Chameleon

My Paia Stringz ‘n Thingz / Organtua keyboard is a great sound generating source. Sure would be nice to be able to process those sounds through some voltage controlled filters and amplifiers, with MIDI and some other stuff thrown in for good measure, right? The Chameleon was born!





After some research, I decided to use Ray Wilson’s excellent modular synth board designs from Music From Outer Space as the basis for the Chameleon. The unit contains the following MFOS boards:

- Noise and Random Gate generator
- Low Frequency Oscillator (LFO) with extensive routing possibilities to the other modules
- Sample and Hold (S&H )
- Stereo Auto-Panner with custom modifications for status & rate LEDs
- 2 State Variable Voltage Controlled Filters (SV VCFs)
- 2 Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release generators (ADSRs) with custom modifications for ADSR LEDs and an auto-repeat circuit
- 2 Voltage Controlled Amplifiers (VCAs)

The boards are integrated in the unit so that no patch cord changes are necessary to reconfigure the modules. Everything is routed and connected through selector switches and potentiometers on the front panel. This is accomplished through a custom control voltage (CV) and audio mixing and distribution system. There is also a custom 3 channel MIDI interface that includes 2 Attack-Release-LFO (AR-LFO) generators, and a MIDI trigger and gate implementation with yet another LFO. DC power (+/-12V and +5V) is provided from an external power supply, with power switching and filtering built into the Chameleon. Everything is packed into a 20½ inch wide by 6½ inch deep by 3 inch tall box with 77 knobs and 17 switches. Holy sardine can, Batman!