I once had an article, probably in Popular Electronics, that told how to make a Theremin OUT Of an All-American 5 AM radio. That was a common design for tube radios in the 50s and 60s.
I tried it, but could never get it to generate a tone. I didn\u2019t have the test equipment at the time to fully trace out the circuits and find out what was wrong.
John
From: vintagesynthrepair@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vintagesynthrepair@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Electronic Battle
Sent: Friday, December 21, 2012 3:26 PM
To: vintagesynthrepair@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [vintagesynthrepair] AM radios
Sorry ... all a bit [OT] but:
>> Maybe off subject a bit, but I found this old SYNAPSE mag article
>> a
> few years back, about using a Novus Mathematician to create
> electronic music through an AM radio.
>> http://www.cyndustries.com/synapse/synapse.cfm?pc=35&folder=sept1976&pic=5
>>
>
>>
> Interesting article! That was one of the ways I used to make
> electronic sounds in the late '70s/ early '80s before I got my first
> synthesizer-- just by holding various electronic games and
> calculators near an AM radio and recording the results. Luckily I
> saved the tapes, because now I'm able to sample them and use them in
> new ways...
> I have always wondered about the audio results achieved from doing
> this. If you ever post an mp3 or wav from your older tapes, I would
> love to hear them.
I did this sort of thing in 1977/78 ... firstly a Commodore scientific
LED calculator, and then a TI-58 programmable LED display calculator,
which I used to generate a loop which would run indefinitely on the
calcultor. Holding it near an AM radio generated all sorts of pseudo
rhythmic sounds (a bit like FAX machines or modem tones).
I eventually modified the TI-58 to provide a "trigger" output to a Korg
MS-10, thus creating an early 9but difficult to use)
digitally-programmable trigger sequencer.