Empress tremolo CV out mod

[plasson]

hello folks,

I'm having the sick idea of feeding my Moogerfooger's Cutoff CV in with my tremolo... can you imagine what would happen with that?

does anybody know of some dude who would be able to put a CV out in my Empress tremolo?
already asked Empress, but they said they can't do that.
also sent an email to Lightfoot Labs (the GoatKeeper manufacturer), but haven received a reply yet.
their tremolo does have a CV out.

any thoughts?

[bongomania]

Thing is, CV systems operate on specific different voltage ranges that may be completely unrelated to the voltage range of the LFO in the Empress. So in order to take a CV off it, the modder would have to know the range needed to control the Mooger, as well as testing for the actual working range of the Empress's LFO, and then devise a circuit to convert from the Empress to the Mooger. This is not a trivial thing, especially if (for example) one of them has an all-positive range and the other uses a +/- range. It's not like just popping another jack in there.

[plasson]

well, the voltage range of the Moogerfooger is easy to figure out since it's written in the manual (I think it's -/+ 3 volts), but are you sure the overall process is so complex?
I mean... I'm thinking about the Goat Keeper, the Pigtronix EP-1, the Brown Fuzz (or something like that), all pedals that have CV outs that are supposed to work with other pedals.

does anybody involved in this kind of mods come to your mind?

thanks a lot for the reply!

[Taylor Livingston]

The Empress is optically controlled by a microcontroller like all tap tempo trems I'm aware of. So its mcu either puts out a PWM signal, in which case there's no CV anywhere in the pedal, or it has a built in DAC which outputs a small voltage which probably then goes to a current amp, since the mcu can't source enough current to turn on the optocoupler.

In any case, there's likely no usable CV in the pedal to be tapped. It's not that it's impossible to do, it's just that, like Bongo says it's not a matter of adding a jack.

[plasson]

thanks a lot for the answers guys.
too bad... I thought it wasn't a matter of adding a jack, but I thought there actually was a CV going on somewhere inside the pedal.

well, gotta find another solution I guess (like the Goat Keeper).

cheers!