PIC-controlled tremolo

This is something I’ve been working on for a while, a very versatile tremolo guitar effect. Electrically it’s not very complicated, most work is done with a PIC16F886 microcontroller which generates a PWM signal which is then filtered and used as an analog control voltage for a VCA (voltage-controlled amplifier).

The video shows an older version. Recently I started to rewrite the software because the old software was too unreliable (tap tempo problems, rotary encoders issues, noise).

Some features so far:

– Sine, triangle, ramp-up, ramp-down, square, pattern modulation;
– Tap-tempo with subdivisions (including triplets)
– Very low and very high speeds for weird effects
– Three user-programmable patterns (a la BOSS Slicer)
– Duty-cycle control for square wave modulation
– Fade-in with tap-tempo switch (in ‘special mode’)

Future add-ons:

– Stereo input/output for panning options
– Additional ‘special mode’ features such as compressor, expander, random on/off…