Cardinal Harmonic Tremolo

[Alex]

New layouts!
This is the same pedal from Jon Patton with slight modifications by 1776 Effects.
The previous layout was verified by Neil mcNasty.
The differences from the previous layouts are:
- 150pF cap added between Drain & Source of Q1.
- 10M resistor added between Gate of Q1 and Ground.
- 4.7uF cap from Source of Q2 to Ground instead of 1uF
- 100uF caps changed to 47uF
- Volume pot is now 100K Log instead of Linear
Use either TL062 or TL072 for the IC


Version with trimmers:



Trimmers can cause noise.
To avoid that socket biasing resistors instead

[Heath]

I'm looking forward to building this.  I've got about 15 circuits I'm currently troubleshooting, so it'll be a bit before I can try it, but I'll post when I do.  

Thanks for the layout!

[Neil mcNasty]

Built this yesterday and it is working fine, except for some LFO squeeling that I hope will go away when i box it and shorten the wires for the rate and depth knobs.

The only thing you might want to do with the layout, is to change the pinouts so it matches the J201's.
At the moment you will have to twist some of the legs to get them in correctly.
The correct pinout for the J201's are SDG (top to bottom), some minor adjustments should get it right...

Thanks for your work!

Neil

[IvIark]

My J201's are

D
S
G

as per above, although I have seen 2N5457's with different pin orders from the norm so nothing would surprise me.  With most JFETs the drain and source are interchangeable anyway so it may not even matter too much.

[Heath]

Neil mcNasty wrote

Built this yesterday and it is working fine, except for some LFO squeeling that I hope will go away when i box it and shorten the wires for the rate and depth knobs.

Aside from the squealing, does yours sound as good as Jon's demos?

[Neil mcNasty]

It sounds nice and very close to what I expected after watching the video, but I just noticed that it distorts slightly when you dig in hard. I had a similar problem with the Kay Tremolo, which is caused by the bias being slightly off on the first transistor (according to some forums), maybe that's the case here as well...
After all, I have not been overly impressed by the last batch of J201 that I got. I suspect that they are from the lower shelf and might be the cause.
I have started using 2SK30A-Y instead and those sound amazing. Highly recommended If you can get hold of some.
I'll try to stick some of those in there and see if that works out better...

[Heath]

Having a few issues.

First, the layout specifies 3 pots in the description, but refers to 4 pots on the vero layout.

Here's what I show in the layout:

100kB Vol
1kB Rate
500kB Wave Form
??? Depth


On the original schematic I see:

100k trim/100kA Vol
100kC Rate
500k trim/500kB Wave Form
1kB Depth

Aside from this, I can only manage to get one of the Vactrol LEDs to light up per the layout.

D4 lights up, passes to D3 which lights up, but it's not continuing to D2.  What's really weird is that if I short the legs of D3 while it's plugged in it goes dark, but then D2 lights up and starts working fine.

Similarly if I short D4's legs, both D3 and D2 light up.  In any event, D2 is always noticeably dimmer.  I have no idea if that is part of the effect or what, but it doesn't look right to me.

Soundwise, I'm getting a very farty sounding tremolo so I can;t tell if it's "Harmonic" or not, heh.  Might be due to the J201 biases.  Without trimmers it's going to be a pain in the ass to adjust the voltages.

It's 4:30am here and I've been at this thing for 5 hours so I'll check voltages later after I sleep some.

[Freppo]

Fantastic sounding tremolo. Great work on the layout(s). :)

EDIT:
Removed my layout. I think it's for the better to keep this thread clean and focusing on Alubru80's great layouts. ;) I will post my TAPLFO + Cardinal Harmonic Tremolo layouts here when I had a chance to verify them.

cheers
/ Fredrik

[Alex]

Fixed the pots values and added a version with Waveform trimmer and one with biasing trimmers
(5k might have been ok for Q1).

[Heath]

WOW!  That was some quick work!  

I'm going to try it again from scratch with the trimmers added.  I won't be able to do anything with it soon due to being booked up for he weekend, but I am looking forward to trying it out.  This circuit has become a personal quest, GRR! :)

As popular as the request threads for this circuit were, I'm hoping quite a few people try building it so we can get lots of feed back.

[jubal81]

I built this on the 1776 PCB and had the low headroom issue. I used 2n5457s instead and with careful rebiasing I've got a very clean output.

[Alex]

Hi Fredrik.
Your version is much more interesting than mine.
There are not many circuits with Tap-Tempo in here and I think it should have its own thread.

[Freppo]

I built up my layouts before leaving for vacation, but I didn't get it to work. I didn't have the right vactrols so I'll experiment more with it when I get home. Hopefully that was the problem. I got the only TAPLFO working on a separate board, but not it's not working the Cardinal Tremolo with the vactrols I had. It passes signal, but no tremolo happening. I'll report back in a week or so.

Cheers
/ Fredrik

[Alex]

If anyone is interested in this project I've modified the previous verified layouts to 1776 Effects specs.

[Freppo]

Yes, please share! :)

[Alex]

They are on the top of the page.

[Pavlos]

just wondering if this has been verified yet? certainly looks interesting....

[agung]

hay Alex. I want build your layout tremolo.is verified and don't have problem? story just to make sure everything ok

[velouriafx]

I built it, but the effect is very subtle.

[velouriafx]

I changed the resistor from LEDs to Ground for 1k and now the effects really appears.