Video: How Theremin Coils are Made

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Learn how theremin coils are made in this free instructional video clip on electronic musical instruments.

- How to Play the Theremin
- The Lower Chassis of a Theremin

Comments

gh05t Aug 02, 2008
Sorry, forgot to ask, what are the dimensions of your phenolic tubes? Thanks.
gh05t Aug 02, 2008
Call me bullheaded, but I just can't take the advice to buy a kit. Messing up and figuring it out is half the fun. Any chance you could post a schematic? Thanks for the great information.
gh05t Aug 02, 2008
Sorry, forgot to ask, what are the dimensions of your phenolic tubes? Thanks.

Video Transcript

On behalf of ExpertVillage.com my name is Mark. Just how did I make the coils that are in the Theremins? Well the original ones I made by hand. I would wrap the wire one turn at a time and it was so easy to not get the tension right, originally I used a smaller wire and it broke easily. You forget how many turns you have and it was just really frustrating, with the help of a machinist friend, we built this little coil winding contraption. It’s a pair of wooden cones that sandwich the coil form in between. Now this is the same form that we have inside of the Theremin, we slide it on and the coil of wire feeds it. on this particular one, to keep the number of turns consistent, I have a counter and every time I turn the crank one revolution, the counter increments and I’ll have this spool of wire usually across the room so you don’t have a lot of angle variance and I’ll start at one end and it will wind all the way down to the other. When I get for the long coil to 1,175 turns, the coil is done and I poke a tiny hole with a sewing needle in the phenolic form and I put the wire through it, tension it, put a little dab of finger nail polish on it and it will keep it from loosening. A few of the tricks when you wind the coil, well how do you keep the coils from being loose? One way is to heat the copper wire, because wire will expand, copper will expand when it’s heated and once it’s wound on here, once it cools off it will tighten, that’s one of the secrets to the trade. The smaller coils are a larger size wire they’re much easier, they’re only 150 turns of wire. And this is made out of fairly common parts. This is a foosball rod from my coin opt repair days, this is a crank off of a Singer Sewing Machine with a little handle added to it and this is a little grinding arbor. And we have a counter and that’s a coil winder.

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How Theremin Coils are Made

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