What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!

[gamalot]

Just received 20pcs PCBs, I like the ball pen. 

[medical-nerd]

Hiya

Bought these from gearbest.com for a birthday present for my 12 years old son.

Must be reliving my childhood through my children......since I always lost keys so never bothered with them from 13yrs old!! 

Cheers

[URI]

This afternoon I bought a Fluke 87V roughly 45 minutes after it was put on ebay for 150€ in good condition. :-)
Being off with my arm broken has to be good for something at last..   

[Specmaster]

Nice steal, sorry to hear about your accident but with a steal like this, perhaps it was a bit of a blessing, you'll have plenty of time to play with your new toy 

[Cubdriver]

A Lucent Rubidium standard purchased over the weekend from the Bay of Malevolence arrived today. 

-Pat

[URI]

Nice steal, sorry to hear about your accident but with a steal like this, perhaps it was a bit of a blessing, you'll have plenty of time to play with your new toy 

It's more like a small consolation. 
I'd prefer my arm being well.

But it could be worse. 

[CJay]

Being delivered tomorrow, a huge chunk of eBay junk

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intech-PA3-400-Mosfet-Amplifier-/352172338939?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&nma=true&si=C4WmTOZVFX5fSDo5eRHa2Q6c8mg%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

no idea if it will work, no idea if it's even useful but there's  meter with a kilowatt range, theres a *huge* transformer (the whole weighs 66KG) and I figure there's a lot of fun in tearing it down which I may record and post on Youtube along with a teardown of the Bruker NMR amplifier I bought a while ago.

[polli]

Bought a monotron duo:

http://www.korg.com/us/products/dj/monotron_duo/

I can start to understand and mod the circuit, and then I have a point of comparison to tell if my synths are working correctly. I've always only worked with digital audio, so pushing the filter until it starts screaming is just too much fun.

[McBryce]

Bought a monotron duo:

http://www.korg.com/us/products/dj/monotron_duo/

I can start to understand and mod the circuit, and then I have a point of comparison to tell if my synths are working correctly. I've always only worked with digital audio, so pushing the filter until it starts screaming is just too much fun.

For some reason that instantly reminded me of this...
https://farm1.static.flickr.com/87/242740060_6474fd3777_b.jpg

I still have my original Stylophone somewhere.

McBryce.

[FrankBuss]

Bought a monotron duo:

http://www.korg.com/us/products/dj/monotron_duo/

This piano looks painful to play. But at least it is a good idea that you can change the scale to major or minor, so that you don't accidentally touch the black keys, as with the chromatic scale setting. But I guess it is often used with scale off, like a theremin?

[medical-nerd]

Being delivered tomorrow, a huge chunk of eBay junk

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intech-PA3-400-Mosfet-Amplifier-/352172338939?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&nma=true&si=C4WmTOZVFX5fSDo5eRHa2Q6c8mg%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

no idea if it will work, no idea if it's even useful but there's  meter with a kilowatt range, theres a *huge* transformer (the whole weighs 66KG) and I figure there's a lot of fun in tearing it down which I may record and post on Youtube along with a teardown of the Bruker NMR amplifier I bought a while ago.

I'm very jealous!

I have bought items from this ebayer before, all good stuff but unfortunately they seem to have put a default postage of £40 on most of their items recently, even the small package items - otherwise I would have grabbed a few more items for stripping down.

Cheers

[polli]

Bought a monotron duo:

http://www.korg.com/us/products/dj/monotron_duo/

This piano looks painful to play. But at least it is a good idea that you can change the scale to major or minor, so that you don't accidentally touch the black keys, as with the chromatic scale setting. But I guess it is often used with scale off, like a theremin?

It's fairly easy to use it in chromatic mode with reasonable accuracy, and I feel like I would be able to record most things in a couple of takes, especially if I practice a bit - today is the first day I'm playing with it and I'm already getting the hang of it.

It's also very fun to use it with the scale off, but not like a theremin - I feel like I can't really control that, - more like a piano, again with the thumbs, and then you can do vibrato like you would on a guitar or a violin, just by pressing your thumb.

But this thing is meant to be modded! First thing would be adding a CV input for the pitch. I have a 88key controller I will use instead of the actual keyboard.

[FrankBuss]

It's fairly easy to use it in chromatic mode with reasonable accuracy, and I feel like I would be able to record most things in a couple of takes, especially if I practice a bit - today is the first day I'm playing with it and I'm already getting the hang of it.

Would be interesting to see a teardown of it. Maybe start another thread for it. I guess it uses capacitive sensing elements?

Recently I saw this instrument:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/skotwiedmann/hyve-touch-synth-make-the-future-of-musical-expres

I think they are using resistive sensing elements. And the Korg is surprisingly cheap compared to this Kickstarter project. Usually anything that is called "analog" from Korg costs an arm and a leg

[polli]

Would be interesting to see a teardown of it. Maybe start another thread for it. I guess it uses capacitive sensing elements?

There isn't much to teardown. It's a single PCB with some pots, and there's even an official schematic for it: http://www.korg.com/download/global/monotron_duo_schematic/monotron_DUO_sch.pdf



I'm not sure if I can take the ribbon keyboard apart, but maybe this can can shed some light on how it works... if I press on the lowest and highest point, it seems to kind of do an average pitch, but it's closer to the lowest note.

[FrankBuss]

Interesting circuit, very simple and cheap with LM324 and 7414. And the keyboard is just one ribbon potentiometer according to the schematic diagram. Something like this:

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8681

Could be difficult to add a CV input for the frequency with exact 1 V per octave, if the MSP430 microcontroller does some correction to the control voltage. Or maybe they managed to build the analog part in a way that the microcontroller can just output a linear or exponential control voltage without feedback? Otherwise it would be difficult to correct for different master pitch settings, because this is not going into the MSP430. I wonder why they didn't do more in software, would be much simpler with less parts.

[polli]

Could be difficult to add a CV input for the frequency with exact 1 V per octave

This is my first analog synth, so I'm also going to have to make my own midi to CV, probably with an arduino uno I have laying around from ages ago... if it still works. I can compensate for whatever (as soon as I actually can understand the circuit).

[FrankBuss]

The most elegant modification would be to add MIDI input and implement your own firmware for the MSP430. My Beatstep Pro uses 3.5mm stereo jacks for MIDI, and then external cable adapters with the standard DIN connector, which can be bought for other gear as well, in case there is not much room for a normal DIN connector input.

[polli]

I actually had a fun idea for a new project (and I can incorporate a couple of my projects, including one I already posted about here), and I think it will be helpful to have a working analog audio circuit around.

This time I'm going to post a project thread after I actually make something, though :P

[Rémi]

I didn't buy them, I saved them from the dumpster.
I'm lucky today

[Mr. Scram]

I didn't buy them, I saved them from the dumpster.
I'm lucky today

You must have found Dave's magical dumpster.

[URI]

I didn't buy them, I saved them from the dumpster.
I'm lucky today
[picture showing an HP 3437A, an HP 34970A, an HP 3456A and an HP 6031A

Congratulations, nice package! Those instruments alone are a solid foundation for a home lab. 
I'm still looking for a HP 3437A going for little money because I've missed the time the HP 3437A were thrown out of the labs in numbers.. 

[Cubdriver]

I didn't buy them, I saved them from the dumpster.
I'm lucky today

Sweet!!!  Nicely done - great 'save'!

-Pat

[tooki]

I didn't buy them, I saved them from the dumpster.
I'm lucky today

OMG where??

I’ve been struggling to even find used test gear (or other surplus) vendors in Switzerland... all the old gear seems to vanish into thin air!

[Mr. Scram]

It pains me to realize that amazing test gear gets shredded every day, while I'm eager to get my hands on it. I'll pay you to haul your trash away, damn it!

[Specmaster]

It pains me to realize that amazing test gear gets shredded every day, while I'm eager to get my hands on it. I'll pay you to haul your trash away, damn it!

Ha ha you and I both, it really worries me that people just dump things like this when they could offer them to people in a local recycle group or something.