Tremulus lune . anyone built one without ticking/noise?..

[deadastronaut]

i was thinking about buillding the tremulus lune..(tonepad)..but there seems to be a lot about it having noise/ticking/throb problems even in bypass?..soooooo....

1:anyone built a quiet one?

2:whats it like with distortion?

3:why 2 speed knobs?

also what about the pulsar? (tonepad)...that seems to have these issues too?..

hmmmm.....i dont fancy building another dust collector!..

especially a 5 knob one.....

[EATyourGuitar]

my buddy has a EH pulsar and it can produce ticking when cheap cables are running over it. like a mic cable that has nothing to do with the pedal board. its one tick for every complete cycle 360. like it only ticks when it pans left. you can use shielded cable inside the pedal that should help a little. some PCB's have a ground screen on them with holes in it. like a faraday cage. but I dont know for sure how much it helps if at all.

[deadastronaut]

hmmmm...yeah they do seem to be a bit notorious!...

[petemoore]

  Did you try..
  Low current opamp for the LFO ? [ TL062
  PS filter very near the LFO chip ?

[Mark Hammer]

+1 to pete's suggestions.

I'm going to take a wild stab and suggest trying out a 47uf cap in parallel with the 470k resistor to ground, off the "spacing" pot.  Tack it on the copper side and let us know if it helps.

[deadastronaut]

i havent built it yet!... i was just wondering if anyone built it and 'didn't' have any problems with it (tonepad layout)_



but if/when i do i'''ll take those suggestions on board!!!...

[cpm]

this is my variation

- As stated, use a low power opamp for LFO (i did LM358)
- Separate power filter for LFO, special care separating LFO ground lines from audio grounds in layout
- Different LDR configuration. I find in original TrL it never gets into (enough) silence when the volume is down.

[theundeadelvis]

I've built 4 or 5 (I always ending giving them to friends) using the Commonsound layout and have never had any ticking noise of any kind, and no noise at all when bypassed. When the pedal is engaged, I do hear hiss that coincides with the tremolo effect. One of my favorite builds.

[rousejeremy]

I've built a few from the Tonepad layout. All I had to add was a 100uF cap from +9v to ground.

[deadastronaut]

I've built a few from the Tonepad layout. All I had to add was a 100uF cap from +9v to ground.

why?..because of noise/hiss...?....did it get rid of it totally?..

cheers rob.

[theundeadelvis]

To answer your other questions, in my opinion:
-it works great with distortion.
-Two speed knobs? I'm assuming you're referring to Speed and Fine. The fine allows you to adjust where the speed range falls. I usually use a trim pot for the fine and set and forget. Basically, depending how the fine is set, the speed pot may not get very fast until last little bit of its travel or you might not get as fast of speed as you'd like.

I really can't imagine a more versatile tremolo (except maybe the 4MS stereo panneur/trem which is basically 2 of these I think). You can get some awesome psychedelic sounds and some great vintage ones too. I gave one to friend who has one of the most amazing collections of vintage gear I've seen, and he loves it. He plays in a Pink Floyd cover band a couple times a year, and says the lune is an integral part of the show.

[Slade]

For the tremulus lune, along with a good voltage filtering, you can put a 33nF cap between pins 1 and 3 of smoothness cap. It will make LFO waveshape a little "rounder" but it will get rid of a big part of the ticking too. Also use a 470pF or 1n cap across the trimmer, it will filter high frequencies at the output buffer and get rid of some ticking also.

[rousejeremy]

It was ticking a bit straight from the layout. I could reduce it by adjusting the internal trimpot but by the time the ticking went away the pedal was below unity. Adding the cap eliminated the problem. It still takes a bit of trial and error to get the internal trimpot set just right. I've actually had to do mine live on stage. For some reason the setting that worked at practice level at home didn't translate to a live setting.
I also removed the "fine" pot. A lot easier to fit in a 1590B that way.

[BoxOfSnoo]

I have no ticking with mine, not sure what I did to make it work so great

I didn't use two knobs, I just skipped the fine knob.  I did notice it was a bit hard to dial in just right though, so I replaced the speed knob with a reverse audio pot and it works exactly as I'd like!  I HIGHLY recommend a symmetry mod - either a switch or a knob.

Sounds great with distortion, before or after.

[deadastronaut]

cool..thanks guys!.....yep i'm looking at doing a four knobber really..1590b...i'll knock it up and test through my true bypass breadboard...

with 100uf..and try those mods out...etc..

i just didnt fancy building another dust collector!..

i'll give it a go...thanks again fellas...

[rousejeremy]

It's a great pedal. One of my only DIY jobs with a permanent spot on the board. Good luck!

[deadastronaut]

thanks jeremy....

[lazerphea]

For the tremulus lune, along with a good voltage filtering, you can put a 33nF cap between pins 1 and 3 of smoothness cap. It will make LFO waveshape a little "rounder" but it will get rid of a big part of the ticking too. Also use a 470pF or 1n cap across the trimmer, it will filter high frequencies at the output buffer and get rid of some ticking also.

+1 for the 1n cap; I've also added a 100uf cap in the power section. No ticking, except at very high levels.

[deadastronaut]

For the tremulus lune, along with a good voltage filtering, you can put a 33nF cap between pins 1 and 3 of smoothness cap. It will make LFO waveshape a little "rounder" but it will get rid of a big part of the ticking too. Also use a 470pF or 1n cap across the trimmer, it will filter high frequencies at the output buffer and get rid of some ticking also.

+1 for the 1n cap; I've also added a 100uf cap in the power section. No ticking, except at very high levels.

@paolo...is it ok at gig type levels though?...


erm...did slade mean 33nf cap on pin 1-3 of smooth pot?...


also i'm rolling my own led/ldr combo...!

[Skruffyhound]

I built one early on that I never got working for some reason. Later I returned to it and through some correspondence with "Liquids" ended up breadboarding and playing with all the values and a few other things. It was still on one of my breadboards until I moved last week. I have a proto board that lets me "play" my breadboards without problem and I was using it. No ticks/clicks at bedroom levels.
I ended up back almost stock, except for the use of some buffers which worked really well. I'm too lazy to try and find my notes in the chaos, but you might try a search here. The thread started with a question about the lune from Liquids.
Now all the components are in a bag awaiting assembly.