TTSH, miscellaneous mods

I started putting together a build post about the electronics side of my TTSH, but there really isn’t actually much to write about that. It’s a kit, and they just work straight-out-the-box when you learn even the details before starting and keep soldering sessions at reasonable lengths (don’t rush the build!).

That said, building mine was probably the first time ever in the ~20 years of electronics hobbies, that I managed to install a resistor of wrong value, in this case to VCO2 triangle-to-sine wave shaper circuit.. Live and learn; had some D’OH moments doing a part-by-part trace of the entire circuit :)

Anyway I thought I’d bundle some of the simple mods under this post. All these three were suggested by user Nordcore in the various TTSH build threads the Muffwiggler forum.

TTSH, VCO sync mod

Heyyy I’m once again catching up my TTSH build documentation with yet another modification. Yayyyy!

This mod is based on Altitude909’s add-on board, which adds a Arp Odyssey style hard sync between oscillators. The build has been well-documented in this thread @ Muffwiggler, so please check there if you’re planning to add one to your TTSH (Hi Vlado!). I did a slightly alternate version for myself and on this post we’ll look at that instead! But first, here’s a video by Stephen Drake on what hard synced oscillators sound..:

TTSH, Gate Booster mod

If you’re all new into how analog synthesizers can be controlled, you may first want to take a look at this Wiki article on CV/Gate for some jargon busting. Other than that, let’s dive right in.

Among the first electronics mod I wanted to add to my TTSH was the Gate Booster. To fully open the ADSR envelope generator of TTSH a +10VDC gate needs to be applied, thus in it’s stock config the envelope can’t be fired properly by using eg. any external gear that outputs a +5V gate. Add to the common CV/Gate specs, the TTSH envelope generator also needs a trigger signal (very short pulse) to work properly. This can be used to restart the envelope without disabling gate signal.

So what the Gate Booster does is, it converts low voltage level gate signals to higher voltage and generates the trigger signal from the gate input. The particular circuit board I bought for myself is this modified version (sold by Oshpark) with a socket for a Midimplant MIDI-to-CV/Gate converter board. Having MIDI (keyboard) input just made so much more sense than eg. building a CV keyboard like the Arp 3620.

Gate Booster board all populated..

TTSH, speaker baffle mod

This was a quick “let’s see what happens” kind of mod for my TTSH.

In their stock config, the TTSH loudspeakers are supposed to be fastened to the circuit board, which is then fastened to the front plate. Handy approach eg. for having the electronics as a entirely separate, single ‘module’ for servicing etc. But problem with this is that it leaves a ~12mm gap between the driver and the front panel.

Odyssey, triumph over sliders

\:D/ Fatality, Arto, Win \:D/

That was of course pronounced with a Mortal Kombat-ish voice and hopefully in 8-bit sample depth ;). Yeah! I’ve been working on the sliders some hours every week and after about a month the “slider cleanup chores” are over! With a bit of practice (and once I built up the routine of cleaning a slider), it’d take me maybe something like 15-20 mins to clean up and assemble a single slider.

Repaired sliders on board B.