Tremulus Lune. More depth for overdrive tones.

[John Lyons]

I'm looking to get more "depth" from the Tremulus Lune circuit.
http://www.tonepad.com/getFile.asp?id=84

Clean sounds are fine and have a good amount of depth.
With a distorted tone the tremolo gets lost or not even heard until the notes fade a bit.

I changed out the 330R resistor for a 150R This seems to have done the trick but it was a shot in the dark so maybe there is a better way to get more depth. Any thoughts on this?

Here are a couple sound clips of what it sounds like now, it's pretty close to where I want to be but I thought I'd check with y'all in case i'm going about this wrong.

Slower chop
www.mrdwab.com/john/Tremlunedirtymed.mp3


Faster chop
www.mrdwab.com/john/Tremlunedirtyfast.mp3

[d95err]

This is with distortion after the trem, right? With lots of gain after the tremolo, the tremolo will modulate the amount of distortion more than the volume. I think this is a really cool effect!

If you want a constant volume modulation, you'll have to put the tremolo after the distortion. If you're using amp overdrive, you'd have to put the tremolo in the amp fx loop, or use an overdrive pedal instead.

[John Lyons]

The clips posted above were done with a distortion pedal into the tremulus lune.
Even still I find it just about good but could be better if possible.

All my amps are old or DIY without an fx loop...

Any ideas how to squeeze out a bit more depth?

Thanks

John

[PenPen]

I've been modelling the LFO from that circuit for another project in SPICE, and what I found was increasing that 330 Ohm resistor to, say, 10k, actually increases the amount of voltage swing, which bigger voltage change should == more depth. Just something to try, at least. 

[John Lyons]

PenPen
I tried the 10k pot in place of the 390R but it didn't increase the depth any that I could tell.
It did let a lot more signal through when the depth was lowered though.

I'm not familiar with the workings of these circuits...
What does the 1K in parallel with the LED do?

anyone else?

Thanks

John

[PenPen]

The 1k forms a voltage divider, the middle point being where to take the signal from. I messed with these too, changing the ratios, and it screwed up the LFO. I'm pretty frustrated, I've been working with a couple of LFOs now trying to find a decent and simple one that I can modify easily, and this one is really stable compared to the EA trem one when I make changes, but it seems designed to only do slight voltage changes at that divider point, like for an LED. I wanted to adapt it to use a JFet like the EA trem, but the voltage swings are too small. I'm still experimenting with it, if I hit on a solution for bigger voltage swings I'll let you know, as this should help with your depth issue as well.

[John Lyons]

Thanks PenPen I appreciate it!

John

[PenPen]

What is really frustrating is I get some really cool waveforms out of it with some mods, on the OTHER side of that 1k divider, but when I try to use it by hooking my jfet gate to it I end up killing the LFO. I have tried several approaches but with no solution yet. I have a couple of ideas left I'm going to try modeling later tonight.

[John Lyons]

There seems to be some good info here: http://commonsound.org/fud/index.php?t=msg&th=537&start=0&S=5a8b1792ee8e1ec35005a10d938d418b

Maybe this will help.

John

[PenPen]

Hmm, yes I was messing with the spacing resistors in the end last night, but what I saw was a change in the waveform (some interesting changes to be sure) but all of the interesting stuff was lost in the divider. The divider seems to smooth out the voltage swings into rounded voltage swings, and lowers the overall voltage swing. Great stuff, though. What I'm curious about is the talk of "original values" other than the 220k and 470k. The schem I was working from had the "new values" so I'm not sure what they are talking about. Perhaps I can mess with lowering those down but retaining the ratio and seeing if that does any good.

[John Lyons]

After a few swapped values I'm back to the stock Tonepad layout and values.
Taking out the 1K across the LED made the effect weaker.
I ended up using a clear yellow LED and a Radioshack LDR with 1meg+ dark resistance to a few hundred ohms light resistance.
The EH Pulsar has more chop to it but I did have to tweak that one a bit as well (long time ago and I forgot what I did sadly)
At any rate this trem is nice. I just like to have too much sometimes, and then scale it back depending on what I'm playing...

John

[PenPen]

Yeah, removing that 1k will do that. I've been messing with it again in SPICE here at work and I THINK I got something good for MY purposes, but the changes I made I don't see helping your situation much. Basically I added a cap in series with the line coming from the middle of the divider before it goes to the gate of the jfet and it helped a lot. I don't think that will help you out much, though. You may want to try a 4.7u cap in series with the opto LED, that is basically what I did to the circuit I'm working. Sorry the experiment won't apply much to your situation, though.

[ethanw]

I just built a lune and am looking for a little more depth also, did you end up keeping the 150 ohm resistor?

Thanks, Ethan

[Dark Fader]

i'm not sure if I've the wrong end of the stick here but I built a stereo panneur (stereo tremulus lune) and with depth on max it gates completely. Is this what you're after?

Cheers,

Jim

[ethanw]

Yes, I'm looking for it to go as on/off as possible and like John said to be a little deeper for the OD tones. It sounds very good now, I used the recommended CDS cell and a superbright blue 5mm LED.

Ethan

[John Lyons]

I believe I kept the 150 resistor. Been a while since I looked at it.
Great sound but due to the way it works (opto coupler) the chop isn't as great as somethning like a Pulsar that works with an op amp LFO.

John

[ethanw]

Thanks for the reply.  I'm still experimenting with my Lune, the controls are very interactive and there's a lot of sounds to be found. I got a new EH micro Pulsar, found a cool sound, and was able to match then exceed that sound with my Lune after a lot of knob twisting.  I had a Mesa Tremoverb that did did a really thick pulsing tremelo, it was awesome with a ton of gain. I think that's what I'm chasing and my Lune is close.

Ethan