tiny synth – Massive FAT Sound !
Quite the simple circuit in comparison to a ‘proper’ synth, recreating Pete McBennett ‘s superb FAT sounding synthesizer.
Many Arduino and 555 based projects are quite wonderful, but nothing really has had the same ear appeal so far of this one !
2x LM324N and an LM358 were salvaged from a hifi or some other 1990’s boards, plus many other components.
The LDR’s are from Dollar Tree LED night lights !
A twin ganged pot can also be used instead of the LDR’s, but in my tests that method didn’t give a 1/4 of the range or effects that waving a plastic cup over the LDR’s can give.
Each note has a separate variable pot to tune. I’ve also added a 100K pot in series with all pots, to give an ability to tune up or down for the whole lot…which in the future is to have a multi-position switch on it to select octaves. Doing so should allow playing as though it’s a full monophonic keyboard.
Here’s Pete McBennett’s original video and demo of his circuit:
