Fender Tremolo roach

[Govmnt_Lacky]

Has anyone done a "roll your own" Tremolo roach for a Fender repair? Looking to find out the LDR min and max resistance AND whether or not an LED can be used or does it have to be a neon lamp.

Thanks!

[glebert]

I do my own with LEDs. The DIY roaches helped with thumping on a couple amps. I don't know the specs of the LDRs I used though, I just got a bag of them off Ebay and they worked well.

[Tom Phillips]

I have done some research about rolling my own lightbugs. One additional parameter to consider is the rate of LDR resistance change with respect to light and dark. That was included in the specification sheets when cadmium sulfide LDRs were more common in the past. Currently, it seems that one needs to buy a selection of LDRs and sort through them to select those that will perform well. I.e. give you the sound that you like over the range of choppy vs. smooth tremolo.

Once I returned a batch of 10 because they used LDRs with very fast attack and very slow release resulting in weak choppy sounding tremolo. At this time I still just buy lightbugs from the usual suppliers.