Jaycar Theremin

Hi all. From the posts on various sites I gather that Kees Enkelaar has not sold his modified Jaycar Theremin for some years. The Jaycar is my first and I would like to improve it. I have pics of Kees's mods but part values would be helpful. Would anyone care to share the mods, or sell a completed one? There is no patent that I can find, other than SC's, so sharing would be helping, not infringing. BTW, the Jaycar currently sells for abt. 40 bux with shipping to the US and I am very pleased with the unit as assembled.

What Kees surely did out of using a better pitch rod and a better volume loop was to insert the commonly known mods for fine-tuning the oscillators, linearizing the pitch field and eventually playing with the wave shaping by increasing the coupling between the oscillators.

All these or similar mods can be found here:
Click me but not too hard, please! (http://www.thereminworld.com/silicon_chip_theremin_modifications.html)

Welcome to Theremin World, Howard.

Have you asked Kees about the disposition of his mods? I know that he did not share them while he was producing his theremins, but it is possible that that position has changed.

Incidentally, Thierry, the waveform of the Kees is not like the ones illustrated on the Jaycar mods page - it is a sine wave - albeit a slightly unstable one - mine produces a single peak on my software real-time spectrum display (*) but it is not a sharp spike, more like an isosceles triangle.

It is reminiscent of a slide whistle. It has a second voice, which is the same signal with half-wave rectification. On my old guitar amp it sounded like a wasp in a jar, but on my SR Jam 150+ it sounds great (I do not think you would care for it, Thierry, it is more strident than the setting I usually have on my etherwave, and rather "electronic" in character.)

As far as I can tell (**), it is not as linear as my etherwave. The note spacing is more like a guitar than a piano throughout its range. It plays notes a lot higher than my etherwave and the compression near the pitch rod is extreme.



(*) Except in the very low notes, where it becomes somewhat chaotic (not in the mathematical sense, a.f.a.i.k.)
(**) I play continuous pitch theremin exclusively, as opposed to trying to play "in tune" with discrete pitch instruments.

Thanks Thierry and Gordon. I thought I searched pretty thoroughly for a way to contact Kees so as to buy his Theremin but only found links and addresses that had died years ago, so, I bought the SC. I'll do Max's mods and build a Levs Antenna, of the correct frequency, for linearity. Not a big deal, just looking for a quick start. At 42 bux shipped to the US, and quickly, I might add, I think everyone who can solder should start here. Best kit since Heath. Again, thanks all.

Did you look here (http://web.archive.org/web/20071106021117/people.aapt.net.au/~fwhite/theremin/CONTACT.HTM)?





("Here" is inside a computer that fills a cargo container that sits on the Sun Microsystems campus in Silicon Valley.)

Oops. Red face, didn't find that one. However, after listening to an mp3 of the Kees, and at 200 dollars, as opposed to 42 for the Jaycar, I made the right decision. The saw waveform is not pleasing at all, to me anyway. Far too rough. Not at all like Clara R's Theremins. Cheers, Howard.

Haha. It's funny how tastes vary. Mine are probably peculiar to Brits of my age - both the Kees voices have strong childhood associations - the sine wave with "The Clangers" - a cartoon featuring cuddly musical space aliens who "spoke" through a slide whistle, and the sawtooth with "Bleep And Booster" - another cartoon - the adventures of a young boy and his space alien chum, with a soundtrack that was pure BBC Radiophonic Workshop, very raw electronics.

You do realise you'll never get "the Clara sound" - so much of the sound comes from the player - as an example, here is Fatern on youtube with a completely standard Moog etherwave (with a decorated enclosure) yet it sounds like a Japanese instrument to my ears!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfQenM5LaBI

I think in her hands the Kees "slide whistle" would be a shakuhachi.

Agreed. I am certainly no connoisseur of the Theremin sound, I simply want something that sounds as unique as the instrument. Sine is easy, as is "Rough/Stringy". What I like is somewhere between. Also, I tried re-searching for Kees web site and my methods turned up nothing. Is that SV cargo container a repository of web sites, possibly? The site was intact, but the external links garnered me a 404. No matter, just curious.

The Internet Archive is the first port of call for anything that has disappeared off the Internet.

They back-up as much of the Internet as they can.

http://www.archive.org/about/about.php

They recently moved to a 3 Petabyte Sun data server.

(Some interesting stats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petabyte.)

Hi Howard,

Did you consider using an effects box? I use a Behringer Ultra Fuzz on my B3 Deluxe (which generates a fairly pure triangle wave on the scope) to get the "saw"-like waveshapes. The combination of "Drive" and "Tone" knobs gives me a range from mellow fuzzy (probably what you have in mind) to balls-out distorted pulse waves (probably more what Gordon likes.)

You could try a variety of fuzz boxes at a music store and see what sounds good to you.