Asteroid Snare Drum

TR-606 inspired snare drum

What does this do?
This is a sound generator module with 3 oscillators + noise generator. This module is a complete mini synthesizer that can easily produce snare drum sounds. A 'trigger' signal is patched in order to hit the snare drum. The bottom row contains an internal mixer where you mix in 2 shell generator oscillators, one thud oscillator, and a noise generator.

The Noise generator can be used for your other modules. You can also patch into the discrete transistor VCA, breaking the switch jack to replace the noise generator with an external audio signal (synth level).

The Filter on the 'Impact' signal path was carefully designed just for snare drum tone control. It sounds very nice. It will not self-oscillate, but the Q control can go very high in frequency.

There is an accent control circuit in order to vary the loudness of the impact.

History of the design:
The Asteroid Snare drum started out on bread board as a TR-606 snare drum. That design only contains one oscillator, a transistor based noise generator, and a 'clipper' brute VCA. It is a nice efficient old design, but it is too simple and boring. I decided to add (2) of the original oscillators, and replaced the noise generator with a digital based noise generator to make sure all production units were alike. The snare drum still was missing fullness, so I designed an addition oscillator called 'thud'. The poor VCAfrom the original design was removing all the additional harmonics, so that was replaced by a discrete VCA, and I added tonal controls to the IMPACT signal, and the THUD signal path.

All of this amounts to about 200+ SMT parts. Far exceeding the original design. I don't think there is another analog snare drum out there with the Asteroid Oomph.

https://www.bluelanternstore.com/store/p92/BLM_Asteroid_Snare_Drum.html#/