Pyramid synth construction photos

Stills of the synth from the original video. At this point it was drawn as a triangular-based tetrahedron, rather than square-based pyramid.

Cardboard and broomstick mock-up to begin thinking about scale.

Dimensions: 500 x 500mm base, 4 equilateral triangles, 354 high.

The version below shows a keyboard protruding from the base of the pyramid, Korg MS-20 style, before it was decided to omit the built-in keyboard.

PCBs from Music From Outer Space - an excellent source of amazing synthesiser related projects.

Amp & speakers

nobs with coloured vinyl inserts.

Boards mostly soldered up - just waiting for a few of the more obscure components to arrive from far away places, including 5nF capacitors apparently made from the tears of a unicorn...

LED phasing timer boards. Each of the 72 rainbow LEDs cycle through a series of colours, so the original idea was to time different groups to come on sequentially, so that different groups of colours would fade in and out together. The LEDs within the groups actually drift out of phase after a few minutes due to manufacturing tolerances, but it all still looks pretty cool anyway.

Casings lightly sanded with ScotchBrite, then coated with etch primer.

At this point, a fun thing to do was to stick your head inside the casing and pretend to be in Carl Sagan's spaceship...

Casings sprayed brown and taken by taxi to Pete's studio, so that he could begin painting the artwork.

Testing the LEDs

Panels back from printing

Pete's artwork back - fantastic! Notice the different eyes on each synth!

Electronics transferred from temporary cardboard onto front panel.

Remaining electronics mounted inside casing, just needs the VCOs calibrating and the casing screwed together.

Pete during pyramid electronic testing process, performing Van Halen-style Moog ribbon controller solo...

Main pyramid page

Return to home page