Etherwave Plus for $250 in Los Angeles

http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/msg/5147553413.html 

Posted for $250, new in box.  Pretty great deal.

Hello Jason,

I have had my eye on that for about a month. Craig's list recommends face to face money exchange and bring a friend. It is two hours from me or I would buy it today. Notice how the packaging shows a EW Plus?

Here is the Link

Christopher

Hehe, I guess I should chime in now.  I own this Etherwave Plus now.  The seller lived only about 5 minutes from me and we did the exchange three days ago. I plan on doing some work to it and will soon use it as my back up/travel theremin when I'm on the road.  The previous owner said it was purchased for their band and it just sat for an entire year, never taken out of the box even once. Smoking deal.  Etherwave Plus - serial #4146

A new EtherWave Plus for 250$, you can't touch that. From Craig's List I have always noticed there is a strong cluster of theremins located on the north side of LA. Glad you were able to purchase it as my need is for the Standard because real estate inside the box is limited and I would want to add my CSB modification for the sound I like.

Christopher

Edit: Randy you need to remove that bumper sticker on your car "Don't Mess With Texas"

Christopher, I definitely never owned one of those bumper stickers. :)   I thought there was plenty of room in the E-Plus.  The CV board only consumes the space in between the main board and the control panel.  Your modifications must need a lot of room.  I want to create a new cabinet at some point. I believe the cabinet of the Etherwaves is not a great form factor, and I want to redesign it with improved playability in mind.  In my opinion, there is way more thought going towards the innards of the theremin (electronics, topology), and not enough thought going toward the outside of the theremin (cabinet design), which has a more direct effect on the elusive equation of capacitance change and ultimately on the linearity of the pitch interaction.

theremincat, (pardon me for answering even though you addressed Chris) ESPE01 works in all Etherwaves, the Standard and Plus.   It's been a long time since I played an etherwave (I sold my first one in 2009) and my technique is vastly different than 8 years ago, so I'm experiencing the difference between it and the E-Pro like night and day.  I have already arrived to the conclusion that the ESPE01 modue is a requirement for all Etherwave Theremins. By the way, there was no module used in the old "Don't Worry" video.  I think the bass could sound much better than it did in that recording.  Until I put the module in this new Etherwave Plus, I cant provide a detailed analysis of the difference. 

Hello All,

I was trying to avoid theremins for while to return to the easy money of the stock market. Using Excel, VB and Yahoo data downloads it is possible to compare 100’s of stocks simultaneously in the last trading hour of each day. The market has been downward for the last six months and housing is holding onto a bubble again but when things flatten and turn around it will be like shooting ducks in a barrel.

There is little room in the EWS box as the sides with the antenna wires must be respected. Here is a photo of my CSB mod, which is a Continuous Signal Breakout point. As I have said in the past Fred, Thierry and especially dewster influenced the approach seen in the photo.

My pitch is enhanced using an external board much to big to fit in the box. Not being a musician and not following YouTube there may be an easier method to get the sound I like, a fat opera sound, if so someone please tell me.

The audio is born on the CSB mod board by using a single diode to mix the RF, no detection, very simple, 9th grade stuff.

Here is my sound.mp3 which is authentic analog theremin in principle. My sound goes so low it just rolls over to the other side. No thereminist has ever told me this is a sound they could enjoy playing, my hearing is limited and family always says nice things. 0-:

Christopher 

Christopher, can you repost that clip in an uncompressed format? It sounds like there is digital aliasing in the higher frequencies, possibly due to mp3 compression. Also, could you do a sweep, from lowest frequency to highest and back to low?  first with no vibrato, and then another just like it with vibrato (with as consistent an oscillation width as possible)? Sorry, if it's a bit too much to ask. There's no rush. The quality of the sound clips, no matter what instrument, are a huge part of the difficulty in determining whether a sound is pleasant or not.

 "It sounds like there is digital aliasing in the higher frequencies, possibly due to mp3 compression"

That has haunted me my entire journey, I can not fix what I don't hear or detect. 

The EWS setup generating the sound was taken apart several months ago so unable to do a steady sweep test.

I did find the original.wav file. 2.1 meg  I almost deleted that post above as I am on vacation from the theremin currently. If aliasing is still occurring it is most likely caused because I use an analog to digital converter with a Toslink cable to the computer sound card. Too much digital may be defeating my goal.

Aside from the noise what "device" on the market would give the EtherWave Standard a similar sound, no use in re-inventing the wheel and I have nothing to sell. The EWS always seemed to have a muffled sound unless in the hands of someone who has all the tools and add-ons.

Christopher

Edit: Now that aliasing was brought to my attention I think this graphic of the sound byte reveals what some hear and I never have, example B. The fundamental is about 650hz, in the vocal range. Five harmonics relate but not the right three. Should be able to clean that up if I get back into things.

Edit2: Further study shows all of the spikes are harmonics of ~560hz, the noise or distortion I can not hear might be represented in sample A, the fuzz around the base of the harmonic spikes.? This needs further study.

I like roll-overs

There seems to be the same unusual high frequency sounds in both files, so it's probably not a compression issue.  I think it may be low level RF noise modulating the signal at certain frequencies.  I am listening with "in-ear" monitors... so I'm hearing things very clearly. It's likely that some of these sounds that feel odd to me are not audible when listening with speakers.  It's all very subjective stuff.  I will agree about the Factory Etherwave tone, that it's too muffled.   The evolving harmonics are where the juicy lush interesting stuff is.  But different listeners will have different preferences as to what sounds pleasant.

It seems like this discussion could evolve and have nothing to do with the original topic, which does not really have a mysterious ending anymore.  Maybe start a new thread topic?  I'm not sure of what roll-over is. :P

Randy thanks for the input, I need to figure out a method to visually display what you hear. I may have a method already but don't recognize aliasing when I see it.

The roll-over is when the thread continues onto a new page, it gets my ramble out of direct view. (-'

PS: Look at our Avatar pictures, good thing it is not mating season, definitely different dinning taste. LOL

Christopher

Edit: Think I figured out how to view this aliasing, I put a graph on the previous page.