The Stylotron

steamabacus

I wasn't quite sure where to post this but, seeing as I've just made this ... er? .... device .... I thought 'Making & Modding' was as good a place as any. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you .....

The Stylotron
 

I bought a Stylophone (one of the reissue ones - no mention of Rolf to be seen anywhere in the promotional literature) last Christmas when my local Maplins were clearing them out at a tenner. It was an impulse purchase and I had no real idea what I was going to do with it. Now, 8 months later, it has finally got a use - as the Stylotron.

I've mounted it onto a board along with an 'analogue' delay pedal (actually a Belcat digital faux-analogue delay that I won in one of the Fretboard Composition Challenges) and a controller box with the power in, signal out and also a send/return insert loop for additional fx. The Stylophone normally runs off 3 batteries at 4.5Vdc but I've soldered connections to the battery compartment so that I can run it from a power supply. One complication was that the Stylophone runs off 4.5V and the delay off 9V and I wanted a single power input for the whole thing. I managed this by building a basic voltage divider inside the control box with a couple of wire wound resistors. It all now runs off of a standard 9V adaptor - the delay gets the full 9V and the Stylophone gets half that - 4.5V.

The board has a threaded mic stand insert on the base so the whole thing can be mounted on a mic stand and adjusted for playing position as you can see here ...



I've just finished it and had a quick twiddle through a pedal board containing fuzz, pitch shift, flanger and two more delays and a volume pedal to allow adjusting the note attack (the Stylophone is basically on/off using its little in-built stylus) - it's great! 

Shark_Eyes

This is wicked. I've got both the delay and the stylophone. Think I might use the slow engine to effect the attack.

impmann

I did something similar but less permanent - I used a Tera Echo, a boss mo2, a volume pedal and a flanger. Excellent fun!!

ICBM

I need to find my reissue Stylophone and give this a try…!

These things must have made an impression on me as a kid because one of the things I always wanted was to make my guitar sound like a Stylophone.

Fuzz Factory. Solved .

thermionic

Somebody gave me an original stylophone and of course I had to use it on a track... It was terrible! Drifted 1970s resistors set the oscillator frequencies for each note and the intonation was WAY off. I had to Autotune the hell out of it to get anywhere near the right notes.

Obviously I added fuzz, distorted amp models, phaser etc as well.

steamabacus

thermionic said:

Somebody gave me an original stylophone and of course I had to use it on a track... It was terrible! Drifted 1970s resistors set the oscillator frequencies for each note and the intonation was WAY off. I had to Autotune the hell out of it to get anywhere near the right notes.

Obviously I added fuzz, distorted amp models, phaser etc as well.

These reissues are digital, I believe, so should be a little more stable.

thermionic

Yes, it's a much better way of doing things. Good work on the Stylotron btw.

Replacing them with 1% tolerance resistors would probably improve it... hmm, gives me an idea.

steamabacus

https://soundcloud.com/steam-abacus/birth-of-the-stylotron-10082015

usedtobe

That's bonkers. I love it!

Gagaryn

Sadly, I still have an original, with the 7" record that came with it! Original runs at 9v.