A440 Lamp

In _Us Conductors_ (page 188) Sean Michaels describes a special superior instrument that Theremin has built just for the love of his life, Clara.

As Theremin, Michaels writes about being in the audience and the orchestra tuning, and the instrument that gives the A is not the oboe, but her theremin - he says, he knows there is a lamp on her side of the cabinet that glows when she's making a "perfect A."

I wonder how he did this?  A crystal?  A tuning fork with a sensor? Because an ordinary RC circuit would not ever keep a pitch, eh? I suppose it could have been an RC circuit that she tuned with a tuning fork just before the performance.  Hmmm.

Also why doesn't MY theremin have a Perfect A Lamp?

A theremin tuned to 440 Hz is over a 1000 times more sensitive to drift than a simple RC circuit tuned to 440 Hz.

Here is a simple to view pitch tuner, upload to any PC computer like device. I have never noticed any type of latency in what is displayed. You would use the pitch preview theremin output. The theremin wave shape is so simple it is easy to monitor.

This free audio software is fast it would work on XP or earlier or any Windows, been using it for twenty years.

Christopher

Yes yes, I have a tuner --- below.  Cleartune app on the iPhone, showing my tuning fork. We all have tuners.  I'm just wondering why if Theremin built one in, in 1938 why we don't all have one built in.

"I'm just wondering why if Theremin built one in, in 1938 why we don't all have one built in."  - DanielMackay

His perhaps had more latency than the digital solutions today?  And the display for real-time use by musicians during performance is fairly critical IMO.

Has anyone ever seen the schematic of this A440 lamp? I would surely like to built this in my Clara Rockmore replica!

It should be remebered that 'Us Conductors' by Sean Michaels is a work of fiction, albeit based on a loose factual reality, and therefore the additional 'tuning lamp' on the theremin may just be the author taking a poetic licence.

Has anyone ever seen the schematic of this A440 lamp? I would surely like to built this in my Clara Rockmore replica!

Henk: Here's more of the description:

It was perhaps the most perfect thing I had ever made. The cabinet was made of ash; the circuitry was gold, green and silver. its secrets were concealed within two hinged compartments. From the outside it was a simple wedge on four legs. The pitch antenna rose in a short straight line. The volume antenna looped at the left side, esoteric and in its way, ornate. Where the performer stands, there was a a small dial: ten numbered settings for ten different timbres. I had not just made the theremin sing more beautifully -- I had given it many voices. Darker, higher, deeper, an instrument of caves, or of woods, or of roads less travelled by.

He also later notes that for the performance, Clara had the case painted black, and only used one of the ten voices.

Arthur Harrison was able to review Robert Moog's circuit diagram of Clara Rockmore's theremin and at a different time examined Lucie Rosen's theremin, detailing his finds.

Interestingly, Lucie Rosen's theremin did have a lamp which was 'presumed to be part of a pitch-indicating circuit' incorporated into the instrument.
This lamp and associated circuitry was not included in the main schematic of the instrument, thought to have been drawn by Theremin.

That said, my initial comment about 'Us Conductors' still stands: it is not intended to be judgemental but a statement of fact.

The articles on Rockmore's and Rosen's theremins along with a fountain of information can be found at Art's Theremin Page

In the schematic at the bottom of the Rosen description

     https://www.theremin.us/Rosen%20Theremin/rosen.html

at the top left corner there's a multi position switch "Tone Control" that I think must correspond to the "ten different timbres" that is mentioned in Us Conductors.