I forgot how much I love Trem... (Tap Tempo Trem Content)

[skullservant]

So I was really curious after seeing Dan's Tap Tempo Trem what it sounded like, so I built one with the third stomp switch for multiplier. Went ahead and bought parts last week and finished putting it together last night. Only ran into a few problems during the build since I populated the board around 2 in the morning the other day- accidentally oriented the vactrol the wrong way and accidentally added the resistors in place of the waveshape distort knob which I later removed and replaced. I ran out of standard wire and had to use 18 gauge which was a total pain, but I guess at least I know no wires will be moving around. After I fixed the vactrol it started right up.

8 different modes:

-Up ramp
-Down ramp
-Square/pulse
-Triangle
-Sine
-Hypertriangle (the top of this waveform is a triangle, the bottom is a sine)
-Inverted hypertriangle (the top is a sine, the bottom is a triangle)
-Random steps

SO FREAKING AWESOME. The random steps sounds like a record skipping and is just AWESOME

I totally forgot that trem is SO RELAXING. I seriously just sat and played clean guitar into the trem for a solid hour and a half and lulled myself to sleep in the dreamy reverse ramp bliss.

Gonna post up a video demo in the next day or so.

[Achtane]

Man that sounds (and looks) badass, 'specially the random steps.
I built an EA Tremolo clone, but it's boring. This might be the thing to get.

[DannDubbleEwe]

These are SO good. I built one for me (and sold it in a fit of madness) and a buddy. Seriously great. Can do really amazing, super hard chopping. When fed a fuzz it's synth heaven. Its versatility is maddening.

[bongoben]

Very nice. This pedal is going to be my first pedal build very soon.

[Mike]

Nice build!

That's the best DIY tremolo out there. Audio path of the trem lune, excellent digital LFO, tap tempo, nice professional boards... it doesn't get much better than that for DIY.

My favorite settings are the square wave / wave distort combo-- from hard chop to little blips-- and the ramps. You can almost get a pseudo-delay type sound with the ramp down, and the ramp up is just fun. Although, I haven't... ermm... actually built one, but...

The project evolved from the first circuit I ever "designed"-- a non-tap tremolo using the Electric Druid's VCLFO, which evolved into the Taplfo. Tom used my schematics for the datasheets for his excellent LFOs, and Taylor brought it to the masses with his nicely done project. I answer about half of the questions about the circuit over at DIYSB, so if you guys have any questions, I'm a good person to ask.

I'm finally starting to build one of these. I have a huge enclosure (7.7" x 9.9" x 1.25"), so I have a ton of room. I'm going to make mine switchable to four modes-- trem, filter, sequence trem, sequence filter. Think the Zvex Seek-Wah and Seek-Trem. I plan on using an LM3914 to slice the LFO into ten chunks. Rotary switches for the shape/multiplier. I want this thing to look like an old industrial panel, so I'm going to use tons of LEDs.

Mike

[skullservant]

Awesome!

One question- do you think if I used a different vactrol it wouldn't click so horribly on some settings?

[Mike]

Have you tried increasing C9 from 330p to 1n? That smooths the edges of the hard on-off transitions a bit. To test, you can just hold a 680p in parallel with the 330n to see if it helps, and if it does, replace C9.

When I did all of my testing and breadboarding, I found that keeping the LED current as low as possible was the key to prevent clicking. Use a superbright LED if you have a flashing status LED. Set the trimmers as low as possible while still making the effect usable (don't turn them down all the way or you could blow the LED). If you eliminate the click but find that the pedal is below unity gain, you can increase R15.

Mike

[skullservant]

Cool, I'll have to try that. I had a waterclear super bright LED installed, but the stupid 18 gauge wire broke off the ground lead and blew the LED while I was testing it out so I replaced it with a diffused green LED. I've got another blue one on the way though. I'll definitely look into adding/swapping out those caps though!

[moose23]

I found increasing that cap to 1n instantly solved all the ticking issues.

[skullservant]

That's GREAT. I'll have to pick up a 680p cap with my next parts order

[Mike]

That's GREAT. I'll have to pick up a 680p cap with my next parts order

No no, don't wait for that. I said 680p because it makes for an easy test. When jammed in parallel with a 330p, the two caps would add up to 1010p-- slightly more than 1n. The 680p is just for testing to see if a 1n will solve the problem. Anything close will work. 560p + 330p = 890p, close enough. Try anything from a 330p up to 1n just for testing

If it solves the problem, great-- pull the 330p and put in a 1n. If it doesn't, then you didn't risk damaging your board by unsoldering the 330p just to test a 1n.

Mike

[skullservant]

Cool. Yeah I don't have any pf caps laying around at all, so I'm going to have to pick up a few regardless. I'll get a few values and just hold them to test and see which works best!

[kbit]

Very interested in a demo. Love me some trem.

[skullservant]

HOW DID I NOT POST THE DEMO IN THE ACTUAL THREAD WTF:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phnfux0bvWc[/youtube]