Pedals and Effects – Fun with Tremolos

For the longest time, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with tremolo pedals. One day I love ’em the next day I hate them. I think the first time I was super interested in tremolos was after understanding parts of what was happening in the Smiths song – “How Soon is Now?” I remember being on the hunt for various trems to get that pulse.

Then tremolos are a great way to instantly add some interesting “mood” to solos, I thought that was cool as well. And finally, pushing the tremolos to extreme where it chops and slices the signal completely. The effect sounds great for all sorts of these interesting applications.

What I don’t like about tremolos, they tend to be one-trick ponies and easy to overuse. On my board currently, I have a Black Cat Mini-Trem which is great, but I literally use it for one song, occasionally two songs. So it takes up pedalboard real estate, but I don’t want to use it too much. So, I might be on the hunt for something a little different and something where I can get a couple of different trems easily without having to make adjustments to knobs.

The Juan and Nick at Pedals and Effects put together a great video (part 1 and part 2) on tremolos. It’s not a tremolo war. It’s not a tremolo shoot out. It’s just fun with tremolos as they say. I can dig it! I’m a big fan of Pedals and Effects, because they go to the weird side of things vs. playing classic riffs. The weirdness really helps me understand how the pedal reacts and immediately I can see how to apply it in the way I play guitar. I understand if you’re wanting riffs, this could be hard, but for me, this is absolutely the way to go.

The tremolos they used are some great ones – Earthquaker Devices Night Wire, Keeley DynaTrem, Chase Bliss Gravitas, Dwarfcraft Twin Stags and the Boss PN-2. Check it out:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Based on these videos, I’m pretty into EQD Night Wire, but that doesn’t help me unless I keep the Black Cat and include the EQD. Meaning.. adding pedals to the board. Ugh. Let me know what you think by commenting below.