tremolo recommendations

[bluebunny]

A pal of mine has expressed a desire for me to build him a tremolo.  He currently has an old Selmer Zodiac and kinda wants something in keeping with its "vintage" character (whatever that means).  Actually, I'm OK with subjective descriptions like that: it will probably guide me more than purely technical considerations.  So he believes he might be after something that's "optical" and using tubes, since that's how the Selmer works.  But not necessarily...

I had a couple of thoughts of my own, but as I've not built a tremolo before, and never used one, I'm not exactly overflowing with personal experience in this area.  So I'm after your learned recommendations and experiences.  Please be subjective!

BTW, the couple of thoughts I did have were these: Jon's Cardinal tremolo (apparently aiming for something a bit "vintage"), Rick's Vibracaster (tubes!), and -- as a completely left-field option -- Rob's Tremshifter (because it's cool and totally OTT!).  Opinions of these?  Any more ideas?

Please be gentle with this bass-playing tremolo virgin...   

[antonis]

If you're stacked with tubes, good luck..!!
(I've no suggestion - I've never even heard one..)

Otherwise, the EA tremolo, the Trill, the Schaller, the EH Pulsar, the Tremulus Lune (with LDR) even some of using 555 chip are good choises..

P.S.
You can allways try a Vibrato..

[Hatredman]

Show him the Tremshifter.

[midwayfair]

The fact that the tremolo involves tubes is really irrelevant. And having a tube dry path isn't going to matter, either, and is really just setting up a situation where you've got a bunch of extra gain in front of the preamp, which is going to dull the effect.

The Cardinal is a bit of an expensive build for what this guy wants, not that I'd discourage anyone from building it. The full-range tremolo side is done somewhat similarly to what happens in the Selmer, except the Selmer has some amplification stages after the photocell and the oscillator is a phase shift oscillator. Normally this would lead to the EA Tremolo, but the EA tremolo is bias modulated and that actually does sound different than a photocell tremolo. The Blue Warbler is actually even closer, and it's cheaper to build than the Cardinal, too. If you go to my site, the build doc for that project has a layout for a two-stage BW that will have a far more intense tremolo than the single-stage version. You can simply omit the envelope control since he probably doesn't need that -- it won't affect anything else in the circuit, and you can still get a pretty nifty bonus vibe effect on the switch if you choose.

The Lune -- or CultureJam's stripped down version, the Shoot the Moon -- is still one of the easier optical tremolos you can build while having as many bells and whistles as you need for the wave shape. The only thing you don't really get is a true sine wave out of it.

[SISKO]

http://www.thetonegod.com/tech/bullitt/bullitt.html this?

[bluebunny]

Thanks for all the suggestions and info.  I'm tempted to pick a couple (or more!) and just build them anyway.  It's not like I have an addiction or anything...      And I already have a board for the Tremshifter...  Expense isn't an issue, btw Jon!      I'll check out the Warbler and likely add it to my list of contenders, too.

[boogietone]

My fav is the EA trem.

[lars-musik]

I very much like the Tap Tremolo by the electric druid (http://www.electricdruid.net/index.php?page=projects.taplfo). It's a Tremulus Lune derivate with a µC that is capable of shaping lots of waveforms. And honestly I wouldn't want a delay or a tremolo without a tap function anymore. Here's a layout I created together with my colleaque bastelfix from a german forum (http://forum.musikding.de/vb/index.php).