Synare Sensor DIY clone!

[Synthpeter]

hi all does anyone know how to make it louder there isnt much volume when im put the sounds over a tune played ie dub reggae , even when its pluged into a line in on my mixer..

thank you...

Hey, I was wondering if you or anybody else ever got any louder volume out of this thing.
I am servicing an original Synare Sensor and the output is really low on this unit as well.
So, if anybody has come up with a modification that raises the output volume I'd be happy to hear about it

Thanks!

/Peter

[riddimshakk]

The new Synare 3 kit has just been released. I have done a limited run and one is currently avaliable for bid on eBay. here is the link for those interested:


[/url]http://www.ebay.com/itm/271046965091?ss ... 387wt_1273

I have built 2 of those boards now & they don't work !
After hunting around i still can't find any evidence of a working version of this kit anywhere.
I now believe ,after some discussion with another person who has the same problem as me that this kit is a dead duck !
Unless anyone else can step in here & prove that the Helensson synare 3 kit actually works ,i am calling it out as a no go product.

Not only did the kit not work but it also cost me almost as much as i could have bought a working model based around another board.

My money's gone, the kit is shit & helensson can eat my shorts !

[SubTiel]

Have you contacted Helensson? He has been very helpful with my questions in the past. I have got the synare 3 board myself but have not found the time to order the components yet.

Bless.

[riddimshakk]

Hi. Yes i contacted him after my first build failed. Arranged with him to send me a part-kit , less the switches & pots etc.. so i could build a second one for less money.
He sent me a part-kit & it cost me extra at my post sorting office (Might as well have bought a complete new kit)

Anyway, i built the second kit extra careful like & meticulously checked every solder join with a magnifying glass. I am 100% confident that every join is good, no shorts etc..
I followed the instructions step by step & double checked every step, all polarities , pots in the right places, switches the right way round .
I even sent photo's of my finished board to helensson & got confirmation from him that it was all the right way around.
It's actually not that complicated & with care you wouldn't make errors...Which i didn't.

This kit though , all it does is this...

...no triggering from the pietzo (Doesn't work) & with the volume turned up enough & the oscillators switched on ,nothing until you turn the 'res' knob fully up.
Then you can hear a constant drone from the oscillators along with some messy noise.
The selector switches seem to work & select their functions & i can tune the oscillators too.
The volume knob is sensitive & erratic.
No other functions work. Damn shame because i think the oscillators would sound awesome if the kit was ok....But it's not !
i can either switch it on with 'res' up fully for a drone or switch it off...That's it.

If you have bought the board & not the parts, i wouldn't waste my time & money if i were you.

[riddimshakk]

Couple more things i didn't mention...
... During my contact with him while trying to get help, he began by offering to recreate the issue because someone else had the same problem.
He told me he'd get back to me in a few days or a week when he'd had the chance to look at it.....Then it went dead...Nothing !

Also. I asked helensson weather he had any video footage of a working unit ,to which he replied "No".

AND...Here's what someone else said...

"fact is, the helenson synare kit is still not functional, i ordered some genuine OTA chips and that was also not the solution. i wondered that other people don't have any problems, so there we have it. the kit is really bad designed and looking at it, it looks like autorouted by software. i spent a lot of time trying to get it to work and also contacted helenson about it, he once said he will refund it, but since i did not buy on ebay he does not seem to care. its a cheap kit with all lowest quality chinese parts, sold for big bucks. alone looking at the supplied flat cable or how he wired the switches makes me wonder (using 8 wires for 3 contacts). i am no stranger to soldering, i also assembled a JH compact phaser clone and several guitar pedal kits all without problems. the thing is, you cannot get tech support from helenson as he does not understand the circuit he sells, he has some ripped schematic and produced pcb's of it without fully knowing how it works.

now i ordered a coron ds-8 from RuprechtM that i finally get some analog synth drum sounds.

i am still undecided what to do with the unfunctional helenson kit, but i am thinking of selling it on ebay with mentioning all the lameness that is involved with it"

[SynareMaker]

I felt that I should reply and at least try to explain a little bit about the synare 3 kit. I'm sorry you are dissapointed with it. I really want you to feel good about the purchase, and I certianly wouldn't want anyone to think that I am involved in any kind of "scam" with the kits.


The synare 3 clone circuit board was designed with pad2pad, and yes for the most part it was autorouted. I have had some critisizm about the random looking trace patterns that are on the board. After receiving my prototype boards and testing them, they worked well and sounded just fine. After looking at the crazy layout of the original Synare's one sided board, I chose to leave my trace layout as is without doing a manual layout.

Yes...The components are in fact Chinese. This is just the norm for components these days. Wheather I order from Mouser, Future, jameco, eBay, etc... they are still going to come from China or Hong Kong.

They are now the major manufactuering countries for electronic components. I WAS careful to make sure

that I used smooth quality pots, switches, and jacks, and the board IS produced in the US from pad2pad.

I have sold about 65 of the synare 3 kits and have so far had 6 people that have had problems assembling a working kit. There were usually problems with either the 3080 chips, or that incorrect switches were substituted for the dp3t switches. There was also a short run where I had included the iwrong type of switches.

About those 16 switch connections.... it is true that there are pads for the switches that are unused in the circuitry even though I instruct the builder to wire all 8 points of each switch. I do that because it is much easier to connect all eight points than to explain each connection and what and where wires could be left unconnected. If the switches were actually mounted on the board, just like the original synare3, All pads would be soldered therefore, I have the builder connect all associated wires.. You aren't the first person though that has complained about the "redundant" switch wiring. Perhaps I will re-write the instructions to tell the builder to only wire up the 10 wires used from the board insted of all 16.

The schematics I include from the original synare3 are included for reference only and may or may not be of any use to the builder. I find them convienient for trouble shooting though, because it breaks the circuit up into modules and you are able to see what each part should be doing. When I copied the synare circuit I did it by reverse engineering. I hand drew the circuit traces with my synare3 board on a light table. After I had drawn the full circuit, I built it on a breadboard. I then removed the auto-on circuitry (because it eats batteries). After I was happy with the results, I transfeered the hand drawn layout to pad2pad. The trace layout was actually a mix of manually routing and autorouting.

For Your kit: I would suggest a few troubleshooting tips.

1. Remove ALL chips from sockets.
2. apply battery power to board (fresh batteries).
3. measure and verify correct voltages from both regulators.
4. measure and verify voltages to all +power pins on IC sockets.
5. remove battery power from board.
6. insert 4049 chip
7. re-apply battery power to board.
8. verify with amp or scope an oscillation from the 4049.
9. verify with the switches and pots that the oscillation freq of chip can be adjusted.
10.... if all is ok but you still have problems with all 3080's installed, then most likely you have a bad 3080 somewhere. There are 5 total but it only takes one being bad to have a dead synare!

You might want to build a test circuit to individually test the OTA's. The 3080 has been out of production in the US for many years now. I buy them from China from several sources and have had mixed results. Some are definitely counter-fit and sub-par at best..... and then some work very well. There's a chance that I sent you a defective chip. I Always test before I ship, but nobody's perfect.

I hope you can give this kit another look, and I hope that you are successful in getting it to perform.

Also.......Please let me know if you wish to send it to me for repair. I'm sure I can get it working for you.

[SynareMaker]

hi all does anyone know how to make it louder there isnt much volume when im put the sounds over a tune played ie dub reggae , even when its pluged into a line in on my mixer..

thank you...

Hey, I was wondering if you or anybody else ever got any louder volume out of this thing.
I am servicing an original Synare Sensor and the output is really low on this unit as well.
So, if anybody has come up with a modification that raises the output volume I'd be happy to hear about it

Thanks!

/Peter

The culprit is the Ca3080. Spec-wise these chips were pretty flaky in the output department.... and VERY inconsistent form one to another. The best way to get a better signal out is to couple an extra 741 type of op-amp with a little gain on the output. The original synare circuits never used anything after the 3080's as a buffer, but you'll almost never get a decent output without either an extra op-amp or some type of added pre-amp.

Synaremaker

[JahNice]

Thanks SynareMaker for clearing things up!

[SynareMaker]

Here is a interesting blog link. The user replaced his original broken synare3 board with mine. It's wired nicely inside of his old UFO !

http://skatronix-electrix.blogspot.com/ ... are-3.html

Nice work!

[riddimshakk]

For Your kit: I would suggest a few troubleshooting tips.

1. Remove ALL chips from sockets.
2. apply battery power to board (fresh batteries).
3. measure and verify correct voltages from both regulators.
4. measure and verify voltages to all +power pins on IC sockets.
5. remove battery power from board.
6. insert 4049 chip
7. re-apply battery power to board.
8. verify with amp or scope an oscillation from the 4049.
9. verify with the switches and pots that the oscillation freq of chip can be adjusted.
10.... if all is ok but you still have problems with all 3080's installed, then most likely you have a bad 3080 somewhere. There are 5 total but it only takes one being bad to have a dead synare!

You might want to build a test circuit to individually test the OTA's. The 3080 has been out of production in the US for many years now. I buy them from China from several sources and have had mixed results. Some are definitely counter-fit and sub-par at best..... and then some work very well. There's a chance that I sent you a defective chip. I Always test before I ship, but nobody's perfect.

I hope you can give this kit another look, and I hope that you are successful in getting it to perform.

Also.......Please let me know if you wish to send it to me for repair. I'm sure I can get it working for you.

First of all, i've already done what you are suggesting here & it doesn't work !
The chips you say can be faulty. When i asked you via an email you said that was unlikely. I have two sets of 5, one from each kit & i have tried 'em all.
Also ,why would i want to pay to send my kit back to you for repair when i have already paid you for two kits that don't work & i had to pay extra duty on top of the second one.

Your kit doesn't work. Even at this time so far there is no credible evidence to suggest that it does.

This kind of thing is disappointing , dead money that i could have spent elsewhere. I don't think you should be continuing to sell the kit unless you can provide a video of a working board.

[SynareMaker]

For Your kit: I would suggest a few troubleshooting tips.

1. Remove ALL chips from sockets.
2. apply battery power to board (fresh batteries).
3. measure and verify correct voltages from both regulators.
4. measure and verify voltages to all +power pins on IC sockets.
5. remove battery power from board.
6. insert 4049 chip
7. re-apply battery power to board.
8. verify with amp or scope an oscillation from the 4049.
9. verify with the switches and pots that the oscillation freq of chip can be adjusted.
10.... if all is ok but you still have problems with all 3080's installed, then most likely you have a bad 3080 somewhere. There are 5 total but it only takes one being bad to have a dead synare!

You might want to build a test circuit to individually test the OTA's. The 3080 has been out of production in the US for many years now. I buy them from China from several sources and have had mixed results. Some are definitely counter-fit and sub-par at best..... and then some work very well. There's a chance that I sent you a defective chip. I Always test before I ship, but nobody's perfect.

I hope you can give this kit another look, and I hope that you are successful in getting it to perform.

Also.......Please let me know if you wish to send it to me for repair. I'm sure I can get it working for you.

First of all, i've already done what you are suggesting here & it doesn't work !
The chips you say can be faulty. When i asked you via an email you said that was unlikely. I have two sets of 5, one from each kit & i have tried 'em all.
Also ,why would i want to pay to send my kit back to you for repair when i have already paid you for two kits that don't work & i had to pay extra duty on top of the second one.

Your kit doesn't work. Even at this time so far there is no credible evidence to suggest that it does.

This kind of thing is disappointing , dead money that i could have spent elsewhere. I don't think you should be continuing to sell the kit unless you can provide a video of a working board.

ok riddimshakk......

I don't know what else I could do for you. I guess I just can't understand why you would think that I would purposely sell you something defective. I have dealt with several other builders that were able to successfully complete the kit.....and anytime there were problems with a build, the customer and I were able to communicate (calmly) until we worked out any problems.

Seeing a video is not going to solve your problem..... I mean, after watching it, I'm pretty sure that your kit still isn't going to work.

You say you have done everything that I suggested as far as troubleshooting goes, but you haven't been very specific as to where the unit is failing.... you just say "it doesn't work". Its kind of like going to a doctor and saying "I'm sick"....then expect a diagnosis.

Also, you don't seem interested in sending it back for a refund, or repair, so we're really out of options.

Please message me privately from here on out. I really don't want to continue with you here in the forum. It just hasn't been productive for either of us, and actually its also a little off topic. This was supposed to be discussion related to the Synare Sensor. I DO hope we can still get you up and running though, and my repair or refund offer is still stands!

Anyway.... for what its worth, Here is a short video demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQeIVRYwHFw

[riddimshakk]

I don't know what else I could do for you. I guess I just can't understand why you would think that I would purposely sell you something defective. I have dealt with several other builders that were able to successfully complete the kit.....and anytime there were problems with a build, the customer and I were able to communicate (calmly) until we worked out any problems.

Seeing a video is not going to solve your problem..... I mean, after watching it, I'm pretty sure that your kit still isn't going to work.

You say you have done everything that I suggested as far as troubleshooting goes, but you haven't been very specific as to where the unit is failing.... you just say "it doesn't work". Its kind of like going to a doctor and saying "I'm sick"....then expect a diagnosis.

Also, you don't seem interested in sending it back for a refund, or repair, so we're really out of options.

Please message me privately from here on out. I really don't want to continue with you here in the forum. It just hasn't been productive for either of us, and actually its also a little off topic. This was supposed to be discussion related to the Synare Sensor. I DO hope we can still get you up and running though, and my repair or refund offer is still stands!

Anyway.... for what its worth, Here is a short video demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQeIVRYwHFw

Finally, a video ! This is the sound i was expecting to get when i finished the build. I have actually sold the board now at a loss for spares or repair.
A wasted venture for me & your video is way overdue & still only shows that it can work now & not that all of them ever did. How come it took you so long to get a simple youtube demo out there ? It's a standard practice nowadays.

Next time i'll spend my hard earned cash on a different product. There's a guy in europe who builds exeptional synare 3 units & his boards are really nice.

Also that's the first time you ever offered a refund too so i don't what offer you are talking about there. Too late now, it's gone & if you let this drop, it will be best forgotten. All that nonsense about the doctors, wth ? Read the thread, i explained enough to you long ago & you never once offered & refund, in fact (& i'm repeating myself here) you charged me for another kit.

[SynareMaker]

FYI..... for those needing to lower the pitch of the synare sensor kit.....Try lowering the 10K @ R21 to around 3.3K it should really extended the low range.


Thanks


helensson

[papa otta]

easy to kill asounbd with this one!!!!!
guidance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFU_nReNBlQ