Tremulous Bear (With schem)

[BetterOffShred]

Hey guys, I bought this kit from small bear a long time ago and it's one of the best trems I've played.  I wanted to make another to play around with dual trem madness, and I was hoping someone would be interested in making a stripboard layout.   The kit comes with a Vactrol of some variety and it sounds really good.. Anyone here is the schematic I got from Google Images.  

[BetterOffShred]

Oh here's the list of the components values!

[MAO]

Here you go, be sure to review the original build notes

Let me know how it goes.

NOTE: ICs are upside down

3/7/20 - R10 value updated

[amsterdam]

damn MAO you're on a roll!  can you break limbs more often? jk. I wouldn't wish that upon anyone from this community.

[MAO]

Thanks for making me smile, it sucks but I'm glad I've got the time to draw up some layouts by request.

Playing guitar a lot more too, this guy's lessons are spot on. Shut up and Play

[BetterOffShred]

Hot Damn, Thanks MAO.  I'm looking forward to giving this a go.  I just graduated from Engineering school and I'm trying to find a job, so I doubt I'll be ordering parts till I'm gainfully employed! I appreciate you giving this a look, and to anyone who's even remotely interested, it's a DAMN good sounding tremolo.  The way the controls all interact let you get some really nutty chop out of it.  I'll be taking this on as soon as I can afford it!  Thanks again MAO.
-Brett

[BetterOffShred]

Hey MAO, I was hoping you could get me straight on how you do your wiring diagrams.. You have the blue circles that are wire hookup spots, are you indicating that the wire is soldered at the blue pad, and then if there is a leg that goes up or down a row from that pad, it's also connected?  
For example, Level one, goes to the board, then there is a 1 row jumper that goes up one row, so is the wire fed through the hole at the level 1 row, soldered there, and then jumped up a row and soldered there too?   I have never built any of your designs, and I got confused by this! Appreciate your hard work!
-Brett

[MAO]

Hi, sorry for the confusion.

The big blue circles are holes to route the wires through the board. This acts as a strain relief and keeps the wiring from breaking off the board.

So, the wire for Level 1 attaches to the board at column 1, row 9. That wire then routes through the board at the blue hole at column 1, row 10 and comes out underneath the board and then attaches to the pot.

This also helps with tidy wiring.  

I show an example with pictures here

Let me know if any other questions.

[BetterOffShred]

Finally got my ducks in a row and got a few things from small bear to finish this, just waiting for my VTCL53 or whatever.  I also don't have any MPSA14s.. but it looks like it's just a 20k gain mpsa13.. I have a few of those I'll try.  Thanks again MAO. :)

[mercury6]

thanks a lot man. always wante a dual tremlune but how can one have all the knobs. atleast for one trem.

[BetterOffShred]

So this is now verified.. with only one problem.  The 3.3k up at the bias pot is actually 22k (R10)  

I also.highly recommend just clipping one leg off a 20k trim pot for R14 so you can tune the led for other Vactrols.  I used a NSL-32 And it sounds great, but I tried some other home made rollies too and they worked fine with the 20k trimmer.

For R12 I used a 130M resistor I got off eBay from France for like 2$.. and then I didn't use the dpdt and set it up with a regular stomp scenario!


Thanks so much for doing this one MAO.  Love this trem.

[BetterOffShred]

Note that in that BOM I supplied R10 is listed twice, once as 3.3k and once as 22k..  there's a table version that only has it listed once, as 22k.. and from my build, 22k is the correct value! Thanks

[MAO]

Awesome!
I updated R10 value in the original layout.

I've also moved things around to accommodate a 20k trimmer per your suggestion here:

[MAO]

Hey Brett,
Couldn't find any Tremulous Bear demos, how does this compare to the VFE OldSchool or Jon Patton's Cardinal Trem here and here?

[BetterOffShred]

It's kind of unique in the sense that it has 2 speed knobs for the wave, and a bias like the Gristleizer.  It just sounds great and has 2 speed ranges which is nice.  It gets pretty choppy with the square mode and right bias/depth without really any thump.  

The old school has the envelope modes and a sag to make it hairy, and the speed range is a bit disappointing on that one imo ..  

The cardinal is a harmonic trem so you're running the EQ into two ranges and LFO'ing them separate ..

The bear is def worth a build if you are a fan of tremolo though.  It's a pretty great design

[MAO]

Cool, I'm on it!

Personally, tremolo pedals never did it for me until I built the Twin Peaks, and then the Cardinal.

So I certainly prefer the harmonic tremolos, but will give this one a go.

Thanks for the inspiration.