tiny tremoloOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[MetalUpYerEye]

@soapamp - I just looked over the picture again and I don't see anything... Did I miss something that is blatantly obvious to you? 

[Manny]

Barcode raises a good point above with possible crosstalk on the switch.
Mine's still on breadboard but I have a couple of switches wired in as follows:

dpdt (disconnects LDR for true bypass)
spdt (disconnects battery from board)

I've not tried both things on one switch yet but that may well be where your problem lies.
I think it may be time to do some snip snip and cut the switch out to test. 

[deadastronaut]

@josh.
when i used a superbright blue it was noisey as hell...i know they look good, i love a bright led too
but it can be a right noisey bugger...even on breadboard....swap it out for a standard red one..
i had the same thing trying to use a colour changing led on a pedal....but i could hear the  colours changing..very pretty, but damn nasty
and unusable.....

[MetalUpYerEye]

@Manny - I agree that there could be cross-talk in the switch, but that can't be whats causing it. Since I switched my LDR to in-line I haven't had anything but the negative battery lead on my footswitch and thats like 3 days ago...

@dead - I'm going to try a regular yellow to see if it helps. I tried the circuit with just the red LED that faces the LDR and without a rate LED at all and still got ticking. I took the signal section out of the pedal today and played around with moving it around in relation to the timer circuit. Seems like I get the most ticking when my signal ground and power ground wires are close to each other - within 3 inches or so I get ticking. I also noticed that the ticking is reduced to almost nothing (usable levels) when I touch the battery with my bare hand, even with the pedal setup the way it is.

I'm probably going to nix this circuit and finish my EA to sate my hunger and call my tremolo project done, though I plan on keeping this circuit going until I straighten it out. I was thinking shielded wire for the signal section, reworking all the wiring in the box, swapping the blue LED for a regular red or yellow and probably socketing my LDR so I can try a few more out to see if that helps. Of course, until I can get parts for the EA tremolo (next Monday) its still open season on this circuit so any more suggestions are more than welcome.

[deadastronaut]

hi all..heres an interesting thread to do with ticking problems..

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=76910.0


im off down the pub...

[Manny]

Josh, looking at your comment about having wires close together, I twisted my signal wires around the -V and +V wires and mine started noticeably ticking.
I tried it again with thick shielded wire for the signal and the ticking went away.

I think it's definitely a good one to try. 

[MetalUpYerEye]

'Kay. Here's my status...

I swapped my super-bright rate LED for a regular yellow LED. A little less ticking but still very much there.
So I shielded my input/output wires and cleaned up a bit inside the enclosure. Significantly less ticking, but still audible.
So I said the hell with it and soldered the battery snip onto a piece of shielded wire too as well as shielding the other side of the ground heading from the switch back to the board...

NO MORE TICKING.

But now i'm faced with another tiny issue. Bypass. Right now for an off mode all I have is the negative battery lead switched which is great until you want bypass, then you get no signal because the LDR is in-line. So how can I switch my negative battery lead for on/off and bypass my LDR on the same switch without letting a bunch of noise back in... 

My footswitch is dpdt so it has enough terminals...

[Barcode80]

I'm confused, why switch the battery snap? Why not just wire it up like a normal bypass?

[MetalUpYerEye]

Because I have to keep my power and signal grounds separate, otherwise it ticks like a mother.

If I switch the circuit by connecting it to the input jack like a normal stomp, then my grounds will be connected.

So i'm going to see if I can get it to work OK with the LDR bypassed on the switch, although that will put it right next to the switched battery lead...

I'm starting to feel like this is kind of in vain... I'm really planning on swapping this out in favor of the EA trem... 

[Perrow]

If you've got rid of the ticking, maybe you could switch back to bleed instead of inline.

[MetalUpYerEye]

Yeah I probably could... I think i'm gonna try to stick with inline and just switch it along with the battery lead. I was also considering switching the positive lead rather than the ground, as I believe the noise was coming from the power ground though it may have been both ground and 9v...

Which is choppier: inline or bleed?

I couldn't seem to get the bleed (depth) pot to do anything for me when I had it wired that way...

[Manny]

Which is choppier: inline or bleed?

Having the LDR inline sounds much choppier in my setup, with bleed to ground it has a more subtle "swell" type trem.
I'm glad you've finally managed to get the ticking to stop. 

I'm currently messing with a 3pdt switch and some shielded wire to get to the bottom of the switching issue as I'm planning on boxing this up over the next week or so too.

[MetalUpYerEye]

Well I rewired it for bleed to ground... Kept the leads short... No ticking from the 555 but my pop sound is back.

Sounds like its popping because i'm connecting my signal + with my signal ground. Pops every time the LED turns on... I guess i'll have to try wiring it inline again but add the switch for bypass and hope I don't pick up ticking with the grounds so close together...

Gonna try to get parts for my EA trem some time this week... I'm only missing 3 caps and it'll be up and running. Then i'll find a friend who wants a cheap trem pedal and give the Tiny to him for the price of an enclosure, input/output jacks and a footswitch. As long as it goes far, far away from me.

[JRM]

Hi guys, just a simple question for the ones that have built this effect: Does it reduces the volume level too much? I mean, the sound clip was wonderfull, I really prefer this tiny tremolo vs a comercial one I've tried last friday at a shop but does it make a big reduction on the volume level when it is engaged? If so, a simple 2N5088 boost will be enough to overcome that?
PS: The unit I tested friday made a incredible high volume drop when engaged!

[deadastronaut]

Hi guys, just a simple question for the ones that have built this effect: Does it reduces the volume level too much? I mean, the sound clip was wonderfull, I really prefer this tiny tremolo vs a comercial one I've tried last friday at a shop but does it make a big reduction on the volume level when it is engaged? If so, a simple 2N5088 boost will be enough to overcome that?
PS: The unit I tested friday made a incredible high volume drop when engaged!

hi,glad you like it , better than commercial ones...
what one did you try in the shop out of curiosity?

no it wont reduce any volume as the in an out are always joined...no problems there ok. enjoy....
a few people (who shall remain nameless) 
have had a few issues with ticking though...read the whole thread to see how we got round these problems...good luck. rob.

[JRM]

I've tried the Danelectro Tremolo. True By-pass and nice but I prefer your sound clip. The Danelectro has depth and chop (hard/soft) controls plus, of course, the rate/speed control. I prefered the more chopy one and I've found pointless to play with the depth pot as things got "muddy" appart from a very limited range. At some speeds the cut was just too strong not making a nice effect. And when we desengaged the effect, the volume went up (a lot!). The clip I've heard from yours makes the effect I wanted. I've already read about the ticking issues but I haven't fully uderstood how can we manage to have different grounds when we feed the two circuits from the same power source: no matter what you do, they'll always touch each other at the baterie or psu neg terminal.

[Gurner]

but I haven't fully uderstood how can we manage to have different grounds when we feed the two circuits from the same power source: no matter what you do, they'll always touch each other at the baterie or psu neg terminal.

Too true.

Would I be right in thinking this is the latest schematic....



Just so as to familairize myself (it's getting to be a long thread!).... there are two LEDs, but only one LDR? (is this just for oomph?)

I think what you might have going on here with the clicking is a combination of two things .....not sure if anyone has ever used a manual kill switch - but on clean settings you get a clicking going on with that. It's because of the rude interuption to the AC signal ..,.to all intents & purposes it's like switching a varying DC level on and off - the solution is a zero cross detect cicuit & only shunt the AC signal at a signal zero crossing point. Not sure how aggressive the signal is shunted to ground (it'll certainly be more polite than a brutish kill switch), but it may well be a similar problem The other aspect is obviously the current surge through the rate LED (no limit resistor?)... the two souces of click-ettes combined will possibly reinforce one another here to give a  cumulative click.

Just one other point - what value are most using for the depth pot? If the 'signal in# is an unbuffered high impedance pickup, there'll be some loading going on if the value is too low.

[Barcode80]

I've tried the Danelectro Tremolo. True By-pass and nice but I prefer your sound clip. The Danelectro has depth and chop (hard/soft) controls plus, of course, the rate/speed control. I prefered the more chopy one and I've found pointless to play with the depth pot as things got "muddy" appart from a very limited range. At some speeds the cut was just too strong not making a nice effect. And when we desengaged the effect, the volume went up (a lot!). The clip I've heard from yours makes the effect I wanted. I've already read about the ticking issues but I haven't fully uderstood how can we manage to have different grounds when we feed the two circuits from the same power source: no matter what you do, they'll always touch each other at the baterie or psu neg terminal.

No no no no.

Why is no one understanding this?

the in/out jacks do not have to be connected to the battery or power psu terminals. they need only be connected to each other, with the ground terminating in the amp. The jack grounds are connected to each other via the aluminum enclosure, and pass right on through to be grounded down the line. This way, the power ground being utilized for the circuit doesn't ever touch the signal.

Didn't we just have a thread about this?

[Gurner]

Aaah...ok, so now I see the angle - it's the way the schem is drawn with just the one Gnd symbol.

The gnd symbol to the left of the word 'depth' should have some representation of being specific to signal ground (or chassis in your example of using the shield jack gnd connection from the amp)

The other ground symbols should be differentiated as 'circuit ground'/power ground....or even simply 0V - and never the two should meet! (circuit board should not touch the chassis at all etc)

Yes, then the circuit is then totally optically isolated & should have no click whatsoever. Could it be therefore that the clicking is due to extreme shunting (ie an aggressive control signal) AT a non-zero crossing point? (as outlined in my kill switch example).

[Perrow]

Sounds like its popping because i'm connecting my signal + with my signal ground. Pops every time the LED turns on...

I don't really know if this could be the issue, but have you considered the possibility that your LDR gets way to much light? If the resistance suddenly goes to near zero you are essentialy connecting your signal+ to your signal ground. Slide your sunglasses between the led and the LDR and see what happens, if you haven't rewired it yet that is, you've rewired this one more than most I guess