My son and I are giving each other the Theramax kit for Christmas. As a warm up, I'd like to make the DIS*PLAYER pitch visualizer.

http://www.dogstar.dantimax.dk/theremin/disptech.htm


Does anyone have experience with this? The creator, the incredible Fred Naurbach died 6 years ago. What I need is the circuit board and they are not available. Does anyone have experience with this visualizer? Are my only choices to do a point-to-point wiring job or pay 160+ for single copy board...or roll my own?

I'm good with making the project but I've never made a board from scratch.

Does anyone know of a similar device? I'd really like to build this thing....

Thanks so much!

Walt

First, it seems that the ear is the better feedback for knowing if the pitch is correct, but I can understand that seeing the notes being played would be useful too.

Sorry, but I don't know of any sources for the boards to build the Displayer, theremin pitch to note LED indicator project.

The CV output of Theremax could be run to a meter and a new scale made for the meter to relate the notes to the voltage and the needle position.

The K89, 2-channel LED volume meter in the PAiA Catalog could be adapted to light for the pitch and volume CVs. It is sensing dB changes in the voltage, but I think the LM3914 IC can be sub'ed for the LM3915 to get linear voltage indication. See the National Semiconductor website data sheets for these parts (or the Displayer schematic) for details on stacking these for more than ten LEDs.

http://www.paia.com/proddetail.asp?prod=K89

A Sonuus G2M can be used to convert the audio output of a Theremax to MIDI and this could be connected to one of the Casio Lighted Keyboards (with MIDI Input) to show the notes being played.

Be sure to check out the extra details on Theremax over in this section of PAiA Talk:

viewforum.php?f=7

Thanks for the informative reply! My son is the musician, I know he'll find his way into Theramax. I think the dis*player is a cool project - certainly not required to play...but a good excuse to make something new...while we wait on Christmas....heh heh heh.

But you make some great suggestions! Thanks again!