I'm quite new to the practical aspects of synthesizers and fx modules (I only just got my first synth a few months ago). As is typical these days, my synth has a variety of onboard effects, but it happens to have no tremolo. Would it work to put a tremolo stompbox between the swell pedal and the synth itself? (i.e., so I'm essentially adding a little LFO to the control voltage coming from the swell).
Why am I not putting the tremolo at the audio output? It appears that most tremolo boxes (or at least the cheap ones) are built for guitars and only have mono 1/4" jacks, but the synth outputs in stereo. (Sure I could pan everything hard left, etc., but I'm looking for a generic solution that won't mess up any future desire to use stereo effects from this synth.)
What's likely to go wrong here given my lack of experience? I'm assuming this will work based on my (limited) knowledge of analog synthesis (i.e., there is no difference between an audio signal and a control voltage), but maybe a tremolo box will be damaged by the CV coming from the swell pedal? Or will it be something more practical like the tremolo depth not scaling with the swell CV (too large for low volumes and too small for large volumes)? Or is a tremolo box not really a simple LFO+VCA, but relies on fancy processing of actual audio signals?
Edit based on the comments:
The synth in question is a hardware synth, a Memotron M2D. Basically a ROMpler controlled by an external midi keyboard. Thus, the only CV-in is a typical 1/4" swell pedal jack. (I guess it's not really a CV-in the sense of modular gear - it's a standard swell pedal input, so the synth must be supplying a CV and the pedal attenuates it? I'm using a Moog EP-3 pedal if that helps.) The onboard effects are just the chorus/flange/echo/reverb variety; no LFO, aftertouch, or other features that can be used for tremolo or vibrato - hence, my somewhat kludge of an approach. I would expect one can use midi CC messages to get the same effect that I'm aiming for, but I've had even more trouble finding midi pedals that do more than just send simple swell, mod, or pitch bend messages.
Note: I feel like an idiot now - there actually is a tremolo effect amongst the onboard effects of the M2D... However, I'm still interested if this idea would work. One could imagine a DIY mod of the pedal so that you have a swell-control tremolo depth (at the moment, there doesn't appear to be a way to change the swell depth and rate via CC control messages...)
