Planet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do

[greatbear]

Not long ago, a friend of mine sent me a Stylophone (reissue, not the '68 original). Being a builder and aficionado of electronic noisemakers and a circuit-bender for long before there was ever such a term, I was delighted to add it to my little arsenal of various noisemakers. So, after lunch today I took a little analog break from puttering around the house. I took out my LP of David Bowie's Space Oddity, tuned the little Stylo to the record, sat back and played along with Bowie on the title track. Pure, retro analog joy. It does a pained and semi-mobile body a lot of good.



It felt almost normal to go full-on digital to make this post.

Comments

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

Hey, there is nuthin' wrong with the full joys of pure analog, it's got its charms, something digital, as good as it is too, often just can't muster INO. :-)

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

It's about as limited as you can get, however, the new ones, like this, have a three position switch for different tones, where the original was a simple pulse waveform. The original and the reissue both have the vibrato feature. This is an example:



If you have an iPhone, there's a Stylophone app. It's almost magical AND revolutionary.

The original Stylo had a single unijunction transistor oscillator, a second transistor for the vibrato running a fixed rate sine wave to a varicap diode that's in the first stage, and a single transistor for an audio output amp. With so few components, you basically have a simple tuned buzz. The new ones approximate the original sound with modern components (most of the parts that made the original are obsolete). Two new waveforms have been added, one is a quick attack fuzzed sound that is kinda like a distorted guitar, the other is a warmer, fuzzy, harmonic-rich tone. The new one also added a volume control as well as an input jack to connect a mp3 player or other external source to play along with. Follow some of the related videos to the one above for all the different sounds that can be made with the thing. Heck, for about 15-20 bux that the thing costs now (if you shop around) it's worth it for the fun and retro factors alone.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I grew up analog. In fact, I spurned digital circuitry and design until the early 80s. It took me a while to get into computers. Not quite kicking and screaming, but close. ;)

[otterdaemmerung.livejournal.com]

It kinda looks/plays like a baby Continuum, doesn't it? :D