Comment

Comment by François on February 7, 2019 at 9:32am

I guess I'll have to raid the kitchen for some aluminum foil and try and insulate the wiring as much as I can...
Thanks!

Comment by BrianQ. on February 6, 2019 at 6:29am

It did make a little interference? (an audible buzz)

Comment by François on February 6, 2019 at 5:29am

BrianQ, I'm wondering about one thing though. Did yours make a motor noise on the amp?
Mine does so I'll gave to make a Faraday cage for it...

Comment by François on February 5, 2019 at 11:51am

With these things, there's never really anything new under the sun. I decided to go opto-mechanical just for the fun of it. I feel it's more in tune with the whole CBG thing. It would have been easier to just take a single LED, tape it to the CDS cell and make the LED blink using a microcontroller like the Arduino. It would have been smaller, cheaper, more reliable...

While I was building it I did some research on how those early tremolos worked. Pretty interesting. They were the very first guitar effects invented. Some used a rocking bottle of mystery fluid that was used to short out electrodes. I also found one which used a commutator and a wheel of resistors. As the motor turned the wheel, the resistance changed and made the effect.

Comment by BrianQ. on February 4, 2019 at 10:32am

Yea, I meant Make? I made the 1st version, it was actually an adaptation of another tremelo on the internet some time ago, so I can’t remember :)

Comment by François on February 4, 2019 at 9:15am

I don't know. It's based on the one from Make: Magazine (version 1). The difference with mine is that the original used a separate flashlight to light the cell and the original had a battery pack to power the whole thing. The original also used a simple pot to control the motor speed. I was tempted to build their version 2.0 but found a bunch of problems with their design, some of which were major. So I borrowed a few bits from both designs and made mine. It uses a real speed controller for the motor. I built a custom pulley and belt drive. The light is wired in with the power so that a single switch controls everything.

I also learned that a speed controller  of any king won't work with a computer fan or any brushless motor...

Comment by BrianQ. on February 3, 2019 at 2:01pm

Is this the optical tremolo from Instructables?