Look in the Surfy Trem thread.

BasilK wrote:

Here it is, finished last night: my take on the red tool box Surfy Bear/trem. Thank to everyone out there who helped and made suggestions!
Check out these photos:

By the way, I seem to get a serious hiss when I turn up the mixer or tone knobs on the reverb. Any suggestions? Is that normal for these units?

Thanks

I found the leads from the brown/black switch to be very sensitive to static noise. You should keep them very short and close to the housing. Maybe you can isolate the problem first by separately testing the Trem and the Bear?

My first guess is that it may be related to the relay I put in to run the dual mixer control. It doesn't seem to be working properly and I need to get some expert advice. My hope is that if I sort that out, the rest will be fine. Also, I wired my pots backwards, so they work counter-clockwise. I'm debating whether or not I care, but if that could be a source of noise, I'd rewire them. I don't really think that's the problem. Thanks for the input!

I'll give it a try. Thanks.

BasilK, I posted pics in the fet-verb thread of what I did. I'm not any help on your build because mine is so different than yours. I tried a bunch of stuff yesterday with no improvement so that led to today's decision.

Hi Frank, when you say you "noticed a lot of mistakes" with ground and signal wires being switched, do you mean my project specifically? I thought I got all those connections correct. If you can point out any obvious mistakes, I'd appreciate it. I'll double check my lines. The unit seems really quiet without the footswitch connected, so I think the problem lies there.

No worries, I wasn't offended at all. Sorry if it came out that way. I just thought maybe you saw something in my photos that looked incorrect. I'm a complete novice at all of this, so the fact that it even works at all is some kind of minor miracle. I appreciate all the helpful comments, thanks!

Hi, I tried using a Crate 3 button foot switch that I have which was pre-wired and I assume it is shielded. One cable went to two buttons that I determined were on/off switches and I wired a Ring/Tip 1/4" jack into my unit. I ran the wires from the tremolo side (ground and hot) to the ring. This works perfectly, and doesn't make any noise whatsoever. I thought that since the jack all ready had a ground hooked up from that, I didn't need to run a ground wire from the rca in. So I initially just ran a the hot line to the jack. Since then, I thought I ought to add the ground to the jack from that point, so I spliced in a wire from the rca jack ground to the tremolo ground that connected to the jack. It didn't make any difference and I still have the same exact problem. I don't think it's the foot switch because the tremolo side works perfectly. But I still haven't figured out the problem. Did you follow all of that?
The strange thing about it is that if I disconnect the foot switch all together (thus making the reverb "always on") it is totally quiet. I only get the slightest increase in buzz, and I mean barely there, when I have the mixer and tone turned all the way up. I thought maybe I have a bad solder joint going to the tip of the jack, but I don't know if that would cause hiss like that?
The other thing I did was remove a relay and the dual pot for the mixer that was wired to another jack that went to button #3 on my foot switch. None of that worked at all, and I couldn't figure out why, so I took it all out and just wired in the regular single mixer pot that came with the kit. There must have been something obviously wrong with all that extra stuff, because now it works as it should. I thought there was an outside chance that the relay was the culprit, but alas not. I'm still thinking it's something wrong with my jack wiring, but haven't figured it out yet. As a last resort I figure I can disconnect the switch for the reverb and just use the foot switch to turn on and off the tremolo.

Whew, that was a long post! Thanks for hanging in there with me...

Did all of that make sense?

BasilK wrote:

Hi, I tried using a Crate 3 button foot switch that I have which was pre-wired and I assume it is shielded. One cable went to two buttons that I determined were on/off switches and I wired a Ring/Tip 1/4" jack into my unit. I ran the wires from the tremolo side (ground and hot) to the ring. This works perfectly, and doesn't make any noise whatsoever. I thought that since the jack all ready had a ground hooked up from that, I didn't need to run a ground wire from the rca in. So I initially just ran a the hot line to the jack. Since then, I thought I ought to add the ground to the jack from that point, so I spliced in a wire from the rca jack ground to the tremolo ground that connected to the jack. It didn't make any difference and I still have the same exact problem. I don't think it's the foot switch because the tremolo side works perfectly. But I still haven't figured out the problem. Did you follow all of that?
The strange thing about it is that if I disconnect the foot switch all together (thus making the reverb "always on") it is totally quiet. I only get the slightest increase in buzz, and I mean barely there, when I have the mixer and tone turned all the way up. I thought maybe I have a bad solder joint going to the tip of the jack, but I don't know if that would cause hiss like that?
The other thing I did was remove a relay and the dual pot for the mixer that was wired to another jack that went to button #3 on my foot switch. None of that worked at all, and I couldn't figure out why, so I took it all out and just wired in the regular single mixer pot that came with the kit. There must have been something obviously wrong with all that extra stuff, because now it works as it should. I thought there was an outside chance that the relay was the culprit, but alas not. I'm still thinking it's something wrong with my jack wiring, but haven't figured it out yet. As a last resort I figure I can disconnect the switch for the reverb and just use the foot switch to turn on and off the tremolo.

Whew, that was a long post! Thanks for hanging in there with me...

Did all of that make sense?

Hmmmm.... I don't know the Crate foot switch but it seems it's powered somehow to be able to light up the LEDs. If it doesn't have a battery inside it may rely on a power source from the amp it was designed for, which means it's not the straight forward switch you need. In that case the electronics inside may cause the noise. But since the trem switch works the way it should that may not be the case.

Are you sure it switches from Tip to Sleeve ánd from Ring to Sleeve? So two switches on one stereo jack? I'll send you a schematic in a minute.

Hi, we put a meter on the foot switch and it is tip/ring configured. Your schematic looks exactly like the wiring I have. By the way, the led's do not turn on when the switches are engaged, don't know what that means...

Thanks.