This is a library of perfboard and single-sided PCB effect layouts for guitar and bass. I'm not an electrical engineer by any stretch of the imagination, just a DIY'er who likes drawing layouts. It is meant for the hobbyist (so commercial use of any of these layout is not allowed without permission) and as a way to give back to the online DIY community.
New Year, might make Modulation Monday a thing. We'll see. Anyway, here's the EQD Hummingbird V2. It's derived from the Vox Repeat Percussion and now updated to use the 2N6027 in place of the obsolete 2N2646. There's also a couple other improvements from the earlier version so a new layout seemed like a good idea. Schematic for reference.
Stumbled across this design by Nocenteli on FSB and thought it was cool, so here you go. Mashup of the Tremulous Lune LFO and the audio path from the Magnavibe with a toggle to switch between tremolo and vibrato mode. I ended up putting the Fine control internally as a trimmer for 2 reasons: 1) In my experience with this kind of LFO it's not all that necessary, and 2) I miscounted the number of pots in this when I started layout it out and was too far in to start over. 😂 You can always wire it off-board if you prefer. Should fit nicely in a 1590B.
To say Craig Anderton's body of work is vast is probably an understatement. But within that body are several DIY classics, and this tremolo is no exception. This is a modified/updated version, specifically in the power section with a +/- 9v charge pump. The vactrol in the original is VTL5C1, but some combination of home rolled LDR/LED combo will probably work (you'll just have to experiment a bit). Schematic here. It'll be snug, but it should fit in a 1590B.
Stumbled across this schematic and it's like CJ's Shoot the Moon and the EA Tremolo had a baby (Though I think this predates the Shoot the Moon...)–the audio path is like the Shoot the Moon and the LFO from the EA Tremolo has been adapted to pulse an LED. Use a 5mm diffused yellow LED and a 2k light/2M dark LDR (or socket and experiment). The trimmer is a gain/volume control. Set to unity and forget about it.
The Cardinal Trem is a harmonic tremolo designed by Jon Patton and meant to emulate the tremolo effect built into several Fender amps from the early 60s (Twin, Super, Pro, Showman, etc). What makes it harmonic? The audio signal is amplified by the first JFET stage, then split into a high-pass path and a low-pass path. Each path is modulated optically with the vactrols, then amplified and mixed into the output. The LFO is designed around a quad opamp (in the original it's a quad, I had to divide it into 2, dual opamps to make it fit) and pulses the LEDs in the vactrols. Schematic and full circuit explanation can be found here.
The L pad will need to be grounded in some fashion for the LEDs to pulse. LED1 can be used as an external rate indicator, either on all the time or as the on/off indicator as well. Jon recommends using optical bypass for this effect (hence doing the Optical Bypass layout on Tuesday 😁), so to use LED1 as the indicator LED, connect it to both pads for the LED on the Optical Bypass board and ground the L pad. If using a 3PDT, just connect the L pad to lug 4 and lug 5 to ground as outlined in the General Layout Notes page.
Here's a great optical tremolo designed by CultureJam. Schematic can be found here. D1 is the external rate indicator and could be used as the on/off indicator as well. Just use part one pole of your 3PDT to break/connect one of the leads of D1. D2 and the LDR should be isolated together (heat shrink tubing works great). Tayda LDRs and either orange or red LEDs seem to work well in this circuit. A NSL32-SR3 optocoupler works well too.
This is Moosapotamus' take on the Vox Repeat Percussion tremolo. The Skippy keeps the character of the original, but with more control while covering a much wider range of tones. There's also the option to use the modern 2N6027 instead of the vintage 2N2646. And you can plug in an expression pedal to control the speed of the effect. I've changed the tone switch to a pot for more fine tuning. More info here.
Haven't done a tremolo in a while, so let's remedy that with the original 4-transistor Colorsound Tremolo (the re-issue is the 3-transistor version). Originals used 2SC945 transistors (BCE pinout), but I've laid this out for more common NPN transistors with CBE pinout. You might want to use a C100k pot for the Speed control. Here's the schematic for reference.
Continuing Jon Patton Week with a vibe/tremolo effect called the Blue Warbler. It features envelop control over the LFO and can be built with one or two LDR stages (layout below reflects the 2 stage version). Jon explains it best, so be sure to check out his build doc and demo below. It'll be a little tight in a 1590B because of the way the pots are board mounted, but should be doable.
Here's another one of my Eagle creations. The Vibutron is a great sounding tremolo from Frantone that uses a ICL8038 to produce the LFO. Originals use a rotary switch for selecting the waveform, but as lvlark pointed out on the Tagboard Effects blog, a on/on/on DPDT switch can be used instead (check out his layout for switch wiring). For you perf builders, this might be a bit difficult to translate to perf (especially with 3 traces under the 8038), but I'm sure one of you out there will make it work. :D This layout has also been uploaded to OshPark if you want a fabricated board–click the OshPark tab above.
Kicking off the week with a fantastic vibe box from Earthquaker Devices–The Depths. It gave me a bit of a fight to get the pots board mounted and as a result there are 5 jumpers O_O. But it sounds great and you should build it.
Ahoy! Welcome to your new Depths Optical Vibe Machine! The Depths is our take on the classic optical vibe circuit. Now you can swab the decks with the same lush, pulsating, three-dimensional swirling sound you know and love, with some modern accouterments for all you land-lubbers out there.
The Depths is optimized for use with all kinds of instruments, pickups, and to play well with dirt, so nobody’s left waiting on shore. If it’s got a ¼” output, plug it in and get deep!
Here's a great sounding tremolo circuit from Demeter–the Tremulator. It's an optical trem, using a VTL5C1. That part can be replaced with an LED and a LDR (600Ω on/50M off) combo. Also, the diodes used in the originals are 1N5229 4.3v zenners, though you can use other zenners up to 5.1v. Here's the schematic for reference.
Here's JHS' Honeycomb Deluxe tremolo. Or something close to it anyway. It's a modified EA Tremolo with an extra switch to control speed and a extra footswitch to switch between speed controls. Ian McDermott came up with a work-a-like for it, so this layout follows his schematic. This layout features board mounted pots and because of the 2nd footswitch I've laid it out for a 1590BB enclosure. Also this is laid out for film box caps like these, though others will work just fine.
Merry Christmas Eve-Eve, everybody! Hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday. Here's an awesome tremolo circuit designed by DIYSB member DeadAstronaut. Cody asked me if I could do an etch-able layout since DeadAstronaut has sold out of PCBs for the effect. Check out the original thread on DIYSB for the schematic and more info.
Edit 3/2/16: Added missing resistor in the filter LFO and corrected traces in trem LFO.
Here's a cool variation of the Vox Repeat Percussion tremolo from EQD. It adds some extra controls to the original circuit for more versatility and control. I had a hard time tracking down a schematic for this one and ended up just tracing the vero layout from the Tagboard Effects blog. So here you go internet, the schem for the Hummingbird:
The Tremulus Lune was designed by Dan Green from Commonsound and is a fantastic sounding optical tremolo. It's a very versatile trem, and has a very adjustable LFO section. The audio path goes through the TL072, and the LFO is created with the 4558. A VTL5C2 can be used, or you can make your own photocupler with an LED (3mm red) and LDR (5k/500k). The LED pads on the right side of the board is for an LFO speed indicator. This LED could easily be used as on/off indication as well. Wire the anode (+) to the board as indicated, and the cathode (-) to the footswitch (typically pin 4 or 7–refer to the General Layout Notes tab above). Then wire the footswitch (pin 5 or 8) to the LED - pad on the board.
Here's the original EHX Pulsar trem from the 70s (not to be confused with the modern Stereo Pulsar EHX manufactures today). It features Intensity and Speed controls as well as a switch to go between a hard and soft wavefrom. Original units often suffer from clock bleed from the LFO section. So I've drawn a second layout with mods to try and fix it. The 470Ω resistor above the IC and the 47µ cap below Q1 should be tweaked to find the values that work the best. Pots can be board mounted from the solder-side using right angle PCB pots.
The Heart Throb is a Schaller Tremolo circuit modified by MarkM, and uses pretty standard parts that you probably have kicking around in your parts drawer(s). The SPDT switch controls the rate. I've added polarity protection and power filtering. The LED not only is an on/off indicator, but will pulse to the rate of the effect.
Here's a 1590A candidate. The Kay T-1 Tremolo originally came in a plastic housing with a treadle that controlled the speed. Apparently similar to the Vox Repeat Percussion tremolo, but a little smoother.
This cool little effect was originally housed in a small box that plugged directly into your amp (which you then plugged your guitar into) and later on some of Vox's higher end guitars. You'll need to track down an obsolete 2N2646 unijunction transistor for Q1, but they can be found on eBay or Small Bear. It produces a thumpy sounding tremolo that could be really useful if you're trying to cover The Who's "Baba O'Riley" and need to do the intro on guitar.
