Wilgamat III v2

The Elka Wilgamat III was a rhythm machine + auto accompaniment instrument built in Italy around 1982.

I first heard about the Elka Wilgamat in 2004, and then purchased a non working one for $50 on ebay. I didn’t have schematics, but I was able to get it working again and reverse engineer the keyboard pin out. This particular Wilgamat project was commissioned by someone in the UK who purchased a semi working Wilgamat, with the rare Remote Foot Switch, and even more rare Bass Pedals. It came from Canada and was sent to me directly.

My client wanted the keyboard to be black, and wanted the entire texture to mimic the original Wilgamat side panels. To achieve this, I first spray painted the keyboard with Stone-Fleck, and then went over the textured finish with black paint. I also CNC cut the keyboard body to loosely follow the shape of the original keyboard that was used with the Wilgamat III.

The keys and contacts came from a newer keyboard: The Korg Kross. This one has dual contacts for velocity on each note. I wired the two contacts in parallel, since no velocity is used.

I did the same individual outputs like I’ve done on the other Wilgamat mods. This time, I used relays to control each channel. The relays are switched on and off via the illuminated switches on top of the main unit.

I replaced the original Keyboard interface from the obscure 32 pin Plessey to a more common DB25. I also put a DB25 on the Bass Pedals. Now the auto-accompaniment can be controlled with either the keyboard or bass pedals.

Finally, I installed the Tubbutec uniPulse to give limited MIDI control. The sounds of the drums can be individually triggered, and the clock can be controlled via MIDI. There’s a switch on the front for internal vs external clocking. The original clock comes from a 555 timer.

I shipped the Wilgamat, the bass pedals, and the new keyboard to England in three big boxes. It was very expensive to ship. Unfortunately, the main Wilgamat unit had a rough journey, and needed a little bit of mending upon arrival. Luckily my client is skilled with a soldering iron, so we were able to troubleshoot across the pond to get everything remedied. It’s still 120VAC, so it’s being powered through a step-down transformer.