ShortScale.org

i was just in the shower and i thought about the first act garage master and how it has three switches for the boost, mid cut (or boost, it hasnt been clear), and distortion, and then that reminded me of those old vox guitars with the built in distortion and tremolo circuits

then from there i got the idea to get a garagemaster and modify it so the first switch is replaced with a three way that goes bass cut/off/bass boost, the second switch turns on a combination fuzz/tremolo, and the third switch changes the tremolo wave from either rising sawtooth or falling sawtooth, and change the distortion volume to a rate knob for the tremolo. what i wanna know is:

1) is it possible to rig the rate knob so that it turns the tremolo off when the rate is all the way down, giving me only the fuzz?
2) what is the smallest tremolo circuit i could build that can give me control of the wave form as i described? (i think a vox repeater would be small enough to fit in the garagemaster but i cant be sure until i get one and check under the pickguard)
3) finally, i am a noob and i wanna know how i would be able to rig a switch for either falling or rising sawtooth

Depending on the circuit, you can rig a tremolo effect to not do anything with the rate (speed) knob all the way down. That's the way the tremolo works on my Silvertone. I looked up some youtube videos of the vox repeat percussion, and it doesn't seem to be capable of that. Perhaps with some breadboard testing it can be expanded a bit to have a depth pot, but that does little good for what you want (other than more control). That being said, even having the tremolo's rate at 0, you still have the effect engaged and there for it's still using power. So maybe using a push / pull or finding a potentiometer that is also a switch, similar to how a dimmer switch works might be an option.

The vox repeat percussion could fit, depending on the layout that you ultimately use. I'm not sure that it's the circuit you want though. The biggest issue (other than finding a small tremolo with rising and falling sawtooth) is getting all of the wiring to fit under the guard. You're gonna have to search around unless someone else has a better idea. Theoretically you could mod a circuit enough to do what you need it to, but at what cost? The tremulus lune is something to check out, it has a lot of controls but if you do build an effect and go through bread boarding, you can put in specific resistances in place of potentiometers that you don't need/want. Also, GFS has been marketing these Mod boards for a little while, now I don't know if they'll do what you want, but they're supposed to be drop in boards.

I know that the EHX Stereo Pulsar can do rising and falling sawtooth on the triangle switch in conjunction with the shape knob, so you could theoretically set up a toggle to go to the min or max by using set resistor values based off the shape potentiometer. With a bunch of wire and the right type of toggle, you could even have min, max and access to the knob to get everything inbetween. That being said, I don't think you'll have a very easy time fitting a stereo pulsar into a Garage Master, then again I have no idea about the room inside of one. The pulsar also has quite a few options that you don't really need, maybe there's a variant of it that's a bit smaller?

On a side note, I'm sure there are a bunch of guitar makers that have messed with this idea a bit. Danelectro made a line called the Danoblaster with a couple of variants, but with built in effects. If you've got your heart set on modifying a Garage Master, then taking one apart will give you an idea of how they fit everything in there and how much room you actually have to work with. I would also look up gut shots of the Vox Phantoms and Danos to get an idea of how things were done. I'm gonna assume that the effects are SMD circuits and if you wanted to modify them, it'll be no picnic. Personally, I'm not keen on having batteries in guitars and I think this might be more tedious than just putting a circuit in a pedal enclosure. That being said, theoretically possible.