Wilgamat III v2

Back in 2005, I modified an Elka Wilgamat to have a keyboard, individual outputs for the different accompanyments, and built a new enclosure. Then, 14 years later, I was commissioned to do the same thing! This time, it's a detachable keyboard, and the patch bay is on top of the Wilgamat.

The Elka Wilgamat III was an Italian built "Groovebox" from 1982. It has preset rhythms, and it will play bass lines, arpeggios, horn lines, and other auto-accompaniments via a keyboard attachment. The keyboards seem to be very rare and forever disenthralled from their Wilgamats, however it's possible to wire a 24 key keyboard where each key switches to a grounded bus.

On the two I modified, I got the keys from the Casio CT-310. This model's keyboard works great, but some traces on its circuit board need to be cut, and others bridged to make it work.

The new keyboard case was CNC cut from Cherry and Aspen woods, I painted the Aspen parts black, and laquered everything.

Each voice is patched out to a 1/4" jack with an on/off switch. I also used the four octaves of square waves from the bass generator, which were discovered when I modified the first Wilgamat in 2005. The octaves are also selected via a rotary switch.

The original Keyboard Interface on the Wilgamat was replaced with a DB25 connector. The new keyboard has a DB25, and connects via cable. There is also an added "Fill In" switch.