Earlier in the thread there was discussion of a DIY Trem Pedal. I am going to take the plunge and build one. I found a unit called the EA improved trem pedal. I am currently deciding between buying a complete kit, or sourcing the parts individually. I'll document that build in this thread as well. Hopefully when I'm done, I can learn to play "Born on the Bayou" or "Bang Bang He Shot Me Down"

The trem pedal plans I'm looking at include a true bypass switch, and another switch that just cuts the trem effect but lets the pedal double as a pre-amp and it supposedly can "sweeten" your tone.

The kit can be found at the generalguitargadgets site.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrGyRncH5gI

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I received the trem-pedal kit from General Guitar Gadgets yesterday. Today, I wanted to assemble it. When I dove into the project, I forgot to take step by step pictures of the process to document here. I apologize for that (sorry Ceri), but I can describe the step by step process I followed.

All of the instructions needed for the project are at the GGG website where I bought the pedal. I opted for the Improved EA tremolo with dual foot-switch option. The 1st foot-switch is a true bypass that turns the unit on and off. The 2nd switch cuts the tremolo effect and allows the unit to be used as a preamp. There are 3 knobs, one for volume, one for speed and one for depth of the tremolo effect. There are also 2 LEDs. One indicates if the unit is on or bypassed. The 2nd indicates if the trem bypass is depressed allowing the unit to be used as a pre-amp. It is also supposed to blink at the same speed of the tremolo effect.

I printed out the bill of materials for the project. The instructions for populating the PCB were as follows:

1 - Resistors
2 - Capacitors
3 - Diodes and transistors
4 - Integrated Circuits

To keep track of all of the parts I taped them to a printed copy of the bill of materials. The resistors are identified by colored bands and it was a lot easier to work with them once I had them sorted and attached. The picture shows a resistor taped to the bill of materials.



I just followed the wiring diagram from this point and attached each component. To attach the components, I fed the leads right through the holes in the PCB. I then turned the PCB over, trimmed the leads and soldered the leads into the holes. I tried to use the minimum amount of solder required to get a good connection. The board and wiring diagram are very well marked and it made it pretty easy to follow which parts go where. I don't really have the best soldering iron and I was a bit sloppy in parts, but to my amazement, I got away with it and the unit worked when I was done.



Once all of the components were soldered to the PCB, the steps were as follows:

1 - mount the pots (the instructions should have said switches as well)
2 - mount the DC jack
3 - mount the populated and pre-wired PCB
4 - wire and solder all connections with the pots, DC jack, and switches
5 - mount the input and output jacks
6 - solder the battery snap.

I will say that the enclosure provided made it almost impossibly tight for mounting the input and output jacks and it was quite an effort to get them seated properly.



I did follow the steps in the order suggested. When I was done I put a battery in the unit and connected my guitar and amp. To my amazement, everything functions properly with one exception. The LED does not blink with the speed of the tremolo effect. I think the instruction may have been incorrect as to the polarity of the Capacitor (C3). I mounted it correctly per the PCB and the wiring diagram, but when I looked at the picture on the website, it was in the reverse position. I'm not going to try and fix it since I feel lucky it works. I think the unit sounds really nice and the pre-amp function does sound pretty sweet through my Marshall Class5.

I'll post a sound clip or two later on ...

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Very nice. I learned to do my first dental extraction pretty much the same way.
Unfortunately, in that the instrument tray was assembled overseas, there was one critical item missing................
.........................................the directions.

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"Another day in paradise!"