Vibratone (harmonic trem) and a couple Hamlets

[midwayfair]

RG Keen's Vibratrem, on MarkM's layout. I added some mods: The rate pot has some parallel resistors to keep it from conking out, I added a tiny MPSA18 booster with a gain trimpot to cure the volume drop and a 100K to cure the switch pop, and tossed in a rate LED (the black wires) for good measure.

Sorry for the crappy pictures on this one. I forgot to take pictures of this before going to Invisible Sound's Tone Geek Sunday, and I only owned the thing for a couple hours. It went home with my friend Keith, who's been gassing for one for a long time and he took the pictures with his cell. The case is actually the light yellow from Smallbear, and the border is metallic blue. It looks very cool in person. The knobs came from Tayda and were a whopping 58c each! Will definitely be getting a few more with my next order if they aren't sold out.

I did my best to make the guts look tidy, but the external connections are in kind of awkward places, so there are wires kind of flying everywhere. I'm also sure I could get this in a 125B at least with a PCB layout ...



A Hamlet for forum member Guitarman514 (William). I waited a few days to make sure he got it before everyone else saw it ...



William wanted the oscillation switch primarily, so I used the same trimpot mod that I used on the Joshua Tree Echo, except it's a little bit easier to wire up in the Hamlet (it can just connect to lug 3 of the mix). Otherwise it's stock.

William provided an old line art drawing that he wanted for the graphic, and I did my best to duplicate it. It was very challenging, but also fun, because the detail is so fine on the figures.

And a Hamlet for me. It's MINE! It's so weird to not own #1 OR #2!


I'm still deciding what color I want the "official" box to be when I make these for others. Anodized red is very cool, but I'm worried that it's just wrong for Hamlet. Copper is always nice, but it's difficult to make many colors show up on it. Anodized orange didn't really work out because it was just too hard to get anything to show up. I'm leaning toward the copper in any case.

[jimilee]

Nice looking pedals,as always,I bet we could help with the color scheme on the "Official" if we could have some pcb's to purchase.

[mshuptar]

The art on the Hamlet Delays are awesome! (Disclosure: I work as an English teacher, so I am perhaps a little biased toward Shakespeare-themed stuff!)

[pickdropper]

Great looking stuff there, Jon.  All of them.

[lincolnic]

Can you talk a little bit about the Vibratrem/Vibratone? I can't seem to find much info about it. Is it supposed to be something Magnatone-flavored?

[wolfingsworth]

Very nice work! The Vibratrem has a really smooth style to it, and those Hamlets are super classy. Are you planning on making a production run of these, or are they just going to be made to order?

[Stomptown]

All three look great Jon! I especially like the look of the Hamlet Denmark. I keep telling myself I can't paint but one of these days I'm gonna have to give it a go...

[juansolo]

Love your painted enclosures 

[midwayfair]

Thanks folks.

Nice looking pedals,as always,I bet we could help with the color scheme on the "Official" if we could have some pcb's to purchase.

I've already ordered the short run, but Chinese New Year is, as you might already be aware, a big snag in everyone's February orders. I'm also keeping the run short because Jacob's going to have the Taptation-integrated version coming out.

Can you talk a little bit about the Vibratrem/Vibratone? I can't seem to find much info about it. Is it supposed to be something Magnatone-flavored?

It's a FET implementation of the harmonic tremolo from 1961-63 Fender Pro Vibrato. RG Keen adapted the amp schematic to a pedal. It's a huge circuit (11 transistors in the end including the boost). I wasn't overly wowed by the sound of the circuit (it sounds like the bastard child of a phaser and trem to me), but Keith and some other guys at Tone Geek yesterday thought it sounded great. It's not hard to build, though, despite the high parts numbers, but I don't think I'd make another one.

Are you planning on making a production run of these, or are they just going to be made to order?

I won't do production runs of completed pedals ... I only sell a couple pedals a month (if that), and they're always made to order. For one thing people are always asking me to mod my brand new designs (what's up with that? ) For another, someone can get custom art if they want it, an they always do. I'm also just not interested in turning my hobby into an avocation. It's just fun building for other people once in a while.

[lincolnic]

Thanks for the info. Sounds like I wouldn't fall in love with it either.

[icecycle66]

That reminds, I need to post a blue warbler on bass demo.

[midwayfair]

That reminds, I need to post a blue warbler on bass demo.

I would greatly appreciate that, since the closest I can get right now is a Lowrider.