THEREMIN REVIEW SERIES

Hello Fred. Sorry to hear you're not able to listen as well as see the vid. It's late, I know. No worries. :)

But yeh, it was a tough decision not to do an identical theme at the front end, so at least the demo is fairly uniform across all platforms.

Watched it earlier Thomas but couldn't comment till now.  Great camera angle with the pitch antenna graphically demonstrating the linearity of the field.  Your comments re the plumbing on the EWS are spot on - I don't understand this ad hoc, makeshift hardware on a $400 Theremin - fiddly to mess with, fragile, and a general pain is the ass.  Quick connect/disconnect it ain't.  Plus no pitch preview, no volume control, I'm kind of at a loss.

You play quite well, and so can really show off the positive aspects and ultimate potential of any instrument!  Thanks so much for all your work with these reviews!

I'd pay money to watch your review of the TVox Tour, you wouldn't by any chance have access to one?

@dewster: Thanks. Glad you enjoyed the new review. Actually, as much as I DON'T like the hardware store bits to connect the antennas, they are actually quite robust, and I have yet to have one break. In fact, I am in the process of removing the hardware from one of my EW Stds, and found that they glued the threaded hard points into the wood, so it took considerable effort to remove just one of them. I'm replacing them with phono jacks for the hot connect end of the volume loop, and pitch rod, and removing the compression rings, and threaded hex nuts. the free end of the vol loop will be held in place with a non-conductive adaptor which will be more attractive than the existing hard ware connections.

Yes, in the kit IIRC they recommend epoxying the plumbing into the wooden case, I never did this because I never got around to finishing the wood (the top of mine is two pieces of very different grade wood glued together, not very conducive to straight varnish, crying out for piano black I suppose).  And if you don't glue it it's fairly fragile. 

Can I recommend UHF connectors?  RS carries them, very convenient to connect / disconnect, orientation is locked via prongs, there are 90 degree adapters readily available (let me know and I'll send you one for the pitch antenna) and 3/8" tubing fits right in.

@dewster: Ah, that would indeed be problematic without the epoxy in place. I installed a module in someone's theremin that had a lid just like yours. Yeh, only thing for it is a multi-coat of piano black.

Yeh, go ahead and send me one of those connectors. I'll check it out. Oh, by the way, just now noticed this while moving the review theremin into studio A tonight, the latest revision uses a cube shaped hard point for the pitch rod instead of the octagonal hard point. That's really got to go. LOL I'm thinking of drilling a hole in the lid for the pitch rod to pass through to the new connector, whichever I decide to use, but I'll try your connector first.

Oh, and 10 minutes after striking set, I ran and grabbed an ESPE01 module, and installed it today, along with putting my anti-chirp vol antenna mod on. She's got her full concert grade voice now, with all 8 octaves. Sounds just like my other two Etherwaves I modded with it. :)

"It's late, I know. No worries. :)"

Alas, if only it was that simple! ;-(

My PC has decided not to produce any sound - thought it was the soundcard, so tried piping the audio to my Hercules FireWire 16/12.. Nothing, then tried into my USB Roland UA-100.. Nothing.

It all went dead suddenly, and other (USB) peripherals have started misbehaving - so I suspect a major hardware fault on the ancient Xeon MB.. But at this time of night I cannot pull the PC out and mess with it, and cannot substitute it for a spare PC in another room.. Should really turn this PC off, but I have decided to do a full backup while its still running, in case it never recovers consciousness when I turn it back on again!

Fred.

@FredM, sorry to hear about that possible hardware problem. Hopefully, it's just a bad driver update, but yeh, that's sounding like a dying MB. Been there, done that, oh so many times. I hope your backup goes well.

Hey, its not too bad - I have an identical spare MB, and provided the Xeons and memory are ok, I can just fit them into this.. There are a number of possible hardware causes (I am fairly sure its not driver - the sound suddenly went dead while watching your video - this is not typical driver failure) - I cannot remember if, when I fitted the combo FW/USB card, I used the USB on this - I think I did, as the MB supported USB 1, and the card USB 2... In this case it is possible that this card is faulty.. But the fact that the soundcard died does indicate a MB fault.

But also, I have been having some strange simulation crashes over the last few days - Corrupt RAM could do this.. But also, the PC has problems powering up at times.. PSU ?

Oh hell - It could be anything! LOL ;-) ... In the past I would just buy a Reconditioned Dell (like this one is) for about £150 and dump the faulty PC in the loft, to sit on top of a load of other older Dells, IBM PC-AT's, Amstrad 1512's, Atari's, BBC Micro's, and probably even a couple of Sinclair ZX81's - I have enough junk there to start a museum! - Even have a complete CPM system with dual 8" Floppy drives and probably even the teletype I used for programming this ;-) .... Then I have a mountain of faulty synths and keyboards I bought for peanuts because they didntb work, or found at the dump, but never even got to examining fully, let alone fix!

But this time buying anything is off the cards, so its probably a day or so down the pan.. This PC has given me about 4 years of brilliant service, at £150 I cant complain.. I spend more on so-called long-life ECO light bulbs!

Fred.

"Yeh, go ahead and send me one of those connectors. I'll check it out."  - Thomas Grillo

I don't have any of the other hardware to spare, but Radio shack sells the SO-239 chassis mount socket (278-201) for ~$4:

And they sell a pack of two PL-259 connectors (278-205) for ~$5:

If those look useful to you, I can send you a right angle adapter to fit between these for the pitch side of things.  I bought several off eBay and I'm not sure if I'll be using them for my new designs, but was thinking strongly at one point of modifying my own EWS this way.

If one were designing something new that employed capacitive shielding of built-in to the antenna(s) this would be a great connector to use as it has two conductors.  For EWS use you can probably just use the outer conductor and ignore the inner.

"But also, I have been having some strange simulation crashes over the last few days - Corrupt RAM could do this.. But also, the PC has problems powering up at times.. PSU ?"  - FredM

Dell et al tend to cut corners when it comes to components the average buyer isn't normally aware of, and a weak/dying PSU can wreak all kinds of havoc.  This is why I always assemble my own, generally AMD uP (value) on Gigabyte motherboards (quality).  Last build was an A10 on micro-ATX, next will probably be die shrunk next gen A10 (whatever they'll name it) on mini-ITX.  And I always spring for a $50-$60 PSU, even if a "free" one comes with the case.