Still alive!

I'm still here, still thinking about synths!

The project has taken a bit of a back seat for a bit to make way for the festive period, but I still found time to have a think about power supplies. I've been using the ATX supply so far but I've heard switching power supplies are bad for synths and linear is much better. I built the expo converter for the VCO and sort of got it half working, but the pitch drifted wuite a lot and it can't quite manage 1v/oct tracking. That's when it hit me that the circuits i'd based my design on were all designed for +/-15v power suppplies and I was only using +/-12v!

Scouring the internet for solutions I got to thinking about the old broken alesis mixer I took apart to scavenge passive components from. Turns out its power supply distributes +12v, -15v and +3.3v, but the +12v and +3.3v are tkaen from 15 and 5 volt regulators and then brought down, so it was a simple matter to cut the trace going to the power distribution connector for the 12v and 3.3v lines and run wires straight from the outputs of the voltage regulators to bring them up to the voltages I needed.

Needless to say I was massively pleased with myself, but then I noticed that I actually had +14.85v and -15.25v. I'm 99% sure that this is close enough to being right and would have made no difference to any circuit I was trying to make with it, but being a perfectionist I could I would have a go at adjusting it.

Several ill advised resistors later the whole thing is bricked. One of the capacitors on the power supply board has bulged out and deformed underneath and the transformer itself has given up the chase. All is not lost though! I've ordered a new transformer which I believe will do the job, and can probably scavenge another capacitor. If it turns out that the circuit still won't work, then this also not a problem as I have more voltage regulators etc so I can use the transformer to build a new supply from scratch.

...after christmas.