DIY Tremolo Probe (ala Zvex)?

[tenwatt]

Is there a DIY solution to this pedal?

http://zvex.com/trem.html

[madbean]

Yup.

[gtr2]

hmm...

[tenwatt]

Yup.

Could you be so kind to provide a link? ;^)

[jkokura]

You asked for a DIY solution... Not a project. Just a heads up that Bean sometimes takes things literally. This is the interweb after all!

I haven't seen a link yet, but I know that there's been talk about doing some of the ZVex plate effects for a while. Just so you're aware, pretty much anything ZVex produces can be replicated in a DIY fashion. That's just how they roll.

Jacob

[JakeFuzz]

Yeah I think Jacob is right. I am pretty sure there isn't a specific project for this effect.

It would be super easy to put together from whats already out there though. There is a schematic of a plate type proximity controller out there that I have successfully used. I bent up some plexiglass with a heat gun and epoxied a copper board on the inside and it looks similar to the Zvex enclosure. This circuit drives an LED, which you could then send through an optoisolator to give you a control voltage. You can then use this CV to control just about any tremolo circuit out there; I would suggest the tremulus lune because of its simplicity. If the control needs to look more like a pot instead of an individual variable resistor I am pretty sure tonegod has an article on pot like control using LDR's. 

[madbean]

I was being coy.

I can show you how to do it....let me see if I can work up a little sketch for you.

[jtn191]

awesome. I too would like a probe-volume pedal. I read the thread on FSB about it but couldn't come to any conclusions...

[eldanko]

I dread to see the various pedal graphics created for these "probes"... 

[tenwatt]

I was being coy.

I can show you how to do it....let me see if I can work up a little sketch for you.

You can.  
(I can be coy too!!!)

Seriously though...that would be awesome.  Thanx!

[tenwatt]

I found this to make the prox control but it doesn't tell me how to hook it up to the effect's circuit.

[junkemail86]

Briggs has some great info in his blog here:
http://revolutiondeux.blogspot.com/2008/03/vsex-wah-probe-probe-controller.html

I remember trying to tackle the Zvex wah probe as one of my first pedal projects.  It worked, but not very well (needed to be much closer to the plate to affect the volume or wah than the Zvex version).  I definitely had no idea what I was doing at the time though.  Maybe it was my choice of LDR, other components, or even a mistake on my end.  For a work-alike tremolo probe, I have had better success with simply mounting a LDR on the top of a small enclosure, then just making a super simple circuit that drains more/less signal to ground via the LDR and the amount of light allowed to touch the LDR by your foot moving closer.  It's ghetto, but it works a lot better than you'd think.  I have no real engineering knowledge, so I bet some of the minds around here could design a more sophisticated circuit.

[madbean]

I know for sure I have the stuff on my laptop...I'll upload the schematic from there. IIRC, I made a couple small revisions to Briggs drawing, but nothing major.

Hooking it up to stuff is actually pretty straight-forward.