DIY & Tutorials
This is my scrapbook of build guides - a place to gather all the tutorials I keep coming back to in one spot. Some are walkthroughs I've made myself; others are favorites I've found around the web that are so good (and sometimes so hard to find) that I'm mirroring them here so they don't vanish.
Anything I've mirrored is clearly credited to its original author, and I only touch the code, not the content. If a guide is marked MIRROR, the words and photos belong entirely to the person who made it - follow the link in the card to visit them. If you're the author of a mirrored guide and want it removed, just email me.
The Dead-Bug Series
One chip, no circuit board. Each of these is a noise-maker built dead-bug - the chip flipped legs-out and every part soldered straight to them, no breadboard, no PCB. They share a power source, they share a method, and they're built to feed each other into one bigger instrument. New to it? Start with the Mosquito, then the Hive.
Dead-Bug Mosquito: A Point-to-Point NE556 Noise Box
build the classic NE556 stepped-tone generator with no breadboard and no PCB - dead-bug, soldered straight to the chip's legs. Full parts list, pinout, a pin-by-pin netlist, and how to add CV inputs and a line / clock output.
Dead-Bug Hive: A Six-Oscillator CD40106 Drone Box
turn a CD40106 hex inverter into six square-wave oscillators in one chip - a whole hive of detuned drones, dead-bug and point-to-point. Parts, pinout, a pin-by-pin netlist, a resistor mixer, and how to cross-modulate the voices.
Dead-Bug Cicada: A Gated Four-Oscillator CD4093 Synth
turn a CD4093 quad NAND Schmitt trigger into four square-wave oscillators - but this time each voice has an enable input, so they can gate each other on and off into stutters and rhythms. Pinout, a pin-by-pin netlist, and the cross-patching that makes them pulse. The Hive's rhythmic cousin.
Dead-Bug Grub: A CD4024 Sub-Octave Divider & Pattern Box
turn a CD4024 binary counter into an octave divider - feed it a tone and get it back up to seven octaves lower, all at once. Pinout, a pin-by-pin netlist, sub-octave taps, a binary-weighted mixer, and reset tricks for rhythm. The glue for the whole trio.
Dead-Bug Dragonfly: A CD4046 VCO (and What a PLL Actually Is)
turn a CD4046 phase-locked loop into a real voltage-controlled oscillator - one you play with a voltage instead of a knob. Pinout, a pin-by-pin netlist, a CV input, plus how to close the loop and make it chase whatever you feed it.
Dead-Bug Hornet: A One-Chip LM386 Speaker Amp
the amp the whole series has been pointing at - a tiny, loud LM386 that drives a real speaker from a line-level noise box. Pinout, a pin-by-pin netlist, gain options, and the Zobel network that stops it howling. Build it once and every other box gets a voice.
My Other Guides
The rest of my first-party builds and explainers - a sampler mod, and the power guides the whole series runs on.
Four Modes, One Chip: The ISD1820 Breakout Nobody Finishes Wiring
record, one-shot sample, loop - plus the feed-through megaphone mode almost every ISD1820 tutorial skips. Pinout, a mode state table, the desolder trick that makes parts fall out, and the loop jumper that isn't on any schematic for this board.
More Volts or More Hours? Batteries in Series & Parallel
series adds volts, parallel adds hours - with diagrams for both, plus series-parallel, the matching rules nobody mentions, how to run 9V and 6V off one pack, and using a multimeter to find out which wire is which.
Rechargeable Battery Pack from Two Dead Vapes
salvage the lithium cells out of two used disposable vapes and wire them into a rechargeable battery pack for your builds.
Mirrored Guides
Favorites from around the web, preserved here so they don't vanish. Every one is credited to its original author - the words and photos are theirs, only the code is mine.
Modifying a PT2399 Delay Board to Break Out the Controls
Turn a cheap, ubiquitous PT2399 delay module into a proper knob-controlled delay - delay time, feedback and mix broken out, step by step, with photos of every joint.
Modifying an ISD1820 Voice Recorder Board to Be a Lo-Fi Sampler
Turn a cheap ISD1820 voice-recorder board into a lo-fi sampler with pitch control - swapping the mic and speaker for 1/4" jacks, breaking out record and play buttons, and replacing R4 with a pot to sweep the sampling frequency.
Modifying the Radica UCreate Music into a Real-Time Multi-FX
A deep teardown-and-mod of Radica's short-lived UCreate Music toy - breaking out the Big Button to DB9 sockets, adding pots, a volume-pedal jack and a 'Hold' footswitch to turn it into a playable multi-effects unit.
MFOS Legacy Projects
Music From Outer Space was Ray Wilson's life's work - the project that started countless people on synth-DIY. Ray passed in 2016; these pages keep his beloved designs accessible and in his own voice. Why I'm building this »
MFOS Micro Sample & Hold
Ray's compact sample-and-hold with its own clock and a glide control, sized to add onto the Sound Lab Mini-Synth - schematic, PCB artwork, panel drawing, and his scope traces walking through the whole sampling process step by step.
MFOS Weird Sound Generator
Ray Wilson's classic first-synth project, preserved - the full build, schematics, panel and case drawings, plus his troubleshooting guide and modifications. A little museum for a beloved MFOS design.
MFOS Mini 3-In Mixer & 1W Amplifier
Ray's simple LM386 battery amp for showing off your synth anywhere - three inputs, one watt, both the Rev 02 and original Rev 0 boards, schematics and build photos.