Shot for the Moon, Landed on Mars

One of my first circuit builds this year was a Kay T1 tremolo clone. To say it went poorly would be an understatement. The first problem was the layout has an error in it, which the author still has not fixed. Only after asking on the DIYPedals subreddit was the error in the layout brought to my attention, as well as how to fix it. Once it was fixed I was getting much better results, but it still ended up just being a warbly overdrive. Building a tremolo was really just an exercise in seeing if I could do it, and with such lackluster results I wasn't ready to try it again. However, I actually was, because I'm an idiot sometimes!

The Vico Vibe really got into my head and I wanted to build one so bad, but I just could not do another transistor-based tremolo and have it fail like the Kay T1 clone. While searching for help with the Kay T1 clone a nice young chap by the name of Ian kept telling me to shoot the moon, by which he meant build a Shoot the Moon tremolo. This one uses two op-amps and has four controls, so again I wasn't really willing to use all those parts just to face another failure. But, sometimes we just need to push through the fear of failure and do what needs to be done, so I did. I built the chopped down version of the circuit that boils it down to two controls, a shape switch and an internal trim pot.

The simplified Shoot the Moon tremolo is such an easy circuit to build, but even so I had my pre-test jitters thinking there surely had to be something I messed up on. The final step of any build is to put the op-amp(s) into the socket(s) and plug the power into the pedal to see what happens. I have a large stock of janky op-amps that can't take too much gain before they get fizzy. They were sold to me, and marked as TL072s, but in any high gain overdrive/distortion these things fizz more than Mentos in Diet Cola. I have learned that for low/no gain applications these things work amazingly. I don't know what they actually are, but so far they're sound absolutely amazing in this tremolo circuit. Which also means this tremolo circuit sounds amazing.

I was elated! Finally, a tremolo circuit that works and sounds awesome. I will say I haven't ran humbuckers through it, nor have I given it the Kali test to make sure it sounds good through my tube amp, but so far I am very happy with the results. I didn't heat shrink the LDR and LED yet, and I may not as they seem to work really well just the way they are. I did test it in a dark room, so I'm guessing an enclosure might be good enough, but I might heat shrink them in the future. The adjustable gain is a nice addition, and since I will most likely set it slightly above unity and forget it, I'm glad it's an internal trim pot.

Well, all I really have left to say is Thanks Ian! This tremolo circuit works, it works great and sounds great! Had he not suggested it, I may not have ever given it a try. So what we've learned here is from failure (the Kay T1 clone) we've been set on the path of something greater. Fear of additional failure kept me from testing that path, but eventually I decided to overcome that fear, and I'm glad I did. It's almost as if guitar pedal circuit building is teaching us life lessons. Funny isn't it? I still have a few builds left in the year and I've decided to plan small builds for November and December, just so I can officially say I've built during those months. Remember, I solder outside so my builds are very weather dependent. Should I get good weather for a singular November and December build the only month I've not built in would be February. We might just have to rectify that in 2024!