Building a Bleep Labs Thingamakit

Dr Bleep was kind enough to send me a Thingamakit - his build-it-yourself light cell powered noise synth (it's the big brother of the Thingamagoop). The box arrived a couple of months ago and sat in the corner, mocking me. Fear of soldering is a terrible thing, and easily cured by a pair of Velleman crawling micro bugs - £10 from Maplin, 1 hour each to solder together, two happy kids, two parents with soldering fume headaches. So far, the Thingamakit is a joy (being assembled next to an open window and a desk fan). Every component is labelled, the manual is clear and helpful, with useful things like a big colour photo of how the populated board should look. The circuit board is was white until I gunked it with solder flux. Best of all, it worked first time. The kit comes complete with an unfinished 1790NS case and a drilling guide, but perhaps something more interesting will turn up.
Anyway, what should I build next?

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

Comments:

Definitely the Sound Lab Mini Synth.
musicfromouterspace.com

# posted by

udenjoe : 1:41 am

I am on my second Thingamakit, which I am installing in an old Roland CS-10 'personal monitor' -- basically computer speakers. The cool things about that:

1. It runs off 9 Volt DC, just like the thingamakit.

2. Bigger, somewhat full range speakers.

3. It's Roland -- set it up next to yer 909!

# posted by

kent : 5:08 am

Perhaps something from PAiA?

Their kits are relatively simple and well documented.

# posted by

Murray : 8:54 am

how thick is the enclosure?
drilling through metal is the
only thing putting me off this kit

# posted by

Anonymous : 9:30 am

Drilling metal is easy because it is very soft it is probably aluminium.

Next thing to build should be minimum theremin. (Just google minimum theremin if you don't know already about it).

# posted by

Anonymous : 10:19 am

bend something! i know it's not technically building but.. i'm adding midi and a dozen extra knobs to a dr-110. my solder-fear was as big as yours when i started and nothing's gone horribly wrong so far.

# posted by

James : 11:22 am

I finished mine last week and already three friends have asked me to build one for them.
I had a minor issue with the knobs in that I didn't get enough lift from the PCB to get them in the housing straight. So I'm going to take them off and wire them. Other than that the speaker does just about nothing. You can nearly hear it in a silent room, but other than that nothing. Thankfully I have a mini Marshall that looks reall cool stood next to the Thing-a-ma-kit.

# posted by

Anonymous : 2:59 pm

I´m putting a Thingamakit, together with a Gakken SX-150 and an SHecho from General Guitar Gadgets together. The Thingamakit will then be routed throught the SX and the Echo, and rigth now I,m thinking about doing some more changes. Youcould as a next project get one of the Highly Liquid retrofit kits and midify one of them odler gears.. like a speak and spell or a SK-5... did that and works well!

# posted by

resonanz : 3:23 pm

Tom Bugs has a kit to make a 2 osc drone machine - I own a completed model and it is great, looking at the PCB it doesn't look like too tough a build either :)

# posted by

Drohnwerks : 8:25 am

Thanks for the prop Drohn!

I would agree (naturally) except that I'm being a right old slow-ass on finishing off the decent documentation... (and have plenty of other things on my plate at the moment so finishing is not very imminent). But, when they're out -- yes, they're an easy build and fun to play.

Tom MT - may be of interest to you that I'll be holding a workshop event in London in November building these WorkshopOscMachines - part of http://www.hokaben.co.uk/ (workshop limited to 10-15 people - booking details to come sometime soon...).

Cheers!
Tom (Bugs)

# posted by

Fishing With Bugs : 10:54 am

how about a Monome kit?
http://monome.org/40h/kit
i think that will be my next project.

# posted by

Anonymous : 4:15 pm

Wheres the best place to research how to build your own boards? Just basics at the moment, only just learning

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:12 pm

is there any possibility to get a circuit description and a list of the used parts for the Thingamakit?
I really have to build one, but cannot afford so much money.

# posted by

Anonymous : 8:52 pm