the Gate Out. Which according to the circuit description work completely different than the T-Max's strange Velocity sensitive Gate. I'm a little surprised that I can't find anyone who has tried to make any of these circuits. It seems like if I can get them working that they would give an Etherwave all of the functionality of an E-Pro. Without the filter bank of course.

I stared at that complicated circuit for a very long time (years!), then bought an etherwave pro. Moog said they knew no one who had done the modification, had no other diagrams or even a photo, and could not help. The questions in the moog forum from a couple of years ago were mine. I got no reply.

You are right; you would get the same functionality for much less money, and who needs a filter if you can use the theremin to control a synthesiser, which is what I am trying to do at the moment.

Why doesn't someone make a theremin functionally equivalent to a mouse; a cheap plastic box that just outputs two streams of numbers? Everything else could be software.

If you do manage to make that circuit you would do a great service to the world by sharing your thoughts and ideally step by step instructions and photos. Good luck!

I've started ordering parts. Some of them are apparently obsolete, but there are equivalents available. The Moog service rep. that I e-mailed said that no one had asked about the 1K PTC resistor in years, but that I was the second person to ask about it in the same day. Go figure.

I'll start breadboarding as soon as I get everything.

A theremin mouse you say? I found this little program a while ago.

http://www.sagebrush.com/mousing.htm

I finally have all of the parts and have been breadboarding the CV circuit. Some parts of the schematic are a little confusing. The circuit is almost together enough to start testing though. I'll probably have it all laid out next weekend.
I'll share the results then.

Jason

Well, I've had the circuit breadboarded for a while now, but I'll be damned if can get the thing to work.
The Volume CV out is fairly simple and I highly recommend it to anyone interested putting it together. I would even go so far as to say that it was fun. But I've scratched my head over the Pitch CV circuit for a week now.

How did it all turn out?