The NI/UK Theremin Constructors Home Page

This home page is dedicated to the first electronic musical instrument, created by Leon Theremin circa 1920. This page has similar information on Theremin Construction to the main site at www.he.com/~enternet/teci/teci.html but in a different distribution format.

Theremin Designs

The September 1995 issue of "Everyday With Practical Electronics incorporating Electronics Monthly" has an article on constructing a pitch only version of the theremin. This hand-held instrument features :-
1. Colpitts Oscillator Configuration.
2. Uses 100 microH coils to keep costs down and consequently reduces the pitch range.
3. Linear potentiometer volume control.
4. Battery powered.

The design ( as appears in the magazine ) is offered as a project for home construction only and no licence for ccommercial manufacture is implied.

The PCB design and circuit is copyright of Longwave Instruments and may not be manufactured by commercial companiers. Longwave Instruments are no more !! They now exist as Rosedene Audio

Longwave Instruments provide the following kits and complete units. The prices below indicate the ready built prices :-

Product Name	Price
Simple Theremin	£ 49.99 + VAT + P & P
Full Specification Theremin	£ 350.00 + VAT + P & P
MIDI Converter Unit	Marketed Shortly

Everyday With Practical Electronics Magazine has published a full specification Theremin ( pitch and volume ) in supplement 40 of their ``The Modern Electronics Manual'' and is penned by Jake Rothman and costs £ 23.50 + £ 2.50 p & p each plus air/surface mail. These supplements are 160 A4 pages long and so contain other circuits as well !!

Addresses.

Everyday With Practical Electronics Editorial,	Rosedene Audio,
OR
Wimborne Publishing Ltd, Dept. E8,	The Dene,
Allen House,	Hindon,
East Borough,	Salisbury,
Wimborne,	Wiltshire
Dorset BH21 1PF,	SP3 6EE,
ENGLAND.	ENGLAND.
+44 1202 881 749	+44 1747 820 536
+44 1202 841 692	+44 1747 820 669

References.

1. Jake Rothman,``Simple Theremin,'' Everyday With Practical Electronics, Wimborne Publishing Ltd, UK, September 1995, Vol. 24, No. 9, pp. 674-678.
2. ``Editorial,'' Everyday With Practical Electronics, Wimborne Publishing Ltd, UK, September 1995, Vol. 24, No. 9, pp. 673. ... publish a more advanced design with both pitch and volume control as a future project.
3. ``Shop Talk'' - UK Component Availability, Everyday With Practical Electronics, Wimborne Publishing Ltd, UK, September 1995, Vol. 24, No. 9, pp. 724.
4. ``Shop Talk'' - Erratta, Everyday With Practical Electronics, Wimborne Publishing Ltd, UK, December 1995, Vol. 24, No. 12, pp. 954.

Postscript Reprint of 1967 Design is in letter format. In the UK, we use A4 consequently most laser printers will complain about the lack of paper. If you are using a Laserjet 4M, you can overide the paper selector by manually selecting Continue on the front panel. Alternatively, use ghostscript with the PAPERSIZE=a4 option to convert to PCL 5 and send the resulting file to a PCL 5 compatiable printer. With the first method, the PCB foils get chopped off, thus loosing the text for Volume and Pitch Antennas.

The following links are from David G. Slomin. This link is broken.

1. Instructions
2. Schematics
3. Circuit Layout

The following designs were originally obtained from internet as GIF files which have been converted to postscript by netscape and gnu zipped. Each page is approximately 1-2 MBytes in size when uncompressed and the output print quality is not perfect; the image has a smudged look but is readable.
• Sashas.zip Stuff penned by Alexander Zeyliger. This link is broken.

  Sasha Theremin Pages	Sasha Theremin Pages
  Sasha #1	Sasha #4
  Sasha #2	Sasha #5
  Sasha #3	Sasha #6

• TECI 1974 Version. This link is broken

  TECI Theremin Pages	TECI Theremin Pages
  TECI plans #1	TECI plans #6
  TECI plans #2	TECI plans #7
  TECI plans #3	TECI plans #8
  TECI plans #4	TECI plans #9
  TECI plans #5	TECI plans #10

• TECI Newspaper Article. This link is broken
  News Page

A postscript version of the Transistor Schematic from 103 Simple Transistor Projects is available in draft format. This was written by me in LaTeX and is available as my-theremin.ps.

Robert Moog of Minimoog fame has setup a company which sells Theremins designed by him. His company is called Big Briar.