Atari Punk Console + mods

Next in line for my ongoing ‘One Instrument a Week’ project is an Atari Punk Console with a few mods to make it more interesting.

The basic schematics for the APC are pretty simple:

The entire thing is built around a cheap 556 dual timer IC. GetLoFi sells a kit, but I chose to get the parts from Mouser and wire it up on perfboard.

The APC is plenty noisy on it’s own, but I wanted to get a little more out of it: I replaced R1 with a photoresistor, added a touchpoint to pin 1 of the IC, and added a simple slide switch for toggling between two 500K pots for the main pitch control. I also removed the volume pot and went straight to a line-out because I’ll be plugging this into a mixer.

The mods give this APC some more character and make it way more fun to play with:

See you next week with a nifty DIY MIDI controller.