Tremolessence Ultimate Version Features

[Ryan]

Thanks, Ian! I'll keep you guys posted! My biggest concern is the soft touch switching being quiet, everything else is

Sometimes, you can "trick" an inductor (in this case the relay coil) into minimizing flyback voltage, which may or may not be the source of noise in the switching system. I've experienced success in noise reduction by manipulating timing and applied current.

I certainly feel your pain. Quiet can be tough.

Man, you said, it Jack! Quiet can be tough!

I used to really struggle with oscillator noises... ticking, thumping, beating, clicking... used to drive me nuts! I've got a lot of tricks up my sleeve for minimizing noises now but this soft touch switching is kinda making me feel like those old days. I have this low level click/snap noise when switching but this is only bread boarded right now and I don't always trust bread board noises. I don't have one of these builds boxed up yet and I'm just in the calm before the storm now... as soon as I get one boxed up and can experiment on it that way I'll go to war with it. Like Clash of the Silent Switchings mythical war.

Interestingly, I have a Moog pedal with soft touch switching that has the exact same click/snap noise when switching... it's not a huge noise, not a loud POP like people hate with poorly set up 3DPT switching, just a civilized little clicky noise, but I'm shooting for dead flippin' silence!

[Jack Deville]

As you know, dead silence is very difficult to achieve using mechanical components of any type.
Have you looked at how the Moog works?

[Gilmourish]

will this be able to do some amp sounding trem aswell? or is it more of a crazy trem? think of how soon is now by the smiths..

[YouKnowIBill]

i hate you ryan... i just cashed in my empress trem for the tex-o and learned to live with out the "extras". now i have that custom trem that i'll never get rid of, and here's my extra features.


i hate you.

I'm sorry, Stephen! Keep in mind the production of these will take months... this is just the first prototype stage of a brand new product and even that process takes a long time. It took me 3 months to get the miniberator pcb totally ironed out and ready for a production quantity. These new Tremolessences will still be quite awhile away... possibly not even by the end of this year if things don't go our way or there's hitches I haven't thought of. Plus, imagine the incredible price you'll get on the new version.

I still love you.

This is always the hard part of upgrades, I hate obsoleting people's pedals.. especially the custom finish guys!

[aussy]

will this be able to do some amp sounding trem aswell? or is it more of a crazy trem? think of how soon is now by the smiths..

current tremolessence can do classic trem sounds with ease
I'd say its more of a 'great sounding trem with extra added functionality' as opposed to a 'crazy trem'
I think Dr. Scientist pedals are a bit like EHX, in that they start out with a great core sound, add further control, and can make some cooky sounds on more extreme settings. Can be used as 'noise makers' or 'creative tools' if you will, but certainly not limited to that
musicality comes first
/end

[Ryan]

Thanks, Austin, and I do agree, The Tremolessence isn't meant to be overly crazy, just really versatile, and I do think it does great at subtle and sweet tremolo sounds.

So last week I got the first Ultimate Tremolessence pcb, the first proto board for the new style, and it went together well and works great... mostly.

Remember how I said once I had the thing all boxed up I'd go to war with the switching system and make it quiet... well.. we had a war. It lasted several days. This time the Titans clashed back though and pwned me. My switching system is noisy and over-complicated and between me and yous, I'm not really liking it very much right now. *squints at switching system*

The features though, they rule. The hold system works great, the expression controls are cool, the single rate knob goes really slow and really fast, it's all perfect except for the switching. And that's become the most important now! So I've kind of been looking down and kicking rocks about it for the last week but my goat-keeping pal Austin set me up with the gear to program a micro for the job... I think round two with this switching system will be fought with a micro instead of the pile of electronics I've amassed with my flip flop circuit. It just leads to the next problem though... I suck at code, I don't know how to do that stuff!

So now the plan is to figure out the best plan to get this micro programmed and it'll control the switching in a much more elegant way, I'm really excited about it, and I'll keep y'all posted!

[Gilmourish]

been in florida for 2 weeks... sorry for late reply. Cheers ryan, just what i wanted to hear :D

[Tubbs]

any news?

[Ryan]

No. *looks down and kicks a rock*

Soon though, I swear it!

[oinkbanana]

still kicking rocks?

[Ryan]

Haha, Kev, kinda! Except lately instead of kicking rocks I've been kicking bits and bytes... microcontroller bits in C language. I'm going to have the switching sorted out within the next couple weeks or so, *knocks on wood*, and then I'll just be a hop skip and a jump away from the next prototype pcb. All the audio and oscillator sections work well from the last prototype pcb so it's really just about getting this switching finished now and I'm well on my way.

Check this out... DDRB... PORTB... (1<<position)...|=...~&=... stuff like that... I'm putting on a clinic here!

[Jack Deville]

Code: Select all

#define FUN coding_mcu
#define KICK PORTB,0
#define HAPPY PORTB,1

void main()
{
  for (;;)
  {
    if (rocks)
    {
       HAPPY = 0;
       KICK = 1;
    }
    else
    {
       KICK = 0;
       HAPPY = 1;
    }
  }
}

[Ryan]

Haha, Jack, that's awesome! And the first time that code cracked me up... pretty special kind of comedy there, sir! *smile*

[Ryan]

*fog machine* *laser grid* *guitars wailing in the night*

Code for the relay switching... done! BOOSH! Big thanks to Austin Lightfoot for setting me up with the hardware, showing me what I needed to learn, and pushing me through all the times I got stuck with it. What a buddy!

So now we've got the box down to 2 cool choices, I like 'em both, I was thinking there was one more feature to discuss... stereo-essence. The ultimate version should maybe be stereo... let's bread board it and see at least...

[oldangelmidnight]

Stereo's silly unless you have panning or ping-pong.
But if you can work that out