Tic Tac Tunes - Now with Tic Tac Beat Box

Step 3 Building the 'Keyboard'.

For the keyboard I've used a 10K LINEAR slide dual gang potentiometer. These are the type of thing you'd see on a mixer desk, only smaller. It works in the same way as a normal pot, but in a straight line. Dual gang means there are two of them in the unit (for stereo signals). Linear means the resistance increases evenly across the length.

Firstly, bend up the eight lugs and remove the resistive element, then look closely at the third picture and notice the diagonal lines on the element. This is where the resistive part starts and will be significant later.

Cut off the six legs, and very carefully cut and grind away the board up to the holes as in the sixth picture. Grind away the through-holes on the back a bit and roughen up the back as we will be gluing this later. Careful here - these things aren't all that rugged and the track is easily scratched.

Fit a link across the holes at one end and thin wires from the two at the other end as in the eighth picture. In the picture, the yellow wire will go to the +ve, the blue to the -ve. Build up a blob of solder on the +ve terminal. This will be the contact for controlling the tempo.

For the probe I'm using just the top pin of a 3.5mm jack plug. Stereo or mono, or 2.5mm would be fine. Use good flexible wire for connecting this. Solder a single wire to the centre terminal and ideally add some heatshrink as strain relief.

Comments

[yopdiesel]

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[AndyGadget]

 
Glad you like it #;¬)

Putting in a 10K fixed resistor should work OK, although you';ll lose the percussion sounds.

[yopdiesel]

Oops, forget it, stupid question. I just found another 10k pot, i'll cope with it.