“Dub Siren! Man – I didn’t even know that these existed until a DJ friend asked me to make him one.
I had to do some digging (a lot of digging actually – there isn’t much on the net surprisingly) to find out the history of the dub siren and it didn’t disappoint. Seems that it originated in Jamaica in the late 60’s, early 70’s where they started to use sirens and analog synths to create sound effects for their music. Later it was emulated to live DJ performances using something similar to this ‘ible.
So what is a dub siren? I’m glad you asked…
The dub siren is based around 2 x 555 timers and a LM741 Op amp. Adding a bunch of pots and buttons allows you to create and control a whole heap of cool sounds from a traditional siren to a long toned note.
They are usually played with a reverb guitar pedal but I decided to add my own reverb circuit (no need to make this one as you can buy them on eBay) to the final build. Adding this circuit gives you some amazing sounds to help you play along to your favourite dub, hip hop, disco house or whatever else you want to play along to.
The circuit wasn’t too difficult although the schematic look me a little to get my head around. I found that I only had to modify it a little (if you are going to add the revert circuit you will also need to do the modification) to get the sound I wanted. I’ve included the original schematic (you can also find it here) and also my modified one.”