Retroflect Stripboard & Schematic

One-chip lofi tape simulator. Basically a chorus/vibe where the modulation is controlled by the input volume. Also features soft clipping of the high frequencies to mimic tape saturation and a noise generator.

The trimpot adjusts the range of the Wow knob. Nine o'clock to 12 o'clock seems to be the usable range. You could maybe get away with a 25k trimmer.

The JFET is a voltage controlled resistor that lets +5v flow to the VCO. It's controlled by the guitar input via an envelope follower (1n34a, 470k & 1uf). The trimpot & 4.7k are a kind of limiting circuit to set the max modulation.

The clipping stage is supposed to simulate magnetic tape saturation by clipping the very highest frequencies first, hence the 1n cap. The saturation pot turns the gain up, at the same time allowing more low frequencies to get clipped through the 100k.

The noise switch syphons white noise from the chip's voltage bias.