Tremolo recommendations,

Will · Post by **Will** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 11:44 pm

Have you bought the Cool Cat yet?

benecol · Post by **benecol** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 11:52 pm

If not; good, buy the Tuna Melt instead.

Post by **Doog** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:26 am

Out of the 5 or so trem pedals I've had, the Tuna Melt sounded the most pleasing.

Tell a lie, the DOD "Vibrothang" sounded the nicest but it also knocked off a fair bit of top end, so maybe that's why it sounded so "WARM". But a very smooth and pleasing trem sound, although it's only got a speed and depth dials (plus two more for the phase/Leslie section).

The Voodoo Labs one is pretty snazzy, the George Dennis is superflexible (mine bit the dust after I tried to turn it into a ring mod), the Marshall is okaaaay, on a par with the Nobels trem - functional but nowt spesh.

Post by **Mike** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:33 am

You'll probably be interested in the one I'm building, mate.

It's got buckets of controls. Alongside the standard Speed and Depth, you have a continuous Smoothness control which moves you from a smooth sine wave to a choppy square wave, then a Spacing control which shifts the space between the pulses, and a Symmetry control which affects the symmetry of the pulse wave.

Those are the five controls I've selected to have on it, you can also add them for Fine control of the Speed, Gain of the whole device (I'm going to preset it with a trimpot inside), and also RampUp and RampDown Sawtooth modes.

Post by **Doog** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:36 am

Very compelling, mistermister- the gain trimpot is a massive boon for sure.

Keep us updated, sounds awesome.

Bacchus · Post by **Bacchus** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 12:19 pm

Sounds great, mike. Is there any way you coul put a rudimentary eq into a tremolo, so that you could take a bit off the top for vintage tones?

Post by **Mike** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 12:21 pm

Yeah that type of thing would be very easy to do, especially in a Tremolo where you have some healthy volume boost (adjustable) on-tap, so that you have something to combat the insertion-loss (the inherent volume drop when you add a tone control to anything as you are removing energy from the signal).

Bacchus · Post by **Bacchus** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 12:22 pm

Why isn't it done? Or do most tremolos have a switch or something that will select between modern and vintage sounds?

Seems like a no brainer to me.

Post by **Mike** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 12:29 pm

Most people actually just consider Vintage and Modern on Tremolos to be your waveshape, with Vintage being a Sine/Triangle wave and Modern being a choppy square wave.

I dunno why people don't include tone controls, I guess because often people want to claim the original guitar tonality is unaffected by the effect.

Bacchus · Post by **Bacchus** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 12:31 pm

That all makes sense.

jamieb · Post by **jamieb** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 1:19 pm

Um, I did have an EHX pulsar which is pretty good; goes all the way from vintage to chopper with no real drama. Originally bought as a replacement for the trem on my AC15 as it was, well, balls.

Now own a Redwitch deluxe moonphaser which is ridiculously good (and does lots of other cool shit aside from tremolololloooing)

dezb1 · Post by **dezb1** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 2:18 pm

Mike wrote:I'm building a modified Tremulus Lune for myself shortly. Tremolo with most knobs ever and it sounds glorious, as does the EA for Vintage sounds, but the Lune can do chops and that also.

I would go for the Cool Cat or Tunamelt Danelectro pedals all day long.

Cheers!

The cool cat's on the way, (the metal casing lured me away from the tuna melt)

eljeffe · Post by **eljeffe** » Thu Mar 19, 2009 8:47 pm

I always liked the sound of the old Dearmond Tremolo Control units. I built one based on the same principal earlier this year, my "Tone Gigolo". I'm currently reworking the motor power section to remove a slight hum, although apparently I'm the only one it bothers. I wanted mine more as a visual piece, but I also wanted clean sound. I'll post a video and sound samples when I'm satisfied it's complete.

chisa · Post by **chisa** » Thu Mar 19, 2009 8:49 pm

these are quite good but big and not cheap.

[youtube][/youtube]

all this is in vibe mode BTW

teh pro guitar shop one does a lot with the trem mode

kim · Post by **kim** » Thu Mar 19, 2009 8:58 pm

this is the behringer UT tremolo i'm using

[youtube][/youtube]

NBarnes21 · Post by **NBarnes21** » Fri Mar 20, 2009 2:00 am

My favorite trem I've tried is the Voodoo Lab Tremolo, it's modeled after blackface Fender tremolos, and has a volume knob so there's no volume drop.

william · Post by **william** » Fri Mar 20, 2009 2:07 am

anyone tried this goofy thing?

seems like alot of really great features.

http://www.smallbearelec.com/Projects/T ... mBear.html

ive always been really curious about them.

Bacchus · Post by **Bacchus** » Fri Mar 20, 2009 2:11 am

I love how shit it looks. What does the 50% variable switch do, do you reckon?

Post by **Doog** » Fri Mar 20, 2009 4:29 pm

BacchusPaul wrote:I love how shit it looks. What does the 50% variable switch do, do you reckon?

Makes the bear do a little dance, I reckon.

NickS · Post by **NickS** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 9:22 pm

BacchusPaul wrote:I love how shit it looks. What does the 50% variable switch do, do you reckon?

Smallbear wrote:The "Var" Switch
For greatest flexibility, it's desireable for a tremolo to offer control of the duty cycle of the controlling signal, i. e., what percent of the time is it "on" and what percent "off"? Getting an uneven duty cycle from a 555 oscillator is easy; it's getting equal on and off times that takes a little doing.

So it's a quick way of reverting to a fixed 50% duty cycle on the modulating signal.