BELIEVE IT OR NOT THIS IS A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT...
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- čas přidán 27. 07. 2024
- Time To Check Out Electrostatic Tone Wheels
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#synthesizer #microphone #experiment - Hudba
its the worlds largest stylophone atm. but next time it'll be a whole lot more tuneful :D, i have a plan which im going to see through. but leave your comment below if you have any ideas or suggestions, so i can stick em on the fridge like ringos song ideas! :D
The most stylish stylophone! :)
@@5cyndi Fran-tastic! :)
I noticed the way the frequency would change when you applied more pressure/connectivity to the alligator clips. Have you considered a CV sequencer to operate it? Cheers.
Why don’t you use the organ PCBS to send 24v into the switch board
Wire it in as a rank with Joan's organ! Use what you already have to be able to play it. You'll probably need to create some other bits to MIDI-fy it, but in the end you'd have what would amount to the first MIDI-ed Compton organ, and from there clever folk with organ sampling technology could sample and preserve these sounds and make them usable today.
That is ridiculous! I love those etched/routed tone discs.
I trust your opinion, as you are familiar with the ridiculous.
Ah! Love it when the worlds of my favourite CZcams channels collide!
Yes! They're so... explicit!
@@PhilR0gersexactly my thought!
Some wizard out there is mighty confused why people are calling the magic circles "tone discs".
"What instrument do you play...?
"The 18V hammer drill." 😂
haha. the warmest sounding power tool brand
@Stadsjaap your comment reminded me of Einsturzende Neubauten and playing the angle grinder 😁
Percussion drill.
Well, I have seen someone play an angle grinder for precussions on stage, and naturally there's Einstuerzende Neubauten that regularly play compressor turbines, haemostatic rubber bands, teacups, a shopping cart etc.
Mr. Big from 1991 enters the chat...
Looks like something you'd use to break the enigma cipher.
That was my first thought! A Turing number cruncher...
My first thought too. Looks like that machine that Turing built. Bomba or something I think it was called.
Instead they used it to break out the Enigma Variations!
@@blancfilmsYes! Btw. "Bomba" was the Polish machine that the British machine was developed from called "Bombe"
Reporter: "Mr. Turing, now that the war is over, what do you think you will focus your efforts on next?"
Alan Turing: "Well, I was thinking about building an instrument..."
I was an electronic organ, digital piano, synth tech for 37 years. When I first got hired, my employer explained all the various tone generation designs the various manufacturers had come up with through the years. They were extremely varied and extremely clever. This is one I have never seen.
"The conclusion on this video isnt great" - Pardon, it is a great video about a great piece of technology. Thanks for bringing it online, Sam.
absolutely. All of their videos are so damn inspiring!!
It's like when you set out on the first day of a journey you've been planning for ages, and the sun is shining, the views are beautiful, and by the end of day one, you're well on your way.
The look of delight when successfully playing a tone generator with a drill...
Those disks are amazing. Primary tone plus a selection of harmonics all in one. Even changed tones by having irregular shapes. What I find most astonishing is that this was probably all built by very skilled people with excellent hearing who could match the sound with old pipe organs. Oh, and they probably also avoided touching the 500V lines.
I would take a bet at them recording organ samples on vynil, and then observing them through a microscope to match it.
Or the more boring way through an oscilloscope. Still takes a lot of knowledge and skill, but the coolest part is how they even came up with that method of generating the tones.
That spinner you've opened took my breath.
You marvelous nutter. I'm having a VERY rough day with loss and you manage to make me laugh, with your comments and expressions, at a time that it's sorely needed.
Be gentle with yourself, you'll get through 💪😘
@@docthorrwhats a nutter?
I have overhauled one of these Compton electrostatic tone generator organs. It is a delicate business re-coating rotor surfaces and the adjusting the gaps between rotors and stators, then voicing and filtering the outputs. Lots of fun!
must have been quite an undertaking
Are there any left which have the ultralinear tube amp?
What are the rotors coated in?
What are the different waveforms in the rotor for?
It's filtered? How?
I have a million questions.
What an amazing set of ideas went into that! The tone wheels effectively varying the capacitance as they revolve, according to the shape of the pattern! Really analogue! And those 2D relays to link the keys via the selected stops - you can see that the designer was really thinking about traditional wind-boxes in organs with their 2D structure - and at the same time as you say, looking like cross-bar telephone selectors! Absolutely magic - I’m glad it still makes sound and look forward to seeing it Midi-fied!
Those test panels REALLY going to save time building an interface... don't need to trace ALL THOSE WIRES !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😏😉😎
🤯🤯🤯🤯
Wow. I love the ingenuity. It really is an analog sample playback machine. So many possibilities.
@@OmegaSparky
Just need a way to etch some metal.
I wonder what the metal is...
@@MostlyPennyCat Usually aluminium.
What a wonderful machine. *Please* show the output of one of those wheels on an oscilloscope
It looks and sounds frigging awesome! Who needs transistors when gears, pulleys and relays will do!
Not quite in the same league as the Bendix air computer though is it 😀
I was looking for your comment on this beauty!
I really enjoy how close to a computer this stuff is
but even so, it's still so beautifully arcane. Those electrostatic spinners and the etching look way too beautiful to function.
playing the spare with a drill was literally witchcraft
Oh, you're right! I guess one could play with the waveforms and even essentially get analogue computer out of it, doing some math using wave interference... if only I had infinite time xD
Fantastic! I used to know an amazing old engineer who lived in Ramsgate, Brian Carpenter. He rescued several of these Comptons and had them running (also a 3 manual pipe organ he had built himself!) in one of the large Victorian houses on Marlborough Road.
Wonder what happenned to it all?
How many British houses had an organ built in? Did the Council know? 😜
Truly amazing. Imagine slapping the blueprints of this whole thing on the table these days: "Hey guys, i have an idea."
Yeah, with how complex electromechanic are, its crazy some of the things people were actually willing to engineer, fund, and physically construct.
@@stitchfinger7678 I have to think that, even then, there were better ways to do it. Look how many outputs those tone wheels have. The amount of redundancy seems insane. Was this organ capable of playing every key simultaneously?
@@tsm688I wouldn' call them redundant.
More "voices / possibly stacked mean greater depth in sound.
There is a reason some crazy people put together the Yamaha Rack monstrosity that held 8 or more Yamaha DX7s to play via midi
@@NinoJoel they did that because they thought it'd be a cool use for 8 yamaha dx7's. You don't actually need to do that to get the effect.
@@tsm688 have you ever used one?
I don't know how you want to make such sound depth without Manny Manny voices stacked.
Sure you could record one and duplicate the recording but that's not very live play friendly now is it
Dear God, when you adjust the tension on those wheels, the slowed tones sound so eerie. Like the world is melting
My mentor on the electronic side is an organ repairman. He showed me a much smaller version of the organ sound generator like those. It looked just like a metal brick with axels coming out its sides. My other mentor keeps me on par with acoustic pianos. Just to keep my story strait. My electronics mentor began having issues with walking on a problematic leg. So, getting an episode on organs is a real treat. Much friendly love. Lily
You could etch a tone wheel like one makes an etching or lithograph. Coat the disk with etching “tar” scratch in the waveforms then submerge it in acid. Then wash off the tar, the acid will have etched where the waveforms where scratched in and not where the tar was. There’s more modern was to make etchings with less harmful chemicals etc. I haven’t made an etching since the 90’s. The new techniques are friendlier. Man you could scratch in some wild waveforms. Maybe a wavetable type scenario. This is so cool. Such a perfect example of sound and art. I’m inspired.
I would imagine a micro imperfection in the etching process Could render the entire plate defective.
@frederickbaugher8361
A feature!
Martin: “It would be so cool to play tight music with that instrument using marbles.”
This is exactly what I thought about when I saw this thing.
@@envisionelectronics - I am waiting for Martin to add this machine to his marble machine ;)
And I admit it would be cool - but that marble machine might never play music if he sets out to add this.
@@stevebabiak6997 considering the time it took to build the 2nd one... he is on the 3rd yet? maybe by the 4th one... If these two guys get together a singularity will occur.
Amazing, the first thing I thought was the Hammond tone wheel, but it's different and weird! Whoever came up with the idea was smoking the good stuff!
What a totally wacky thingamajiggy! I just love that you call the other one "Joan's Organ", very sweet to remember her.
Joan's or Jones?
Makes a big difference.
(Please pardon my ignorance)
@@patrickbodine1300 "Joan's" as it was owned by a woman named Joan.
No worries, he's been doing that project for a while, can't expect everyone to know everything :)
So cool to see al this lost technology. What a beauty! People become the most resourceful in the light of lacking resources.
Chatty Kraftwerk is back with another beautiful example of audio engineering. The tone generating etched circular waveform assembly is a thing of art.
Speaking of Kraftwerk, I think Sam would get along with Ralf Hütter if they'd ever meet. Perhaps this needs to be arranged.
That really is an amazing piece of ancient technology. It's stunning the lengths men went to to make noises in churches, I know that's a super over simplified explanation. But, it really is that simple when compared to how complicated and complex these beautiful old machines are. Thanks for sharing such things with us.
Its amazing what kind of electronic devices you find and show us. Great work!
I found the video VERY interesting. I have an old 1960's Vacuum tube, Hammond home organ that still works,
though, no one seems to want it. So, I might start to do some experimenting of my own with it, would be interesting
to mess around with the tone wheels, and it has a power amp, and 2-3 Pre-amps in it. along with a spring reverb
Tank, and tremolo, and other interesting circuits, for my Mad scientist experiments 😀👍
An old 3D resin printer can be used to very easily etch a precise and intricate pattern on metal if you wanted to have a go at your own waveforms.. I've made some lovely lithographic plates this way in a few minutes (as opposed to the old ballache way).
This thing is amazing.
Will that be better resolution than photoresist?
@@pattheplanter You still use photofilm but you don't have to print a transprency, or cut a stencil or make a screenprint. Resolution depends on the printer but most are going to be 2-4K these days. Lots of hobby modellers have an old Mars lying around.
I would totally do that.
It could be human choirs not a long sample.
@@radarmusen Choirs, yes. I wonder if the inventors of this thing could imagine some kind of changer, like a record changer, to expand the memory bank capacity.
I just can't get over how beautiful those etched waveform generators are - mind blown... absolutely love what you do Sam.
I tried to come up with a better comment but I've just circled back around to " this makes my brain happy"
I love old electronics that bridge the gap between mechanical and solid state. Those tone generators are a work of art, the genius who worked out how to make this stuff is incredible.
Just incredible! I’m so glad this is being preserved, and not just chucked out. I had the absolute privilege of rebuilding a Hammond and Leslie once - it blew my mind! But this machine is off the charts! I just love everything about this!
The Wurlitzer spectra-tone was similar but spun the speaker 😆
Always love a good organ transplant
This guy is amazing! While I'm trying to get a record player with a handful of TO-72 transistors working, he's fixing organs with thousands of electrical, mechanical and pneumatic parts. Next project: connecting the Apollo 11 flight computer to work the Star Trek transporter!
Have you seen the channel that restored an Apollo AGC and ran the software that flew the spacecraft?
The inside of those tone generators is just beautiful.
Whoever invented this was a genius. They didn't have transistors or fancy ICs, they had relays, motors, metal, and Maxwell's laws. And they still made music.
Also, manufacturing these could've been a real chore. A modern CNC would make short work of it, but back then this was made by hand, or with a manually controlled mill. The mechanisms they must've came up with to make perfect sine waves (or the other more intricate waveforms) are equally fascinating, I'm sure.
:D your face when messing about with the drill
Very cool old technology, good on you for saving such a beautiful machine from the scrap heap and making it sing again!
0:03 that giggle :D
I went back for a listen. That needs to be loaded into a sampling synth.
bro is reaching new heights of complexity everyday
This is so cool. It is amazing. It showed the creative mind of the times before modern electronics. What genius thought of this? Insanely awesome 👌 👏 👍
Those tone generating discs are so cool. That’s the coolest thing I’ve seen this month.
I'm very impressed by your ability to describe and present this system. My mom restored a Wurlitzer for her home and I learned how it all worked. There are so very few people who make the effort to learn these things and fewer yet who are actually teaching the next generation. Thank You
When you opened that tone disk it reminded me of Roto pulses we used to work on back in the 70s/80s in a machine shop. They used two rotating graded glass disks to make a stepping motor move a rack and pinion very accurately. I love the technology and ingenuity of these old systems. You are very smart being able to work all this stuff out. I applaud you mate. Well done. Take care and watch those 500V rails - they hurt.
Stu
What a fantastically complex, yet deceptively simple, bit of kit! Wonderful bit of musical machinery.
i dont have words to express how cool this is
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, what a fantastic machine. How did I every live without you?
You’re a beautiful machine...
Wow! Sometimes it's such a surprise to find out stuff like this, it's been there in our midst for ages but hidden away.
There is something magical in having the guts of this mechano-electronic organ exposed to explore like this! I like the idea of making it MIDI controlled - it could be fun to see if you could use a device to adjust the belt tension to make a controllable pitch bend.
Interesting sounds!
i dont think people understand how amazing this is, in a day where all of this is ran by software, to be able to do these things with insane analog solutions is just amazing
Imagine being the original constructor of such a machine and knowing this is cutting edge tech. And for us to see it uncovered, moth balls n’ all, and barely understand what the bloody hell is going on inside. Cheers, mate for blowing my mind.
@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER every time you produce a video with unusual item as its center piece, my first thought is "Where in the heck - and how - do you find all these wild things?" Was this one a "Well, hey mate, the church got a new organ. So let's go dig around in the basement and see what's just laying around?" :)))
Very amazing things you're doing over there across the Pond - keep up the great work!
- H in Florida, USA
oh my god those waveform/pickup etchings look so damn cool, like something you'd find in an alien spaceship
This might be the coolest electromechanical device I've ever seen!
The insanity level is rising and I like it.
I am amazed how busy you keep yourself Sam.
Love that you just got stuck in 👍
Few things excite me as much as finding out LMNC has posted a new video. They are always so fun and interesting, despite me not knowing jack about either electronics or music
Being an organ guy at heart I'm very glad to see my donations are going to a good cause.
3:05 That looks like some kind of ancient technology Indiana Jones would discover. Awesome stuff.
unreal find. The ingenuity built into this chungus of a kit is truly a marvel.
I was watching waiting to find out how a pre-transistor electric organ handled routing the signal from the console and thought "surely it wasn't relays, that would be loud and potentially slow", but sure enough, it was relays! Amazing how they implemented those grids of relays!
Thanks for all showing and explaining. So cool to see such exotic hardware working in detail.
As is often the case with your videos, I am blown away by learning about something I had no idea that existed. For all I know, there's no other video online showing this vintage tech.
I LOVE that thing! Worst comes to worst, you could always rig some switches to that crocodile clip board and run it that way...
You made my day. I am sitting here a bad dose of COVID. I didn’t know these existed considering my favourite music is on the church organ. Thank you.
It's only a matter of time until Sam obtains the RCA Mark 2 Synthesizer. Jokes aside, I'd love to see that happen 😂Love your videos Sam
What a fabulous piece of engineering. I had no idea that such a thing ever existed.
That is fascinating, ridiculous, and the internals are gorgeous. One of the things that strikes me is that probably no one would think to do it like this again, but it would be so much fun if they did.
Fascinating, the etching in the tone wheels are a thing of beauty and I imaging this would sound fantastic in a large reverberant space. Thanks for sharing.
Electro mechanical music: This is amazing and I had no idea this existed. Thanks for rescuing this tech, and presenting it. Cheers!
Curious Marc is probably drooling over those core memory units in the background there.
Hey ya moke. Thanks for sharing this. Unreal amount of effort to produce these back in the day.
Wowwwwww! My wife was trained as a church organist when she was a girl. The congregation had, on the South Side of Chicago, of all things, in a Very Traditional congregation, a Hammond B3 with a Leslie speaker! I first saw it in the Fall of 1971, and man, I was BOGGLED. === But you, young man, keep cranking out the most amazing videos, unearthing electronic musical gear from The Ahistorical Vermiform Appendix of Time! ❤ Thank you! ❤
Dman Sam, these kind of videos are really amazing and so fun to watch. Your passion is so infectious!
Excellent Sam. I've always wondered how these tone units worked. You're doing great work not only rescuing equipment but getting them working, often without manuals. Looking forward to the next episode.
I’m currently rebuilding a Viscount Grand Opera (1980s Italian electronics!) for our local church where I’m the organist.
Love this piece of nostalgia technology, thanks for saving it and showing it - looking forward to hearing it in its fully glory.
this is my introduction to electrostatic tone generator organs, or any adjacent organ tech, and I am absolutely enthralled that it exists.
That is one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time! You could MIDI that to your existing pipe organ and have a sizeable hybrid setup. I'd like to hear how all the various "ranks" from that sound when it's being played.
Can't think that there is enough room next to Joan's organ in the museum. There was a single manual Compton in the Methodist Church here in Wye which I used to tinker with. There was some special oil that we had to use to lubricant the wheels. There was also a solenoid that waggled the tension wheel on the belt to produce vibrato. It always sounded rich and warm, but anything sounds good with a big valve amp and a 12" celestion speaker 😀
Fantastic stuff indeed. This is yet more really incredible gear to get for the museum. The transitional technologies that get forgotten are fascinating. Looking forward visiting again...
I’m so happy you’re doing what you’re doing. All the old amazing machines of the world need a knowledgeable and creative person like you.
I learned to play the organ on a two manual electrostatic tone wheel Compton organ when I was 14. It had just 12 tone wheels.
It did not sound great, mostly because the drive belt had a join that caused a regular wibble in the sound, and also there was some static despite those earthing strips. It used synthesis of a small number sinewaves, so it always sounded flutey rather than reedy, through that was a welcome break for me from the square and sawtooth electronic organs of the day.
Within two years I was playing on the UK cathedral organ shown in my bio, so it gave me a great start in music.
Great video! I love your style! 🙂
Keep going. Now already for years you are exploring some interesting things!!! And it just gets better honestly!
Amazing! Thank you for sharing Sean
The fantastic abstraction in those disks must have taken a lot of in-depth engineering. Who figured that out? It's amazing.
Absolutely fascinating! Never knew something like this existed.
brilliantly done as always! thank you! so enlightening.
Totally amazing, great stuff! One of these was installed in London’s Royal Festival Hall, before the famous R Downs organ was built by Harrison’s. No one knows what happened to the Compton, but it sure was a brilliant creation, who knows had it been further developed ?! Yes, most Compton cinema organs had a variation of this system called a Mellotron, fewer wave forms and only one set of 12 generators - you either hated it or loved it!!! The church versions attempted to create diapason tones, principals etc and better reeds, all with some success. Hammond only used sine waves and the harmonics were derived from the tempered scale, so we’re not pure - the synthesis was thus very poor, limited to only 8. The Compton generators were etched with sine and complex waveforms so far better realism was possible. The limit was the huge size of a big Compton ES system, where Hammond’s was tiny by comparison………
Anyway, brilliant vid and so good to see one of these in such great hands! bravo! MIDI control is a virtuosic idea!! Good luck and can’t wait to see what result you get - you’ll be amazed at how good this thing can sound!
Subscribed and thrilled!
Blessings and mind the 500v lines!!!!!
Adrian, Bermuda 😊😊😊😊😊
This is a piece of technology I never knew existed. Absolutely love the invention required to figure something like this out. Spinning discs with etched patterns to generate tones? Crazy... marvelous, but crazy. Love that you are taking care of this and finding this organ a new home.
Incredible. I can't wait to see what you squeeze out of it!
Great to see a lad happy in his work.
That is right up your alley eh.
Can’t wait to hear it chime 🤙
That was a very interesting demonstration of some very old school tech!! We need to document this old tech before no one can remember how it worked.
Thank you so much for sharing this stuff with the world. It's always good to learn something new.
Super neat to see a tonewheel organ that's different than the Hammond. I would guess this to be 50-60's era, but I'm sure you've got more chance of figuring it out as you've got it to study. The sounds it made were pretty cool, and I'm sure it can be made to do cool stuff again. These kind of devices are so darn big, it's tricky to preserve them, but I'm glad they can serve a purpose today.
Love these insights into alternative sound generation. Nice one Sam.
Fascinating! And wonderful. Thank you
You're a genuine treasure Sam, thankyou for all the mad awesomeness you share with us.
Oh man that is INSANE! I sense some super interesting mods to come! What a piece of engineering.
I never thought I could sit through a video of a man playing with his enormous organ!*
GREAT JOB, FELLA!
* Oh! Get your mind out of the gutter!
Fantastic!! Thank you so much for letting the rest of us see and hear these crazy contraptions! ❤