Ev's Heavily Modified Tr606

Above: Evan in Robin Whittle's workshop, where the conversion of many bread and butter, stock standard TB-303s to Devilfish modified blubber splutterers has taken place. Oh, the carnage. Oh, the joy.

The "Super Knobbulated TR-606" mods were partly fumbled through by Evan, with instructions from the internet, with further mods professionally completed by Robin Whittle, of Real World Interfaces: http://www.firstpr.com.au/rwi/

The first set of mods was something like the mods covered here: http://www.confusedmachines.com/

The mods with Robin Whittle were some special requests that I had for the lettucey little lunch box, plus some ideas of his own to give the machine's character "a good kick in the pants", as Robin might have said once or twice as he explained the finer points of putting oscillators under duress.

In the end, this is what I have ended up with on the machine, encased by myself in a shitty old black Roland CSQ-600 CV/Gate sequencer box:

List of Modifications to TR606:

Bass Drum: Pitch Tune and Decay Time for each of the two oscillators making the bass drum sound.

Snare Drum: Pitch, Noise Filter, Noise Decay Time, and Noise Level (also affects the level of noise burst triggered with toms).

Low Tom and High Tom: The Toms in the 606 share a lot of circuitry between them. I wanted more individual control, so Robin grafted on a secondary circuit copying much of the original and duplicating it, to give each Tom it's own set of controls. These controls are a mixed bag. Each can affect the relative affect of the other controls. They take some getting used to, but provide a wide range of tones in the end, from low, self oscillating rumbles to quirky, chirpy rim shots. The High Tom is simply pitched up a little compared with the lower Tom.

Each Tom: Pitch Sweep Amount, Sweep Time, General Decay Time, and "Monster Pot", which simultaneously changes pitch (from very high to sub sonic self oscillation) and decay time - very much like loosening or tightening a drum's skin. There are also switches for selecting between low or high pitch range, and turning noise burst on or off for each Tom. The tone of the Tom can also be turned down, leaving just the noise bursts, which are cool sounds.
We also added independent volume controls for each tom.

Cymbal: Decay Time.

Hi Hats: Decay Time for Open Hi Hat.

Plus something like a Band Pass Filter for global control of all Cymbal tones.
There's also an external input option, which feeds in to replace the normal chiming sound source of the cymbals.
This is good for sounds such as chords from a keyboard, which can be run through the band pass type affect of the cymbal circuit, and chopped to the pattern of cymbals and hi hats programmed on the TR sequencer. Nice for glitchy crunckly sounds.

I made use of the interfacing jacks already mounted in the back of the old CSQ to function as the individual sound outputs, trigger, and sync sockets.
Also, Robin modified the power supply from the CSQ sequencer to power the 606 in place of a "wallwart" adaptor.

OK, I guess I should get some samples of the machine in action up here on the page next!

Ev.