Aleph Null Special Sauce

 I'm a big fan of Brian's, aka Aleph Null's, circuit designs he's been kind enough to share over on the MadBean forum. Here's one of his latest offerings, the Special Sauce. In his own words, "It's a short delay with envelop control pitch bending. This makes for unique chorus, doubling, slap back, and vibrato effects." More info here.

Nocenteli Magnalous Lunevibe

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.

Run Off Groove Tri-Vibe

This is (or was now I guess) one of the few Run Off Groove designs I haven't laid out. It's not a small circuit and I ended up laying it out for a 1590BB so the pots can be board mounted (but it will fit in a smaller enclosure if wire them off board). I also did this in Eagle, as it's a bit more complicated circuit and the schematic reference feature in Eagle makes for fewer mistakes. No worries though, there's a perf version too. More info on the ROG site.

Here's the BOM, and the schematic for reference:

VooDoo Lab MicroVibe

Here's the Micro Vibe from VooDoo Lab—aka, welcome to jumper city. Always seems to happen with vibe circuits, but this one will fit in a 125B quite nicely. Pretty standard adpation of the old Univibe with speed and intensity controls. Set the trimmer to 250Ω (and be careful if you adjust it since there's no protection/limiting resistor). Schematic can be found here.

Mid-Fi Electronics Pitch Pirate

Here's the Pitch Pirate with board mounted pots. Like the Deluxe version, the LFO is designed to be grounded when the effect is turned on (hence the pad at the top of the board). Just use the true-bypass wiring diagram in the General Layout Notes and leave out the LED wiring. Then just connect the corresponding pads on the board to the lugs of the switch. The on/off indicator LED (pads at the top of the board) is connected to the LFO ground so that will turn on and off (and show the rate) with the LFO. It'll fit just fine in a 125B with top mounted jacks, but will also fit in a 1590B if you wire the pots off board (or maybe with long leg pots mounted to the component side? YMMV).

Jon Patton's Blue Warbler

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.

Zombie Chorus

Got a request for this one. This was originally designed by John Hollis and has since been modified by various folks in the DIY community. Like the latest version of the Little Angel chorus, it has a switch to do either vibrato or chorus tones. And the Mode switch allows for different speeds (Leslie, Normal, and Clone). Here's the schematic for reference.

Earthquaker Devices The Depths

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!

CultureJam DuoVibe

Here's a cool vibrato effect designed by CultureJam and based on Tim Escobedo's Wobbletron. Here's what he had to say about it his original build doc.

The DuoVibe is a two-stage optical vibe circuit than can also cop subtle phaser tones. The LFO is modified from the Shoot the Moon tremolo (itself derivative of the Tremulus Lune) and is capable of triangle wave and near-square wave output. The pitch bend in Vibe mode is discernible but not capable of “seasick” wobble. With the depth cranked, you can think of it as a sort of “tremolo with funk going on” kind of thing. There is a Vibe/Phase Mode switch, the name of which indicates its function and purpose. This switch simply toggles a feedback filtering cap value, but is useful despite the simplicity.

Mid-Fi Electronics Clari(not)

Here's the Clari(not) from Mid-Fi. It's a delay/vibrato/fuzz... thing that's pretty cool, and the sibling of the Pitch Pirate Deluxe. It uses an LM386 amplifier that pushes a fairly standard PT2399 delay and an optical vibrato. I've laid it out for on-board pots mounted from the solder-side and you should be able to squeeze it in a 1590B. Schematic can be found here.

BigFoot Fx MagnaVibe

The MagnaVibe is a vibrato effect inspired by the built in effect on old Magnatone amplifiers. From the BigFoot Fx description:

The Magnavibe was inspired by the early 1960's vibrato guitar effect (not the typical tremolo which is just pulse modulation). The Magnatone amp was known for having that amazing wobbly sound. Setting out to put that type of sound in a box and use it with any amp took much experimenting. The results are excellent. This is not a plain one dimensional vibrato such as a chorus pedal with the dry mix removed. Delay chips weren't even used back then. Nor is it just another uni-vibe clone, but a unique sound with that classic unique tone. Adding spring reverb or delay after the vibrato sounds especially good.

I've drawn it so there's space to use a VTL5 or similar photocell, or you can make your own. Either way, theres space for it. A lot of layouts I've seen don't allow for a comfortable enough space to get the LDR and LED lined up nicely. You might even be able to get this to fit in a 1590a.

Mid-Fi Deluxe Pitch Pirate

This was a request from my friend Cody from They Remained Silent blog. The Pitch Pirate is a vibrato/chorus pedal, and the deluxe version adds a PT2399 based delay. It also has the ability to modulate over an octave as well as control the waveform of the modulator, giving you a huge range of tonal options.

Notes:
You can go the home-brew route and put a 1M LDR and LED in some shrink tubing or there should be enough space to use a VTL5C2 photocoupler. Adjust the trimmer at input till there's no unwanted distortion.