Building the tap tempo tremolo

[Taylor]

I haven't done anything with that, but this might be a good question to ask Tom Wiltshire, who designed the TAPLFO chip that this project uses. His site is electricdruid.net.

[acehobojoe]

Awesome. Can you double check to make sure you sent mine? I payed with paypal a while back. I'm in South Carolina.

[Unlikekurt]

hello all

i just built mine and it sounds great.  the only thing i'm wondering is if there is a way to get the bottom of the swing to be completely null.
with my tremulus lune, with the depth set all the way up i could achieve no signal when the tremolo swing was in the off portion.
Can this be done with this design?

[Unlikekurt]

Resolved my question:
The NSL32 didn't have a high enough off state resistance to completely null the signal.
Switched to a Perkin Elmer and am satisfied.

[karbomusic]

I just wanted to pop in and say thanks to Taylor and everyone else in this thread. I got my board Monday evening, soldered Monday, boxed it Tuesday, took it to rehearsal on Wed. Worked first try and I have not even tweaked anything at all yet. Kudos!

[Taylor]

Nice, what's the symbol at the bottom?

[karbomusic]

It's from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Sinaitic

I had no reason for choosing "A" in this build other than I liked it, but in a previous build (quad buffer) I used that alphabet with "A,B,C,D" for the outputs.

Is the expected/required video allowed here? 

[1878]

I finished this ages ago but forgot to post a pic. Fantastic effect !!

[acehobojoe]

Just about done with mine, however, the 10R resistor right after 9v burned out. I can't figure out why, perhaps I'll try a different resistor. Has anyone else had this?

[acehobojoe]

Most likely it was the fact that I used a 1/4w resistor. I'm switching to a 1/2w.

[acehobojoe]

Argh... Same thing, the 10r just keeps getting hot when I plugin. Anyone have ideas?

[Taylor]

Is your 4001 diode in the right way?

[acehobojoe]

Well, I'm pretty sure it is, it's got the white side with the white on the board. I'll check again.
Edit:
Here's a pic

[acehobojoe]

probing around, there is no more resistor problems, but when I reach the op amp, the signal sort of dies, right after that third resistor. My guess is that nothing is getting the proper power it should. I might have messed up my regulator because of a crap dc adapter, don't think it was sending dc.

[bluexskyxnoise]

so I just finished the board, crudely threw some wiring for the offboard components to hear what it sounds like, plugged in and the good news is I'm getting signal. The bad is its terribly gainy, almost fuzz like. There's some serious gain going on here. Is this just the gain of the output that needs to be adjusted? (I was going to move the gain to the outside and didn't attempt to throw a pot on it yet to do an initial sound test)

[Seven64]

so I just finished the board, crudely threw some wiring for the offboard components to hear what it sounds like, plugged in and the good news is I'm getting signal. The bad is its terribly gainy, almost fuzz like. There's some serious gain going on here. Is this just the gain of the output that needs to be adjusted? (I was going to move the gain to the outside and didn't attempt to throw a pot on it yet to do an initial sound test)

yes.  this needs to be set to a reasonable level, or can make the effect sound terrible.

when i built this, it fired right up no probs.  i was skeptical because it was my first try at soldering ic's directly to the pcb without socketing them.  super happy i have them soldering skillz to not overheat ic's or tranny's. 


this thing sounds really nice!  i am glad that i built it!

[nemz]

I just finished building three of these pedals, and I have the same issue with all of them. I've built a few dozen pedals before, but this is my first time building the tap trem. I've read the whole thread and I don't think my issue has been addressed, but I'm sorry if it has.

This is what happens:
Bypassed, the pedal works fine.
Engage the effect - it works fine, all features operate as desired (except that I couldn't get rid of 100% of the ticking on extreme settings, though I tried multiple optocoulers, changed the 330p to a 2.2n, and tweaked the pots)
After some length of time (sometimes 30 seconds, sometimes a couple minutes) there is a "pop" sound, and then a continuous buzz/hum with the ticking greatly amplifed. If I play while it is in this state, the guitar volume is reduced. The closest sound I can compare the buzz/hum to is when you have a cable plugged into your amp and you touch the other end's exposed jack tip.
If I disengage the effect there is another "pop" and the buzz/hum goes away, and I get my clean guitar signal.
Then if I turn the trem back on, after some length of time, it happens again. This happens to all three of the pedals I built.

One interesting thing to note is that the issue does not arise when I place a boost pedal (ZVEX SHO clone) after the trem.

This leads me to believe that there is some sort of issue with the effect out and my amp input, though I'm not sure what, since this is the first pedal I've built with this issue. When my amp (Fender Blues Deluxe Reissue) is on standby, I measure -0.5V DC at the input. When the amp is on, (not on standby) I don't measure any DC voltage. I unfortunately don't have access to another amp to try the pedal with for the time being. Is it possible that I need to use a polarized 1uF cap at the output instead of a film cap? Usually I use tantalums as the last coupling cap in my builds, but I went with a film for this one, as recommended in the build document.

Any help would be much appreciated, as I'm at my wits end here. I do not think there are issues with my work quality (solder joints, etc), since I have the same issue with all three pedals, and have done a very large amount of soldering on a variety of projects with no issues.

[Taylor]

That's really weird. My understanding is that tantalum has less DC leakage than aluminum electrolytic but still worse than film, so if leakage is a problem I reckon polar would make things worse. Perhaps post pics and maybe somebody can see something of note.

[nemz]

Here are a few pictures:

[acehobojoe]

Yours looks nice man! Just finished mine....

So the white dot on the opto is negative...