To the initiator of this thread I will say that there was nothing accidental about the advent of the musical tesla coil.
Since I built the Museum coil for the Danish Electricity Museum, I was determined to build a tesla ccoil that could play music.
I was aware of the low inertia spark gap type, but devicong a motor driver for it was beyond me. I tried with the triggered spark gap that has been mentioned, but I failed at the time due to lack of electronic knowledge.
Then I had a conversation with Steve Conner, and he knew how to build the first midi to tc interface based on a Roland syntesizer.
I built the accpmpanying six coils, made the world premiere in Nibe, Denmark, afair in 2007, and the rest is history.
Is it a gimmic? Depends heavily on what you mean with gimmic, it certainly is not a Stradivarius, no matter what you feed into it, but then, most of what you see on Youtibe is recorded with sub standard cameras and clipping microphones.
Anyone who has performed with a Tesla Coil of the musical variety will have noticed that the majority of the audience is able to muster about 20 seconds of interest, after that it is time to move on.
Personally, I don't favour the coil as a lead instrument, rather find the coæil best suited to play in the rythm section, if big enough, like Thumper, even well suited to play the occational bass line.
Cheers all, Finn Hammer
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