Presentation: DIY digital Theremin

I never tried a theremini in person, maybe my local music dealer in Berlin has one to try.

I tried different capacities and the lower it is, the better is the reponse but of course also the bigger is the noise. I will try different parts on the circuit board.

And of course the main point is the playability and not the gadgets

You should have a look at the code of the Open.Theremin project, though. There is a kind of pitch linearization, not 100%, but greatly improving the playability.

And I'd normally expect someone to become a good precision player first, then to play and to study a maximum of different actual and historic Theremin models, to get the needed musical and technical experience, before they start developing a new instrument.

I've seen ways too much theremin circuits in the last ten years which were engineered in a brilliant manner, having impressive technical data and features, but which were rapidly disqualified as unplayable by renowned classic thereminists. And the cause was always the same : The designers were good engineers but bad or no thereminists at all, so they did their designs completely apart from the needs of the player.

Remember that Clara Rockmore already disqualified the Etherwave prototype presented by Robert Moog himself to her as a "too nervous toy".

Just finished routing the first pcb version, but there are still things to improve. Just a first version,it could look like this:

"...which were engineered in a brilliant manner" - Thierry

Thierry, interesting.... can you give the links to 3 top brilliant circuits from your top list?

Already sleeping? No, just bugfixed some major erros on the circuit board.

Looks much better now too, but not finished yet.

PS: I'm here since 2006??! It was about time to write some postings..

So, the PCBs are ordered. In two weeks I will see, if the circuits are working as expected.

This first prototype looks like this:

""...which were engineered in a brilliant manner" - Thierry Thierry, interesting.... can you give the links to 3 top brilliant circuits from your top list?"

 Ilya, these schematics of aspiring theremin designers have obviously never found their way to the internet. But I have some of these "cadavers " in my private museum to learn from these how one should NOT design a theremin for musicians.

You are cordially invited to visit me in my atelier, so we can look together at these and discuss details. You'll have then the luck to see for example the world's first tube theremin with "stabilized" oscillators - so stabilized that the pitch range goes just from 60Hz to 400Hz. And a "super reactive" volume circuit - so reactive that the volume loop serves as a on-off switch for the audio signal. :-)

And much more...

After two weeks of waiting the parts and circuit boards arrived. Some parts are already solded. The mikroprocessor is living, the oscillators are oscillating (much better than an on the bread board!) and all voltages are correct.

I already found some small design erros but nothing important. Lets see how it works when everything is finished.

Almost finished:

Looks beautiful!