PAiA Theremax ftw

Well, let me tell you this: building a PAiA Theremax theremin from scratch, mounting it into an Atari 2600 case, and getting it work right is no small feat!

After many, many long hours soldering and snipping and hotgluing and wrestling a bird's nest of wires, it seemed I finally had completed the (basic) Theremax setup... sans the extra modifications I plan to add, but I figured I'd better test out the basic system first.

So... I crossed my fingers and plugged it in and switched it on and... nothing. The power LED didn't even light. No smoke or fireworks just... nothing. Dead? No power? Who knows. So... I reached out to switch it off and unplug and POP! A loud snapping explosion like a firecracker went off under my arm.

I switched it off and looked and... sure enough, an electrolytic capacitor has exploded open.


Well, turns out that the wiring of the power supply they gave me was OPPOSITE the normal markings (this one had white stripe for +, black wire for -)... so I was sending negative polarity through the board when it should have been positive!

So much for the name "Kid Electric"

Anyway, I rewired the power supply and reconnected some of the ground-wire connections and... voila! LED is go! Not only that, but I bypassed the volume antenna circuit with a jumper cable and was able to get sound out of the pitch antenna and null it out so that I can control the pitch! Pretty exciting stuff...

Unfortunately, when I removed the volume-bypass gimmick and try to get it working NORMALLY (with volume circuit), I can't get it to make a peep. :(


Will update more if I ever conquer this beast...