From recollection, the Tiny trem works only on high Z sources...as soon as you put an effect inline (in front), your signal then becomes Low Z & it's effect is somewhat nulled.
There must be a simple way to change this, right?...Because I noticed that the Idiotbox Cyclops Mono stutter is a circuit based on the simple 555/LDR/LED combo and I saw many demo videos where the idiotbox Cyclops and Mad Doctor Stutter were placed after other effects and it still chops the signal very well.
yes, put a buffer to achieve a known impedance for the following stages
If you put a buffer in front of the tiny tremolo, that won't work as it'll make the High Z guitar signal, a low Z signal (which is the actual issue here ...i.e. putting an effect pedal before the tiny tremolo essentially makes your guitar's signal signal Low Z)...putting a buffer in front of the tiny tremolo would would then need a circuit re-design to make it work ...but then it wouldn't be the tiny tremolo - e.g. check out the component count of the tremolo SD posted a couple of posts above (& I dare say "The not so tiny tremolo" hasn't quite the same appeal!)
true, but a known impedance makes a reliable function of the LDR (recalculating values), and lower output impedance will play well with the rest of the chain.
a simple hack would be adding an inpur resistor, to make more like a pot: the combined resistor and LDR, and the wiper on the middle junction
A sufficiently big resistor (100k .. 1Meg...) would make any precedent impedance negligible, but... it wont swing to full volume, and following impedance will make less volume indeed when paralelled. Now the problem would be dealing with a high output Z
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k46/jasonmatthew911/Cyclops_Inside.png
So it depends on what you expect from an overly simplstic circuit, talk about tradeoffs.
I think sometime it was noted some tremolo that actuated only by adding a DC level on the output, so the input stage of a tube amp would shift bias. Thats simple and clever, but no way reliable.
