Best DIY Tremolo pedal

[coxter]

I sure the original threader is just wanting opinions from fellow diyers who built trems.
doesnt matter what's best or the "ultimate" trem.

I'm just gona give my take on the EA. The speed is adequte, but the depth(range) needs to be alot deeper.
But hell, the mosfet sound is so warm, I love it.

[Dave Z]

I sure the original threader is just wanting opinions from fellow diyers who built trems.
doesnt matter what's best or the "ultimate" trem.

I'm just gona give my take on the EA. The speed is adequte, but the depth(range) needs to be alot deeper.
But hell, the mosfet sound is so warm, I love it.

Yes, that was my intent - thanks for the detail on the EA!

[Bucksears]

If I didn't have the trem on my SRRI, I'd build a Craig Anderton Tremolo in a heartbeat.
I built one for my cousin about a year ago and A/D'd it with my Super Reverb's trem. It was pretty much identical, right down to the ticking noise.
It uses a CLM6000, I think. I can't imagine something else sounding better.

- Buck

[markm]

Just for the record,
My intention with the "Hearthrob" was to smooth out the sound ala the EA but maintaining a reasonable depth.
It sounds like an EA but goes about double the depth than the EA can achieve.

http://aronnelson.com/gallery/album76/Hearthrob_Tremolo_LAYOUT

It can get very choppy on max settings and be smooth on lesser settings plus the speed is highly adjustable from slow as molasses to faster than a cheap date on a Saturday night! 
The EA is still my favorite though.

[Mark Hammer]

What do people want in a tremolo?

1) A sufficient range of speeds, and the ability to dial in JUST the right speed.  Sometimes that can be a function of pot taper and/or exoticness of personal speed choices, rather than the design itself.  Most tremolos can be converted into having a couple of more narrowly-focussed speed ranges, rather than a single do-everything range.  That would encompass very slow speeds more suitable for panning and audio-range speeds suitable for ring-modulator type effects.

2) An appropriate waveform.  "Appropriate" will depend on your application.  If you like a nice subtle swampy "throb" then you want something which is decidedly un-square.  Some folks have a need for stuttery sounds, so square/chop capability is important.  Puretube's tremolos for EHX are popular because they can do many different waveforms.

3) Sufficient range of sweep depth.  Some folks like subtle modulation, no matter what the speed.  Some folks like deep deep modulation from full on to full off.  Not every pedal can go full off.

4) Panning option.  Some tremolos are easily adapted to autopan function.  E.g., the Anderton one lets you simply invert the LFO output with one of the unused invertor sections for a stereo autopan.  The old E-H Pulsar is not quite so pan-friendly.

5) Tick-free sound.  This is something that may depend more on board layout and builder chip/device choice than on design.  Some tremolos do seem to have fewer complaints about ticking than others.

6) Sweep rate indicator LED.  Being able to see what the speed is before you turn the volume up is very handy for some people.  Not all circuits lend themselves to doing that easily.

7) Immunity to distortion.  Some people need something that can handle hot signals cleanly, without any risk of distortion of any kind.  At one extreme we have optical tremolos.  At the other end we have CA3080-based circuits.

Ability to handle external control signals.  This could be either expression-pedal control of sweep speed or perhaps an external LFO.

Figure out what is important to you and find the design that optimizes those features.

[col]

I have built several tremelo circuits and the ones I like best are the EA trem which sounds very 50s/60s, the Kay trem which is very extreme and one from "Advanced projects for the Electric guitar", by J Chatwin which is the one I use live at the moment.
I used to have a Marshall Vibratrem but the effect wasn't very deep at all and it devoured batteries. As soon as you put any distortion on you loost the tremelo effect. None of the above suffer from this and the Kay and Chatwin ones will cope with just about anything.
I also built the one from the Penfold book "Electronic music Projects," which is based on a 555 but I couldn't get rid of a click even with a low power 555. The effect was very good though. He also has a couple in the book "Practical Electronic Musical effects Units" based on an LM13700 including a split Phase tremelo which looks interesting but you'd need 2 amps to get the effect.
There are 4 different tremelo circuits in another penfold book "Music Projects" which is still availble and published by Newnes rather than Babani but I've not tried any of them yet. They include an envelope tremelo, tremelo, alternative tremelo and a dynamic tremelo.

Hope this helps