Foot-operated vibrato/trem? (mechanical, not electronic)

[rwlandes]

Has anyone heard of a foot-operated mechanical device for hands-free operation of a trem/vibrato on a guitar? Maybe something with a cable that pushes or pulls the vibrato mechanism?

[FightingPlankton]

Foot controlled tremolo is called a volume pedal. The only vibe pedal I know with treadle is rotovibe but that's just like having a foot controllable speed knob. It's not 100% mechanical. I think the full tone mini dejavibe is the same way. And the new ehx good vibes has an expression out jack iirc.
but it sounds like you're wanting to replace the ldr and leds with a pedal. You could probably desolder the ldr and wire it to an expression jack... bUT I think this is uncharted territory.

[rwlandes]

Actually I am looking for a way to work the whammy bar with a foot-operated cable system.

[FightingPlankton]

OHHH! Totally missed that. Maybe rig up something like the B-bender that works on the whole bridge. I don't think there is a commercial unit.

[FightingPlankton]

I just built a remote hihat using an old hi hat pedal and a bicycle brake cable. An easy solution would be to drill a hole straight thru the body and attach the cable to the existing whammy bar... ghetto but it would work.

[rwlandes]

INNteresting... do you have a photo?

[FightingPlankton]

http://offsetguitars.com/forums ... 478200

[FightingPlankton]

When I get home I'll try to draw up my idea for guitar on ms paint

[rwlandes]

Cool. Thanks.

[epizootics]

The main problem with having a pedal operated trem would be that you couldn't move from the spot where you'd put the pedal, since for it to work, you would have to set it up to a fixed tension. Any movement would either pull the pedal around or activate the trem when you don't necessarily want it to pull on your string. The other issue is that you'd need two pedals, one to push it down and one to pull it up. Thinking of this reminds me of those silly clip-on mics sound engineers insist on attaching to my saxophones when my bands play higher-end venues. They just don't work for me since I usually do lead vocals as well & move around the stage too much, forgetting completely about the mic. They end up on the floor every time. I'd rather use any crap dynamic microphone set in a fixed place and get closer to it when I need it.

Now, you could use a cable system attached to the upper half of your body, so you could still walk around. I can see something like a short, fixed T-shaped trem bar with cables attached to either ends of the T, going through the body. Each cable would be attached to your waist (belt loops?), one to your left side, one to your right side. You could then set up the length of the cables so that a rotation of your torso one way or the other would pull the strings up or down. With this system, you could fine-tune the length so that nothing would happen until you reach a certain rotation angle, thus reducing the risk of using the trem unwantedly. You could also simply move the guitar at an angle instead of moving your whole upper half, which might look weird if you don't play in the Shadows.

[Grey]

I'm curious about what kind of sounds you want to make with a system like this.

[andy_tchp]

Just buy a whammy pedal and save yourself hundreds of hours of effort to do the equivalent (with about 1/100th the functionality) with a cobbled together physical solution?

[Futuron]

I'm curious about what kind of sounds you want to make with a system like this.

[Zork]

The Boss ps-5 and hr-6 have a dedicated fake vibrato function that sounds pretty close. I would prefer this over a wonky mechanical thing. For which reasons are you're looking for something mechanical? It is interesting nonetheless..

[FightingPlankton]

The main problem with having a pedal operated trem would be that you couldn't move from the spot where you'd put the pedal, since for it to work, you would have to set it up to a fixed tension. Any movement would either pull the pedal around or activate the trem when you don't necessarily want it to pull on your string. The other issue is that you'd need two pedals, one to push it down and one to pull it up.

well, kind of. If you use a long enough cable you could still move around. And the pedal wouldn't be bolted to the floor, so if you want to switch guitars u can just pick up the pedal and move it back stage with the guitar.
You wouldn't need 2 cables because the spring tension from the existing trem unit will pull it back in place.