Happy New Year 2026, Pork barrel with Vactrol LFO

[fair.child]

Hello folks, Happy New year 2026!!

This year, I have a personal goal to create a new chorus pedal, though the title says pork barrel which is not new. However, I do want to discuss some ideas and bounce back with you all as a starter

1. Why do I want to do it?
I always have a personal ear lust over a nice chorus and I do have an original CE-2 which is a great pedal. However, after seeing Bonamassa live and Landau often, I come to search for a blue hippo MK2, which is hard to find. So basically, because I see a lot of players that I love have BH MK2 on their chain then that's the spark on me.

2. Why Pork Barrel?
BH MK2 or MK1 is basically a CE-2 with chorus vibrato mod and I really want to go back and study again the porkbarrel or CE-2 original. Basic understanding is already there and I have built tri stereo chorus so I have a further crazy ideas (in an analog way) to start the redesign.

3. Why do another chorus design?
I want to test out the chorus LFO in a manner of slow sine wave where the rate control works not with an op-amp (triangle) wave instead more a sine wave. I know there is Vref on the op-amp network that can do that as well but I want to make it controllable using VTL5C2 or C3, or any type of slow sine wave vactrol (between 1Hz to 8Hz sinewave LFO). I think this is going to be interesting.

So there are some ideas that I write down for starters, any thoughts are welcome (if you're reading til the end thank you)

[madbean]

I only just saw this thread. I'm not sure how a CE-2 would sound with a purely sine wave modulation. I think it might ened up sounding a little lop sided because the peaks and valleys would be much more drawn out.

However, this is DIY so all ideas are a good starting point. My suggestion is to take a different approach and maybe adapt one of the Electric Druid microcontrollers to be the modulation engine. Then you could use all sorts of different wave types, not just sine and triangle. Take a look at the Flangelicious project and consider how you might have to work it into a chorus design. It might require a BBD with extra stages, or some other wizadry.

[Aleph Null]

The AE tremolo produces a sine wave, or very close to one. I'm using that drive a two-stage optical phaser. It's producing vibrato. It doesn't go very slow, but that's not necessary in my use case. If you want a really slow sign wave, you might consider using a micronctoller. Maybe on of Electric Druid's TAPLFO chips?

[fair.child]

I found this one and started working on it

https://www.demedasheffects.com/blog/surface-detail-diy-analog-chorus

the Druid LFO is more PWM than sinewave LFO. I'm researching if I can make LFO sinewave that I can use rate control between 0.5Hz to 8Hz. By the way, this is the core of TSC.

There are two design considerations;

1. using MN3007 and MN3101 with +15V/-15V charge pump
2. using MN3207 and MN3102 with +9V

[jimilee]

I found this one and started working on it

https://www.demedasheffects.com/blog/surface-detail-diy-analog-chorus

the Druid LFO is more PWM than sinewave LFO. I'm researching if I can make LFO sinewave that I can use rate control between 0.5Hz to 8Hz. By the way, this is the core of TSC.

There are two design considerations;

1. using MN3007 and MN3101 with +15V/-15V charge pump
2. using MN3207 and MN3102 with +9V

Very cool.


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