Tuning the Etherwave...Cover me. I'm goin' in!

Well, I have put it off long enough and with each passing month it is getting harder and harder to get those increible low rumbling sounds out of my Etherwave Standard.

Soon I will have to open 'er up and mess aorunf with L5 and L6. I have two questions:

1. Do I really need to short out capacitor C28? I am not afraid to mess around with the innards of a Speak and Spell or Casio keyboard from the flea market but I am a little leary of jumping the leads of this thing.

2. Does anybody have pictures of L5 and L6? Are they easy to find? Is it easy to screw up?

Could I just try tweaking L5 a tiny little it instead of oging through the whole process?

OK, so that's actually more than 2 questions.

I am just tring to get a little more bottom from the thing. Right now I have the pitch knob all the way over and can't always get the low end.

Hi, DD--

I had to open mine for adjustment during the winter of 2006... in my case, the entire playing range was compressed to a ridiculously short space.

I didn't have to short out anything... it was just a matter of taking off the lid and then reconnecting the power supply.

If you can really make only one small adjustment without going through the whole procedure, count yourself incredibly fortunate... I think I had to go through the entire procedure about THREE times before I got it right. (But maybe I'm just slow...)

Seriously, in my case, it took me a while to catch on that one of the inductors wasn't going through its full travel, until a bit of gentle persuasion. Also, I didn't have an actual reference for the top pitch, so I had to estimate from a piano.

P.S. L5 and L6 are easy to find. The "easy to screw up" aspect comes from all the *&^%$#@! interaction of the circuits... so you're almost certainly in for a lot of back-and-forth, back-and-forth adjustment... and that's [i]before[/i] you even get around to trying it with the cover back on.

So, bottom line: don't worry about damaging things, but don't be in a hurry to get through the process.

Thanks to both of you. I have been putting it off long enough.

I wish they would have just positioned the tuning adjustments so that you could reach them from the back with out taking off the case and then putitng it back on.

I know I am probably delusional when it comes to "just tweaking it a bit" so I will block out some time so I can get it right.

I wonder why the instructinos say to short out C28....

Does that disable the volume antenna or something, leaving the sound on constantly?

If so, that brings up some interesting possibilities such as putting in some analog circuits at that point. Maybe some kind of filter or something would have some cool effect on the sound.

Not that I am going to mess around with it. One of you more electronics-savvy types can do it and let us all know how it goes....

If nobody has any pics showing the locations of L5 and L6 I guess I could take some and post them.

Maybe I am trying to make this harder than it really is.

I have been known to do that from time to time.

now your sounding like Buddy


Andy

L5 and L6 are silver cube like componants that have a hole in the tops for the little screw driver. They are located near the power supply area, and are clearly labeled.

Just make sure the theremin is at least 6 feet away from anything metal.

I drilled access holes in my lid to avoid the trial and error method of retuning.

If you still need a photo, I'll be happy to post one.

Thanks.

I will let you know.

Drilling the holes sounds like a good idea.