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[SYNTH DIY] Moritz Klein's Shapes VCO Stripboard layout

For the past few years I have been trying to learn electrical engineering well enough to build my own modular synth. To put it lightly, it has been a struggle. Whenever I have put my mind to something in the past (learning multiple foreign languages, instruments, coding) I always picked it up with ease. But EE was always failure after failure. I am committed to becoming proficient this year.

Resources

I recently soldered Moritz Klein’s shapes VCO which is a 1v/oct voltage controlled oscillator with square, sawtooth, and triangle waveforms. This is a great project because Moritz had a full youtube series where he walks you through this circuit, as well as a 50+ page manual (including schematics) on erika synths website! I mirrored the PDF here.

Triangle Out

Moritz Klein’s design did not come with a saw to triangle wave shaper. He does have a video in his series about it, however I was unable to get it to work (probably my fault), and I think the design below is better because it is very simple and you can shape the triangle with a pot to get rid of any residual peaks from the saw wave.

Stripboard Layout

below are the traces, I recommend you flip this image horizontally as it will be easier to reference when actually cutting the traces!

My power supply has 4 wires, +12v, GND, +5v -12v. I assume your power supply is different because I have never seen someone with my configuration. You will have to adjust for your system or adopt my schema ;)

Demo Videos

Sorry for the vertical videos, I will get that sorted out eventually…

Personal Experience Building the Circuit

I breadboarded this circuit at least twice, and had two failed soldering attempts before I got it correct. It would not be an overstatement to say that I spent at least 50 hours on this project. The majority of time was spent debugging my final stripboard. I had was truly on the brink of breaking down and giving up after multiple failed nights in the basement comparing my design with the schematic. I finally prayed to God asking that He reveal to me what I am doing wrong. I looked online and the first thing I found was a recommendation that I run a razor blade between all the strips on the stripboard in order to remove any possible shorts. The next day, I did just that and my circuit worked flawlessly! I checked for continuity on all strips multiple times before this and did not find any shorts. The power of prayer is truly amazing.

I think this will be the start of a successful year in synth building. I have already breadboarded Juanito Moore’s 808 Kick Drum module and that will be the next post.

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[SYNTH DIY] Moritz Klein's Shapes VCO Stripboard layout

For the past few years I have been trying to learn electrical engineering well enough to build my own modular synth. To put it lightly, it has been a struggle. Whenever I have put my mind to something in the past (learning multiple foreign languages, instruments, coding) I always picked it up with ease. But EE was always failure after failure. I am committed to becoming proficient this year.

Resources

I recently soldered Moritz Klein’s shapes VCO which is a 1v/oct voltage controlled oscillator with square, sawtooth, and triangle waveforms. This is a great project because Moritz had a full youtube series where he walks you through this circuit, as well as a 50+ page manual (including schematics) on erika synths website! I mirrored the PDF here.

Triangle Out

Moritz Klein’s design did not come with a saw to triangle wave shaper. He does have a video in his series about it, however I was unable to get it to work (probably my fault), and I think the design below is better because it is very simple and you can shape the triangle with a pot to get rid of any residual peaks from the saw wave.

Stripboard Layout

below are the traces, I recommend you flip this image horizontally as it will be easier to reference when actually cutting the traces!

My power supply has 4 wires, +12v, GND, +5v -12v. I assume your power supply is different because I have never seen someone with my configuration. You will have to adjust for your system or adopt my schema ;)

Demo Videos

Sorry for the vertical videos, I will get that sorted out eventually…

Personal Experience Building the Circuit

I breadboarded this circuit at least twice, and had two failed soldering attempts before I got it correct. It would not be an overstatement to say that I spent at least 50 hours on this project. The majority of time was spent debugging my final stripboard. I had was truly on the brink of breaking down and giving up after multiple failed nights in the basement comparing my design with the schematic. I finally prayed to God asking that He reveal to me what I am doing wrong. I looked online and the first thing I found was a recommendation that I run a razor blade between all the strips on the stripboard in order to remove any possible shorts. The next day, I did just that and my circuit worked flawlessly! I checked for continuity on all strips multiple times before this and did not find any shorts. The power of prayer is truly amazing.

I think this will be the start of a successful year in synth building. I have already breadboarded Juanito Moore’s 808 Kick Drum module and that will be the next post.

Tags: