13 January 2010

MFOS VC-LFO New Front Panel

I bought a Music From Outer Space (MFOS) Voltage Controlled Low Frequency Oscillator (VC-LFO) a while ago from E-bay. When it arrived it didn't work properly and I succesfully repaired it back then, but I wasn't happy with the build quality either and the fact that it had a front panel that read Oakley VCO. So I decided to buy a new front panel for and and completely rebuild it. Here you see the old unit. As you can see the PCB is fastened with a piece of plastic on top, but it isn't really secure. It fell out a couple of times and after the last time I was fed up with that as well.

The first thing I did was remove all the old wiring from the PCB. After that I used a desolder pump to remove the solder from the PCB holes. And then I put new wiring on the PCB. I got a new front panel from Bridechamber, but there is something I didn't really get. The PCB has a potmeter for Course Tuning and Fine Tuning, but on the front panel only Course. And there is a Sine Shaper potmeter on the front panel that I didn't understand. Eventually I decided to use the Sine Shaper potmeter for the Fine Tuning. I also used a 3 pot bracket from Bridechamber to fasten the PCB.

And here is a picture of the finished module. The only thing I left in place is the wiring for the power. There is also already a MOTM style power connector on there. Something I still need to do for my other units. After this I looked again at the signals coming from this unit. And I was a bit surprised. Even though I didn't change anything the signals didn't all look that great. But there is not much calibrating that you can do on this unit. I think I'll go and see if all the correct components are used on the PCB. I can't imagine it is supposed to work like this.

And here is the finished module on the right. It has two potmeters for CV inputs now and also an input with potmeter for the Pulse Width Modulation. And then there are 5 simultaneous outputs with Sine Wave, Triangle, Saw, Ramp and Square. Right of the module you can still see the old front panel. I already have two Oakley VC-LFO PCB's as well in the mean time. But I'm not sure that I'm going to use this front panel. Ah well we'll see :) Today I looked a bit through my backlog of PCB's while searching for the Oakley VC-LFO. And I found some PCB's that I didn't even know I had :) Hmmmm.. Still lots of work to do. But let's first finish up the modules that are already done. I'll keep you updated on the progress as usual. Enough for now.

No comments: