mkstewartesq
Well-known member
I built this pretty much stock except for a change to the rate control. The BOM calls for a B100K but I found (as others have noted) that this results in most of the turn having very little effect on the speed until the last 10% or so, where everything is bunched up. So I desoldered that pot and replaced it with a C100K which provides much better control over the speed. Highly recommended that anyone building this in the future make that mod. I also covered the LED/LDR combo with a bit of heat shrink to further insulate it from ambient light.
It’s a nice sounding tremolo, and Shape control enables you to go from a gentle rounded tremolo effect to more of the hard edged square wave sound – I knew that it would not get the true “helicopter chop” but it gets pretty close when the Shape control is fully counterclockwise.
The only thing I’m not sure about really comes down to my relative inexperience with tremolos - when I’m using the Square wave, I expected to hear absolutely none of the original guitar signal when I hit a chord or note. That’s the case when the rate is really slow but when you get midway or higher in the rate and hit a chord you hear the chord ring out and the tremolo effect seems almost “laid on top of it” and becomes more noticeable as the chord decays. Again, I’m not sure if this is expected behavior or not – I tried playing with the spacing between the LED and the LDR but it didn’t seem to make much difference.
I also have a Pendulum harmonic tremolo that I built on stripboard, so the Moonshot makes a nice compliment to that - together they give me a nice variety of tremolo sounds to play with.
Mike
It’s a nice sounding tremolo, and Shape control enables you to go from a gentle rounded tremolo effect to more of the hard edged square wave sound – I knew that it would not get the true “helicopter chop” but it gets pretty close when the Shape control is fully counterclockwise.
The only thing I’m not sure about really comes down to my relative inexperience with tremolos - when I’m using the Square wave, I expected to hear absolutely none of the original guitar signal when I hit a chord or note. That’s the case when the rate is really slow but when you get midway or higher in the rate and hit a chord you hear the chord ring out and the tremolo effect seems almost “laid on top of it” and becomes more noticeable as the chord decays. Again, I’m not sure if this is expected behavior or not – I tried playing with the spacing between the LED and the LDR but it didn’t seem to make much difference.
I also have a Pendulum harmonic tremolo that I built on stripboard, so the Moonshot makes a nice compliment to that - together they give me a nice variety of tremolo sounds to play with.
Mike
), or even more waiting for the Pendulous where I think you would get what you seem to be missing on those.
