Thing modulator not working proparly

[syndromet]

I decided to build the Thing modulator today, since I had a few lmc567's. It does work, but I need two boosters in front of it to get any sound at all. When I get sound, it's kind of ON/OFF, and impossible to controll. Is this normal?

[RaceDriver205]

Nope, somethings wrong with your Thing modulator.

[vortex]

I've messed around with the Noise567 and Thing Modulator (thanks Chrisian & Tim!) circuits and volume was never a problem. It's a simple circuit, you might be a solder joint away from having it working!

I used the non CMOS 567 IC.  That's all I could lay my hands on at the time. Recently I noticed that Small Bear is carrying the CMOS version and I am looking forward to trying that.

The non CMOS 567 works fine but there still is a little carrier signal bleed present in the signal.   I spent a fair bit of time swapping parts on the breadboard to minimize this. Quite a bit of fun for a simple circuit! Perhaps the CMOS version will be better.

You might like to experiment with the other outputs on the chip as they have a different charactor. It's been a while since I built the circuit but I recall installing switches on my boxed version to add the different chip outputs to the main out.

Hope this helps. Have fun!

[liquids]

Reviving an old thread instead of a new one....

I was messing with the Thing Modulator and Noise567 this weekend.  It seems a couple people around have had trouble with this, like I did, and hence was searching older posts.  I found the Worth Ekik site yesterday http://www.geocities.com/worthekik/diy.html--great site! But I figured I would post my findings especially after I read this note there:

"Digikey currently has the "LMC567CN-ND" chip which will work for this, unlike any of the "LM567" variety."   

I bought one of the LM567 from Digi-key, not seeing the C of difference.  I'll order a C variety with my next order from Digi-key Smallbear etc, for curiosity. 

But when I was messing with it unaware of this, it was such a simple circuit, I couldn't figure out what I'd done wrong.  I then looked at the noise567 here http://personal.inet.fi/koti/holmberg/images/noise567.jpg.  I noticed that they're the same...LDR vs Pot variable resistors, and cap values not withstandnding.  Output in one is coming from pin 2, the other pin 1, for slightly different sounds (nothing huge considering the weirdness of both).

But on noise567 Pin 4 here is connected right to +9v.  I had even tried stepping the 100k to 4.7k, to no avail. So I connected 9V right to pin 4 (that is, got rid of the 100K resistor in Tim's schematic altogether) and left/added the 100uF cap to ground off of it.  Bingo!  Weirdness.

Deciding if I'm going to build it is a whole 'nother question.    But if you can't get you LM567 to work, but it's all you've got, for starters just connect +9v to pin 4,  add that 100uF to ground off pin 4, and you will have instant gratification...rather than waiting for that sole chip to arrive, and the dozens of other parts you didn't need but ordered anyways, because you wanted to make the shipping costs worth it.   

Likewise, this may be common info, but expiriment to make the resistance values between pin 5 and 6 larger.  interesting things happen between 1k and 100K, yeah.  But if you like 100K, on the breadboard you can just make the 10K on Tim's schematic a 100K and hence try the 100K-200K range, etc.  In the end, maybe a 250K pot, or a 500K pot, who knows, maybe 1M, but don't be limited where you need not be.  (=

Enjoy!