Print PDF
Favorite
Email
Step 4Putting It All Together
To position the sound-hole, put the springs on the posts and put the sounder on top. Gently press down and slide the whole assembly into the box then put the lid on. Mark the position of the sounder hole and then remove the circuit and drill a small hole there. A hot soldering iron is great for tidying the edges up. While you're at it, make a hole in the lid of the tic tac box to let the probe lead through. Also make another hole near the base of the box to allow the wires from the keyboard through.
Feed the probe and keyboard wires through into the box and cut these as short as you safely can then solder them to the board. Connect the wire from the battery +ve terminal. The circuit is now live!
Put the sounder in place and feed everything in for the last time. Use a hooked piece of stiff wire to pull the keyboard wires through so they don't foul the battery placement. Take your time over this step.
Impact adhesive is about the only thing which will stick the pot base to the plastic box, so give them a thin coat and leave to dry. After 5 minutes or so, carefully stick it down.
I'm left handed and have made this to suit a left-handed person. For the right-handed version, stick the resistor strip lower down on the panel and turn the unit around when you're playing it.
The insulating tape is important. It has to go around the box and cross the tracks exactly on the diagonal stripe mentioned earlier. This sets the end-points for the keyboard.
Trim away the tape around the solder blob on the keyboard. This is the control button which turns it on, and sets the tempo and scale.
Decorate it in a style of your choosing and clear the sound-hole with your soldering iron tip. I went for the purple holographic sticky vinyl to give a futuristic look but with a retro purple seventies vibe (and because the shop was selling it cheap).
| « Previous Step | Download PDFView All Steps | Next Step » |
If you hover over the yellow boxes on the 4th picture on step 2 it shows the keyboard connections to the top track (+V), in the middle (to the IC pin 3) and bottom track (0V).