Build Your Own 'Vibrato' (1957)

[PRR]

Build Your Own 'Vibrato', Popular Electronics, December 1957

[DummyLoad]

you read the last page? they (PE) were corrected on the use of the terms "vibrato and "tremelo". P


--pete

[Platefire]

  I got a dano cool cat tremolo on my small 4-pedal-board and I swear it does classic tremolo as good as anything I got including Silvertone 1482, DR with bias tremolo, Dunlap stereo trem/pan pedal, Mesa Boogie Rocket 440 Trem and 74 Pro Reverb trem. 
  For a $30 pedal to do that good and I think it even has true bypass. Just wondering how much the parts would be on that Popular Electronics project at todays prices. Also I was trying to remember which Elvis songs had tremolo guitar. I'm having trouble thinking of one. I was thinking "Return to Sender" may have one? We want to make like Elvis with Electronic Throbbing guitar    
 

[eleventeen]

I BUILT THAT when I was a kid. I remember it quite well, I gathered up old PopTronics issues and looked for simple (audio, I had no interest in radio stuff at all....I don't know why....but if it had a coil, forget it) projects I could build mostly out of parts scrounged from dead TVs. Of course, you always wanted to get the issue AFTER the issue where your project appeared and probably the issue after that, because they NEVER got the schematic right when it first came out!


It worked.  Kind of subtle, nothing at all like a Fender vibrato in terms of depth.

[PRR]

> you read the last page?

I actually re-hacked the PDF to append that.

Vibrato is clearly rocking your finger on a fretless string, now standard violin practice. On e-gitar, either string-bend or the bar that stretches your strings (neither is quite the same as rocking on a fretless).

Tremolo seems to come from pipe organ "swell". Some pipes are in a box with movable doors. This is both Volume and Tone (box with an opening is a low-pass). The primary use is to "swell" the sound soft to loud or loud to soft. Fast-footed guys can rock the doors pretty quick. This is not the same as the low throb of multiple pipes together, that is mis-tuning (unavoidable in equal-temperment, which is why Bach promoted "Well Tempered").

As we know, Leo used the word "Vibrato" both for his early hi/lo-pass wobbler and for the later volume-only wobbler. This seems to be wrong; but then, "cat gut" strings never came from cats.

[kagliostro]

Nice article PRR I'm going to store it on my archive

---

Some time ago I was doing a search about vibrato and tremolo and I've find something that can be of interest

http://thermionic.info/dorf/Dorf_TheUniversalVibrato.pdf

http://thermionic.info/dorf/Dorf_TheWurlitzerVibrato.pdf

and this that Merlin borrowed from Vox (Vibrato & Tremolo from the same unit)

http://s81.photobucket.com/albums/j207/merlinblencowe/Vibrotron/

Vibrato Sample
http://www.mediafire.com/download/b25k4tkacac9had/Vibe.mp3

Tremolo Sample
http://www.mediafire.com/download/ehx9k3qz8ate053/Trem.mp3

Franco