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Musical Tesla Coil againagain.

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Finn Hammer

Fri Dec 05 2008, 06:30PM

Registered Member #205 Joined: Sat Feb 18 2006, 11:59AM
Location: SkÃ¸rping, Denmark
Posts: 741

Hi all.
Now that everybody are building musical tesla coils, I thought it was perhaps time to show the next step.
(Again, my idea, Conner`s electronic)
This is an old rig, dating back to 2005, and I am still finding more it can do.
And it sure is difficult to record the sound with an ordinary camera.
Watch in high quality helps improve the audio too.

This vid is not about sparks, but the sound they can make.
Enjoy!

Cheers, Finn Hammer
(I am going to keep the details secret for some time yet)

Dr. Drone

Fri Dec 05 2008, 07:57PM

Registered Member #290 Joined: Mon Mar 06 2006, 08:24PM
Location:
Posts: 1673

aonomus

Fri Dec 05 2008, 08:15PM

Registered Member #1497 Joined: Thu May 22 2008, 05:24AM
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Posts: 801

My Christmas break project is to make a quick and dirty audio modulator for my SSTC (Steve's SSTC5). For the video I'm going to try recording the sound separately using professional audio gear, so we'll see how it turns out (since my modulation method will make it sound harsh anyway).

Overall there is alot of attention being gained by audio modulated SSTC's/DRSSTC's, hopefully it brings more people to our favorite past time.

rp181

Sat Dec 06 2008, 02:08AM

Registered Member #1062 Joined: Tue Oct 16 2007, 02:01AM
Location:
Posts: 1529

Thats great. How better is it in real life than a youtube video?

On a side note,
I was looking at your other vids. Is
Hard Rock Hallelujah Hammertone MusicTesla
Only played by the tesla coils?

Steve Ward

Sat Dec 06 2008, 04:20AM

Registered Member #146 Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 04:21AM
Location: Austin Tx
Posts: 1055

Good to see more innovation with musical coils.

Ive been working on more stuff myself. Can now do up to 12 voices at once (4 coils). Its quite glorious, and draws over 200A from the 240VAC line with all 4 coils blasting out chords. Maybe someday some video will be posted by the other 2 members of my group (i have no video camera).

I have nearly a full midi implementation done in the micro, including pitch bend and volume controls. But these voices are pretty neat sounding, may need to play around with that.

I still think chords are one of the best effects on these DRSSTCs. Just gotta watch the power draw... we have dumped up to 20kVA into one coil when playing 4-note chords, but the sound is bigger than any marshall full-stack

Steve Conner

Sat Dec 06 2008, 10:38AM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

I recently made a big improvement in the sound of musical Tesla coils, by getting rid of the Tesla coil. :)

Spectrasonics were looking for weird instruments for their new Omnisphere softsynth and they contacted me about my musical DRSSTC. I made nearly an hour of 24-bit recordings for them, every note in the so-called "instrument"'s range, and they did all sorts of crazy processing to make a fully playable Tesla coil patch. Now every home can have one

I was worried that the electronics wouldn't stand an hour of non-stop sparking, but they worked fine. I did have to break and let it cool down a few times in the top octave, though!

I'm also hoping to appear on Make magazine's MakeTV soon with my Tesla guitar. I've been practicing and can get a recognisable tune out of it now!

aonomus

Sat Dec 06 2008, 11:32AM

Registered Member #1497 Joined: Thu May 22 2008, 05:24AM
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Posts: 801

One of the few song tunes that remind me of a SSTC/DRSSTC is the intro guitar riff (or is it synth/keys) to 99 Red Balloons... distortion sounds just about right to what your video had Steve (Conner)

Finn Hammer

Sat Dec 06 2008, 04:01PM

Registered Member #205 Joined: Sat Feb 18 2006, 11:59AM
Location: SkÃ¸rping, Denmark
Posts: 741

Steve McConner wrote ...

I recently made a big improvement in the sound of musical Tesla coils, by getting rid of the Tesla coil. :)

Cheating! Terry made scan-tesla, the software teslacoil, to avoid building coils. And now this!!! Why do you brilliant people want to avoid making coils. Well, it hasn`t stopped the rest of us.

Steve McConner wrote ...

Spectrasonics were looking for weird instruments for their new Omnisphere softsynth and they contacted me about my musical DRSSTC. I made nearly an hour of 24-bit recordings for them, every note in the so-called "instrument"'s range, and they did all sorts of crazy processing to make a fully playable Tesla coil patch. Now every home can have one

And they won`t even know what they are missing, how sad

Steve McConner wrote ...

I'm also hoping to appear on Make magazine's MakeTV soon with my Tesla guitar. I've been practicing and can get a recognisable tune out of it now!

I hope you make it. You deserve this success.

Cheers, Finn Hammer

HV Enthusiast

Sun Dec 07 2008, 08:54PM

Registered Member #15 Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068

I'm just wondering what the next big innovation will be. To be honest, musical DRSSTCs are cool and all that, but its just a novelty and there is only so much you can do. Not to mention, Tesla himself was doing this stuff like 100 years ago, so its nothing really new or groundbreaking other than the interfacing with MIDI etc... And multi-note DRSSTCs? Heck, why play one bad sounding note when you can play four at a time! :)

I personally like the CW audio modulation and think there is lots of opportunity still available there for innovation. Sure, its not as spectacular visually, but the audio quality can be near perfect and crazy effects can be realized, especially with stereo coils and having no mechanical excursion limiations as in real speakers.

I think if someone can get a CW coil running that can reproduce low frequency notes efficiently that would be a major innovation and really open the doors to the capabilities of CW coils. Gonna take a lot of power though!

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