Today we’re going to look at a perfboard layout for one of the more popular DIY Tremolos out there. Originally published in Electronics Australia magazine this tremolo can be found as the basis for many boutique and DIY Tremolo pedals. For this build I decided to try the layout posted at runoffgroove.com. Working with perfboard is a little bit different than working with Vero board. It requires a bit more planning (in my opinion) and you have to be confident with your soldering capabilities. Anyways, here’s the layout I used.

As I rarely use perfboard I was happy when the pedal fired up the first time I plugged it in. One of the nice modifications to this layout is that the LED pulsates with the tempo of the effect. I added an additional LED just to show status (on/off) as the rate LED stays on regardless of the pedal’s operation. The board fits nicely into a Hammond 1590B box. I chose not to add a battery jack as I rarely use batteries in my setup. It’s not my cleanest wiring job, but it’s far from my messiest.

Finally, here’s the finished enclosure. I used rattle cans for the basecoats, and while cost effective, it is a far inferior finish than powdercoating the enclosure. I couldn’t think of a clever name for this build so I chose to leave the image as is.

It’s a great little pedal. The volume control is a great addition as I’ve found that some trems have a slight volume loss when engaged. As well, with the depth control at zero and the volume at 11 this pedal doubles as a decent clean boost. Bonus! I’ll have a few interesting posts coming up in the next few weeks, so stay tuned!