New Project - Keyboard?

[Guest antman49443]

The Midibox project seems very mature now.  Posts are mainly a little tweeking and helping neewbies.  I wonder if Thorsten would be up for a new challenge?

How about a custom, user-configurable Midi keyboard controller?  The current Midibox Plus hardware should support a velocity-sensitive keyboard with a number of programmable controllers and program select.

There seem to be a number of controllers on the market that are either inexpensive with few features or expensive with all the features in the world but not quite with everything I'd like.

Obviously one could use a cheap Midi keyboard with a midibox but that seems a little messy and wouldn't guarantee all the features one would want.

[Guest romakrau]

Hi antman49443,

I'm interrest in setup a keyboard controller too. I've just

finished a midio128, and set up my older KORG CX3 with a

MIDI out. It works fine ( Thanks to Thorsten ;-)).

I've also already connect a older Yamaha Electone organ

(D85 out of the 70's) to MIDI. I found the discription

of a MIDI interface on an italian site (Thanks to Carlos).

All this works fine, but not very comfortable.

Please let me know if you will start with a project of

a keyboard controller, with keyboard split per key press....

Greetings Roman

[Guest antman49443]

Roman:

Due to the overwhelming response to my post ;), I don't believe there are too many of us interested in a keyboard project.

However since my initial post, I believe Thorsten's Midibox NG based on the PIC18F will provide everything you and I have ever dreamed of in custom keyboard controlers.  We just have a wait a little bit.

In the meanwhile, if you haven't checked JD Petkov's and Tom Scarff's sites, they may have just what you want.  Of course, it's not free like the Midibox stuff, and expect pricing from 25 to 99 Euros/US Dollars depending on whether you're just ordering the programmed PIC or a complete pcb.

www.geocities.com/JDPetkov   (in Bulgaria)

tomscarff.tripod.com  (in Eire)

Mr. Petkov seems really organ-oriented and probably you're best bet.  Good Luck!

[Guest tritone]

what would you use for the actual keyboard part?

the problem is finding something with alot of keys that's cheap.

if you can find some cheap-o thing from the 80's it would probably be quite easy to create a controller from it. since the MIDI interface already exists, i'd think you could probably even do it all with FPGA's, yes?

[Guest antman49443]

Tritone:

I've been at this hobby for 25 years now so I've had lots of opportunities to acquire keyboards.  Right now my best source is ebay.  I bid on keyboards that are in need of serious repair.  Since I have nothing to lose, I bid real low and if I don't win, so what?

The best keyboard deal I ever worked out was at a store that sells home organs.  Many times they will buy old organs from owners to get them to buy new ones, so they have a lot of old unused organs sitting around.  For $50, I got 2 4-octave keyboards, 2 5-octave keyboards, an old preset rhythm machine and 2 one-octave bass pedals--after scrapping the cabinets and ancient electronics. Some of the older keyboards have much better key mechanisms.  

[Guest fluoroscopic]

New to the forum, so I got here late. (:

I am planning on making a keyboard controller, but not a normal 12 tone controller, so retrofitting an old synth will not work for me.  The mb64 would give 64 keys, and 64 pressure sensors, and the 128 would provide 128 keys.  

I am still searching for the key mechanism part of my plans.  Ideas right now are either finding large momentary switches that have a piano like action, or building a mechanism with reed switches.

Any thoughts on actually building a key mechanism?

[Mickey_Sadler]

Hi All,

Here are a few interesting pages that may give you some ideas on building a keyboard from scratch.

http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/organ/organ.html

http://www.well.com/user/smalin/organproject.html

http://www.angelfire.com/mn/organlcms/organpro.html

http://www.archive.org/ and put

shift.merriweb.com.au/harmonium/diy/index.html

into their search box, then pick one of the page dates and click on the link on making a small organ keyboard. (The original pages on the 'net are gone, but the Internet Archive has them archived.)

Later,

Mickey