Deckard’s Dream MK2

The built price shown is the pre-order down payment. The rest is due when it is ready.

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Oh shoot, you’re right

I’d like to see the boards. I am just testing my diy deckards now. Took a very long time to build by hand. I’d say they are even harder to build now as they are mostly smd. I’d say the way to go is if everyone sent their boards to be smd in a factory in bulk to save money as doing smd by hand is very doable but much trickier

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SMD is way easier if you buy a heat gun. I wish the whole thing was smd tbh

Can you elaborate? Any resources you can link to?

Take a look on you tube. Solder paste and heat gun to tin the pads, place the smd part on the pads, apply more heat. Done. Heat gun is £50 from amazon. Will post a link later.

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I think it’s strokes for different folks there.i have a heat gun , even used paste , find it easier using through hole , if I was doing SMD I think it should be left to machines but it’s still doable

ah yeah I remember you mentioning that you were building one, how long is a long time?

I enjoying the various YouTube accounts of self-builds. A series of mental breakdowns, before your very eyes!

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I genuinely want to like the BC poly synths but they just don’t grab me for some reason. would love to spend some time with 'em and see if that changes. same with the Moog One, actually.

anyway, it’s awesome they’ve done well enough to continue evolving this synth. would love to see them do a keyed version some day.

The DD sounds incredible in person. I’ve posted this elsewhere but it bears repeating;

Used in MPE mode, it feels so alive by comparison to my other synths. More or less turns it into a stringed instrument.

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I think it took me 6 weeks of work 9 to 5. From organising components learning SMD and implementing it , and then the 20k solder joints you have to solder it is a real hurdle. Glad it’s over. I have half a decade of experience soldering but it was still a leviathan task

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Smd is partially presoldered the caps that filter out noise are not. It took me a week to do as I found doing them difficult.( learning hurdle). The rest of the kit is where it starts getting mind numbing

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Oh woaw I was trying to convince myself that I can do the mk2 and I have zero experience soldering haha … Ok that put things into perspective hhh

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I think the kit itself isn’t hard , it’s just there is a stupid amount of soldering. I found the TTSH arp 2600 clone much harder. But it has much less components to put in

Agreed it’s not hard to solder parts onto a board.

What is needed is some experience of how to deal with incorrect BOM issues, how to read circuit diagrams, how to get yourself out of problems you’ve caused yourself, how to be organised so you don’t lose track of parts, how to pay attention and not make mistakes.

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You have my condolences now, and my respect when you finish.

I half promise to buy your next album where your finished DDream appears on it

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I’m pretty much done the main board, a few pieces of hardware to attach still. Moving on to the voice cards now😔

It’s kind of fun, but also a masochistic way to save a few quid. As I said before, this instrument will contain a piece of my soul

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Finally had time to repair the last voice card. Turned out it was a dry joint. Everything working great now! Just awaiting the slider caps and a knob :crazy_face:

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