Monotron Delay

yo all,

Just wondering if anyone knows of any mods that exist which remove the Monotron Delays dependency on AAA batteries?

It's such a tasty unit, but the need for constantly buying batteries makes it sit sadly on the side

I tried snooping around, but to no avail - the only closet thing i found was the Jahtari (which seems extremely sweet, albeit custom made and expensive)

http://www.jahtari.org/gear/monotron.htm

Is there even some cheap hardware shop solution? Some sort of fake battery shape you can put into devices which run off the mains?

Just get a 3 volt power supply and solder the wires to the battery contacts the right way round. If you're feeling fancy you can of course get a female DC connector component and solder that in your Monotron, for that unplugging action.

^ yeah, I added a power socket to mine, it was super easy. Also added cv and gate inputs; if you remove the ribbon controller they fit nicely in the spot where it used to be, and the battery compartment provides space for the wiring.

Anyone know if it's easy/doable to solder in separate in/outputs for all components (vco, filter, lfo)? Would be pretty cool to use my monotron as a sort of semi modular extension thing.

Outputs should be easy to add. Inputs would need extra circuitry for mixing (audio), current to voltage (cv).

  On 5/24/2015 at 11:38 AM, th555 said:

Just get a 3 volt power supply and solder the wires to the battery contacts the right way round. If you're feeling fancy you can of course get a female DC connector component and solder that in your Monotron, for that unplugging action.

  On 5/24/2015 at 2:52 PM, modey said:

^ yeah, I added a power socket to mine, it was super easy. Also added cv and gate inputs; if you remove the ribbon controller they fit nicely in the spot where it used to be, and the battery compartment provides space for the wiring.

So the legends are true! This truly is great great news.

Would you gentlemen be so kind as to give me a lil' more info? The layman i am.

So I buy a 3-volt battery supply, cut the end of the wire - then connect these wires to the battery contacts (is it just going to be all the same copper wire, or different strands within?) - when you say 'the right way around' what do you mean by that? Looking in the back of the Monotron there only seems to be 2 contacts - one for the '-' minus springy end, and then just a thin flat metal part for the '+' positive on the opposite side.

If i was to feel adventurous and fit the female DC component - would this be a standardised DC level, or would i need to buy a special one that only accepts low 3V values?

Also where would i connect this to? The plus and minus contacts?

Many thanks!

If you cut and strip the wire of a DC supply there should be only 2 wires inside their own plastic tubing, each will probably consist of lots of tiny wires but that doesn't matter, just treat it as 1. Then you indeed solder one of these to the - end of the battery compartment, and one to the + end. What matters here is that the + of the supply goes to the + of the Monotron, and not to the -. Just try both (without soldering :P) to see which wire belongs where.

  Quote

If i was to feel adventurous and fit the female DC component - would this be a standardised DC level, or would i need to buy a special one that only accepts low 3V values?

  On 5/24/2015 at 6:17 PM, TRiP said:

 

  On 5/24/2015 at 11:38 AM, th555 said:

Just get a 3 volt power supply and solder the wires to the battery contacts the right way round. If you're feeling fancy you can of course get a female DC connector component and solder that in your Monotron, for that unplugging action.

 

 

  On 5/24/2015 at 2:52 PM, modey said:

^ yeah, I added a power socket to mine, it was super easy. Also added cv and gate inputs; if you remove the ribbon controller they fit nicely in the spot where it used to be, and the battery compartment provides space for the wiring.

 

So the legends are true! This truly is great great news.

 

Would you gentlemen be so kind as to give me a lil' more info? The layman i am.

 

So I buy a 3-volt battery supply, cut the end of the wire - then connect these wires to the battery contacts (is it just going to be all the same copper wire, or different strands within?) - when you say 'the right way around' what do you mean by that? Looking in the back of the Monotron there only seems to be 2 contacts - one for the '-' minus springy end, and then just a thin flat metal part for the '+' positive on the opposite side.

 

If i was to feel adventurous and fit the female DC component - would this be a standardised DC level, or would i need to buy a special one that only accepts low 3V values?

Also where would i connect this to? The plus and minus contacts?

 

Many thanks!

 

I'd highly recommend soldering a socket rather than the wires from the power supply; it's less prone to failure that way. Also, you can use the power supply for other things when you're not using the monotron (especially if you get one with variable voltage, see next paragraph).

And yup, you've got it right regarding positive and negative terminals. If you get one of the power supplies that comes with a bunch of connectors you'll be able to choose polarity as you please; I chose to wire mine so the centre goes to the negative terminal, since that's how a lot of guitar pedal power supplies are wired, and I use variable voltage power supplies.

It'd probably help to get a cheap multimeter so you can figure out which pin on the socket is centre; it's not always obvious. If you plan to play around with any more electronic projects a multimeter will come in very handy!

Many many thanks, gentlemen!

I shall give it a go and report back.

Gentlemen, it was a resounding success!

Fitted a nice plug in/out DC system - many thanks for the help!

One last thing - is it just ours, or do all Monotron Delays have notoriously awful and dodgy audio in/outs? (AUX/Headphones)

We have to pretty much hold the audio cables at precise angles for them to work - other wise they dont make proper contact

My first-gen Monotron has very shitty aux ports as well yeah, unfortunately. Congrats on getting it work, have fun.

Nice one! Regarding the audio ports, it might help to re-solder the terminals, it sounds like it might just be a dry joint.

  On 5/27/2015 at 11:38 PM, modey said:

Nice one! Regarding the audio ports, it might help to re-solder the terminals, it sounds like it might just be a dry joint.

most intriguing! Would you be so kind as to elaborate on the process of that?

Would i need to de-solder them and then re-solder (how does one de-solder?), or just add more solder to the area that's already soldered?

Is there any great risk involved with it?

I once put a wire between the left and right things internally, cuz 1 of them had broken so it was mono when I plugged my headphones in.

I'm also planning on soldering a jack connector to the speaker wires, some day.

  On 5/27/2015 at 11:42 PM, TRiP said:

 

  On 5/27/2015 at 11:38 PM, modey said:

Nice one! Regarding the audio ports, it might help to re-solder the terminals, it sounds like it might just be a dry joint.

 

most intriguing! Would you be so kind as to elaborate on the process of that?

 

Would i need to de-solder them and then re-solder (how does one de-solder?), or just add more solder to the area that's already soldered?

 

Is there any great risk involved with it?

 

It's better if you de-solder and flow some fresh solder on to them, but it's not 100% necessary; you can just melt the existing solder but it might be a bit stubborn. To de-solder you can use some solder wick:

It should be available wherever you get your solder from.

There's not much risk, apart from the usual risk of damaging components from overheating, but if you're careful with the soldering iron you'll be fine.