The Mothership

[mjg]

This one is a Theremin Fuzz from Parasit Studio (thanks Freppo!), with a custom PT2399 echo circuit that I put together (achievement unlocked?)

I found this old Apple Airport base station behind my parents' filing cabinet a while ago.  It had been faithfully serving up a defunct wifi network for about 5 years since the telephone company technician installed a new wifi router for my parents, and didn't bother turning off the old one.  I decided to give it a better life. 

Rotary switches for the octave selector on the theremin, and another rotary for selecting the theremin, echo, or both chained.  I've put in a small circuit with a few transistors so I can switch both the LEDs on when both effects are running. 

The echo has speed warping and max feedback momentary switches.

The drilling was a bit of a hassle – there are no straight surfaces on this thing, so lining up holes was a challenge.  The boards sit off the knobs and switches with some orange juice container plastic that I cut up for the purpose.  And of course after I got everything together, I found that the very middle lug on the stomp switch wasn't quite soldered properly, so had to pull everything out again.

This one took quite a while to get finished – it's probably been sitting on the shelf in various states of undress for a few months.  But it's finally finished, and working.  I had to go with shielded wires leading into the Theremin Fuzz, as it really misbehaved if it didn't get a nice clean signal.  The shielded wires seemed to help the tracking. 

Originally I had an optical bypass in there as well, but that seemed to be screwing with the theremin as well, so I pulled it out and went with a plain 3PDT.  I'd probably just wired something wrong. 





Gut shot:



Night shot:



Video demo (about 2 minutes long):

http://graybloomfield.com/guitar/2017/07/31/the-mothership/mothership-480/

[EBK]

Mothership....
Apple logo....

Independence Day?

(As I get older, I realize that I need to be more careful making casual references to movies that were made over 20 years ago.  )

[mjg]

Has it been that long since that movie came out?  Oh man...

[bcalla]

That's the ccolest thing I've ever seen!  And heard!  Awesome!

[oip]

sheer madness, i love it!

[BrianS]

Very creative.  Really looks sharp.

[storyboardist]

That's awesome! Perfect name too.

[Droogie]

I love everything about this! Great job!

[jimilee]

That's insane, I've been looking for a router like that for a project as well.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[stringsthings]

That's so creative!  One of the most unique enclosures I've seen.  Congrats!

[gordo]

What a cool enclosure.  Captain Kirk's Fuzz Face.

[mjg]

What a cool enclosure.  Captain Kirk's Fuzz Face.

"It's fuzz, Jim, but not as we know it"

[nzCdog]

Gold!  Love this, what a fun re-purposing of an old enclosure

[gordo]

Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor...not your roadie...

[Addy Bart]

Sounds great!