ACE R&D project

26/07/26

Porthtowan/Nangiles exotic semiconductor field trip to East Wheal Towans, Great Wheal Charlotte and Nangiles mine. Specifically looking cuprite from Porthtowan area, and wolframite from Nangiles mine near Bissoe.

25/07/26

Release of live Sheffield recording (as a free download) on bandcamp, soundcloud and archive.org

Had a good morning doing R&D:

• Rebuilt crystal diode triangle voice on breadboard from the log synth, added feedback.
• Tried building a Razor blade diode and tested it in the triangle voice (made another video).
• Quickly tried a Perikon diode with some zincite purchased from Poland and chalcopyrite from Ale & Cakes Mine.

14/06/26

Live performance at Sheffield Pattern Club!

13/06/26

Tried again, and posted a 1920s crystal diode making noise video on instagram and had 200 likes and 7,848 views. This seems to be a good way of doing 'outreach' for this project at the moment.

12/06/26

Getting the Variscan Synthesis live rig working.

• Replaced all 0.1uF DC blocking capacitors to 1.0uF, removed unwanted low pass filtering.
• Using silver cat's whiskers after reading about galena point contact diodes.
• Added crystal radio diode, see semiconductor history.
• Using new portable 6 channel mixer to replace 4 track recorder.
• Lots of rehersals and recordings made.

03/06/26

Received crystals, cat's whiskers and tins & posted them on instagram, video had 6,500 views which was a surprise!

01/06/26

Project announcement and added/working on semiconductor history and cat's whisker setups after questions on mastodon. A sizable proportion of the materials budget might be going on ebay purchases of crystal radio parts!

30/05/26

Starting a log here of the work done. The first entry is things I said I'd do so I can keep a check on it (chopped up from proposal)!

End up with unique sounds and electronic music created with instruments I will create designed to work with natural semiconductors collected from Cornish mine waste.

• The music itself will document the specific locations and history of the site the material comes from (who worked there e.g. the Bal Maidens, stories we know of the site, its industrial heritage, etc.
• The instruments will be artworks in their own right
• I will use the time to research more interesting and complex musical potential.
• The aim will be to create instruments that focus on this that highlight raw materials using Cornish granite, soldered copper pipes, CNC milled copper circuit boards alongside the semiconducting minerals themselves.
• test these new sounds and prototype instruments in a live setting
• develop existing and new collaborations within this community and further afield
• The instruments would also be designed to be used by other people in future

All sounds, music and designs created will be published online as creative commons and open hardware for others to follow and provide feedback.

Project plan from proposal

Start	End	Task
02/05/2026	31/07/2026	Researching history of semiconductor development from early 1900's
02/05/2026	01/09/2026	Researching mine history and searching mine sites for semiconducting material
01/06/2026	30/10/2026	Prototype instrument experiments based on research
01/06/2026	31/10/2026	Music making and test performances
01/09/2026	31/10/2026	Documentation, publishing recordings, blog posts

I've started by looking into the history of semiconductor usage.