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MIDIbox of the Week (MB6582-MkII by Wilba)


TK.

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Ca. one year after Wilba introduced his famous MB-6582 to the world, which became one of the most popular MBSID designs with dozen of PCB/kits orders, he created a new version with a lot of improvements: the MB-6582 MkII

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More photos (for example with the first happy owner of a MkII :)) can be found at Wilba's flickr page

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Nice one Wilba ;-) Red LEDs - way better than the blue ones!

edit: For everyone awaiting PCBs or Kits for the mb6582 - be patient, it's so worth it. I actually got to play around with this beauty for a bit and I can honestly say it's the prettiest DIY-anything I've ever seen.

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Wow.  Such an impressive project!  I've def. got some studying to do before I start again myself.. although I'm not too interested in the SID sound I'm really thinking about building one of these just to get to know it better.

Great work Wilba!  8)

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Thanks for the nice comments.

I'll pre-emptively answer some questions:

"MkII" merely refers to the fact that this one was made with the PCBs from the bulk order I organised last year (the red ones, as visible in the photos), which have a different layout to my original MB-6582 PCBs (which is now referred to as "the prototype").

The panels were made by Front Panel Express, using the optimised artwork, i.e. a single HPGL engraving object which was created by exporting to DXF within FPD, then importing into AutoCAD, then plotting to an HPGL file in AutoCAD, then importing back into FPD. Quite a laborious process, but saved money, and I like not paying Front Panel Express any more than I need to. Thanks to Doug Wellington for the DXF exporting (catch-22 of saying thanks is he'll now be pestered by everyone wanting to save money on their FPE/Schaeffer panels!)

The knobs are the "Waldorf" knobs from ALBS, not from Goblinz, but thanks Goblinz for running ALBS bulk orders for these knobs!

The rotary encoders are from the SoundWell bulk order, with detents removed, except for the menu encoder, which is detented and has a switch, this one came from mc4 from some samples from SoundWell when he ran his last bulk order for rotary encoders. Thanks mc4!

The base PCB parts and red LEDs came from SmashTV. Thanks Smash! SmashTV's red LEDs work best with 1K resistors.

The feedback knobs at the back are from a local store, attached to 100K dual-gang pots with shafts shortened using a Dremel and grinding disc.

In the ~3mm gap between the LCD and frontpanel is a piece of 3mm thick smoky transparent acrylic, about 5mm larger than the cutout of the panel, attached to the panel using superglue at the corners. The edge of the cutout is made black using a Sharpie (permanent marker pen).

The red LCD was bought directly from EIO (there was also a bulk order arranged for this LCD a few months ago). It happily works in 4-bit mode, and is a lot less noisy than a PLED!

Finally, in case it wasn't obvious, this MB-6582 was built specifically for TK and was given to him as a gift during my visit to Munich on the 14th June, 2008, where I also got to meet nILS, seppoman and PolyKobol, drink lots of beer, eat lots of pork, and jam with lots of synths and MIDIboxes.

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Hey I was just wondering are there any non-cosmetic changes?  I think there are but I can't tell?

The only non-cosmetic changes are the use of the PCBs from the bulk order I ran, which differ from my prototype (green) PCBs in a few minor ways, which are documented here:

http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/wilba_mb_6582

The essential difference is fully "MB-SID V2" compliant hardware, an integrated CAN bus connecting master and slave Cores (PICs), and a reconfigurable PSU section allowing a single 9V SID supply or dual 9V/12V SID supplies. The control surface differs from the prototype as it now matches the MB-SID V2 feature set.

Hopefully the "MkII" doesn't confuse anyone - it's only "Mark 2" relative to me... It's the exact same setup that people are building now from PCBs and parts bought through bulk orders and from SmashTV, and when the next run of PCBs is made, they also will be almost exactly the same (only a few missing tracks fixed and components moved).

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  • 3 weeks later...

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