The Dead-Bug Series
One chip, no circuit board, every part soldered straight to its legs.
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, no etching, and nothing to order and wait for.
They share a power source and a method, and they are built to feed each other into one bigger instrument. New to it? Start with the Mosquito, then the Hive. Want to try the circuit before you commit solder to it? Most of these have a breadboard twin.
All 6 builds
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.