01 June 2008

Yusynth (Part 3)

Last week I also picked up the first components for my Yusynth modular. I will start working on 4 VCO's. When I got home I studied the parts and found that the 100 nF capacitors are way too big. They are 400 Volt types and 63 Volt would be more than sufficient. Also the Elco's are not right they are axial and on the PCB there should be radial. Also the trim potmeters are of the wrong type. The last thing I found out is that I forgot to order sockets for the IC's. Ah well better next time. I will trade these parts next week and will start what with is right.

Soldering the PCB's we made ourselves is a lot different from the other PCB's I did so far. To begin with there is no fancy silk screen with component orientation or even numbering. So you have to figure our first what goes where and all you have are wholes to look for. Another thing is that the PCB is single sides and the whole itself isn't letting solder trough, so flowing soldering tin is a bit more difficult as well. But hey I did this for a living remember? So I picked up the pace were I left it of long time ago. I started with soldering all the 5% resistors.

Yves has some very nice documentation on his website though. In the picture on the left you see the component orientation and there are also pictures with the values of the components. I did find some minor differences though so for some parts I was not really sure which value to use, but I will figure this out when I go along. Another thing I found out is that I thought I made the BC547 version of the VCO's because I thought the LM394 would be hard to get. In the end we apparently did make the LM394 version PCB's as we probably did find the components, but I can't recall. Maybe we just made the right ones by mistake :)

In the picture on the right you can see how far I got today. These 4 boards will actually produce music some day. Strange idea right? :) Well they will for sure! I will look for the rest of the components next week and try to work some more on them. I still have a lot of PCB's to go, but I just take it easy. I like to solder a bit in between my job and working on my music. It gets my head clear after work and then the result in the studio is way better. So soldering these DIY projects have a double function for me this way. I'll update you again when I have done more work on this project.

2 comments:

vinnui said...

I'm building YuSynth VCOs too, found and ordered LM394s from Futurlec.
MFOS VCO can use the LM394, so i can build them.

Synth.nl said...

Ah cool. Keep me posted on your project to then :)