Saturday, 7 May 2011

Progress on the Virtual Organ

Quite a volume of water has flowed under the bridge on the virtual organ project...

Firstly, the MIDI bass pedal electronics have been cast in stone (or, at least, cast on a small PCB)...


Next, I purchased a bunch of linear potentiometers from a trader on eBay, and made up a PCB to take nine of them (enough for a single manual). Here's the set...


Readers may recall that I've explained how my drawbars are scanned - but I needed to make up an interface (having previously only breadboarded the solution for 5 drawbars and a single additional analog control). I designed an interface to service a set of 9 drawbars and another set of 5. Two of these units will be needed - one for the swell manual & pedals and another for the great manual and miscellaneous analog controls.

Here's my schematic...


I elected to use the A733 PNP transistors I salvaged from the "Donor Organ" - not only as a signature "cheapskate" joke, but also to ensure that authentic Hammond sound!!!

Here's the finished unit, made up on some nice white PCB board I picked up at the NARSA rally...


So - here's a shot of the "organ" development to date (sans pedals, which are hiding out of view)...



You can even see the lunatic Leslie Switch!

I have the new drawbars AND the original 5 "test" drawbars running (the latter now configured for the lower manual).

Just as I finished the new set of "potentiometer" drawbars, a genuine set of Hammond drawbars came up on eBay. I snapped them up and will be fitting them to this project. Real drawbars are nine-position switches (rather than potentiometers), so an entirely new interface methodology will be required - but it have been fun developing this one (and I can still use it to implement general analog controls).

Watch this space to see the real Drawbars.

...-.- de m0xpd

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