The STR-500 is a sampler that does one thing: you record a sound and then play it back by pulling a string. You travel through the sound in time, so you can pull the string slowly or quickly, or stop in the middle to freeze the sound.

This is where you purchase a fully assembled and painted STR-500! The current model is powder coated blue with a laser etched lid, colored yellow using wax and spraypaint. Each unit is handmade, and the painting, LED color, and button color will vary. There is very limited supply, due to the difficulty of finding the string mechanisms.

PCB and semi-assembled kit versions coming soon

For audio, the instrument uses stereo 1/4" line input and output only! If you want to plug in a microphone, or listen with headphones, you'll need a mixer or some other system for managing your signal levels.

This project is fully open source. Check the links for all of the code and build information. Over the coming months I'll be making videos that explain how to modify the code and even the hardware.

I am working on an online user manual, it should be ready in the coming weeks.

One note - there is a bug in the STR-500 that I can not solve (yet): when the instrument is left switched on for a very long time (around 16-24 hours, I think), the audio output will get very distorted and stop working properly. Switching it on and off again resets everything and it will work again. Startup time is 3 seconds so this is pretty quick! Sadly this appears to be an issue in the underlying code library I am using so it is resisting a quick fix. I will be making a video soon about updating the STR-500 code anyway, since I'm likely to tweak things over the coming months, and as soon as I find a fix for this bug I will let you know.

Footswitches

The STR-500 has 1/4" footswitch connectors which bypass the play and record buttons. These should work with many (or even most) standard footswitches, but if you don't have any there is the option to add these to your order. I have generally used momentary footswitches for this, but latching can work well for playback. I would not recommend using latching footswitches for recording, because the STR-500 does not support continuous looping recording (yet?).

The footswitches connect to the main STR-500 unit with standard 1/4" jack cables (like guitar cables). These are not included.

note: the footswitches are pretty easy to DIY, I'll be making a video with instructions for this soon

Power Supply

Please specify which region power supply you need. You can also use your own, provided it's between 5-12v and center positive, and has a 2.1mm pin. If you want to use your own, please be very careful and double check the voltage and polarity!