Hi Guys.

I’m tossing up between two different pedals, the Carl Martin surf Trem and the tv electronics Pipeline. Any advice ?

Simon

Odds are you won't get a straight answer, everyone prefers the one they have. Have you looked at SurfyTrem or Surfytrem deluxe? The company is made up of SG101 members and shining lights of the international surf music scene.

Danny Snyder

"With great reverb comes great responsibility" - Uncle Leo

Playing keys and guitar with Combo Tezeta

Formerly a guitarist in The TomorrowMen and Meshugga Beach Party

Latest surf project - Now That's What I Call SURF

-

Last edited: Feb 02, 2024 16:18:06

I use a Source Audio Vertigo, which can be equipped with a tap tempo switch, and has harmonic, bias and opto-coupled tremolo.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

There’s tremolo, and then again, there’s tremolo.

Bias Modulating tremolo works by altering the bias of the power tubes. Tweed era Fender Vibrolux, or a ‘62 Princeton are good examples. Bias tremolo is rich and very warm. Even without reverb, Bias tremolo gives a great Surf sound. Bias modulation works well with lower powered amps, but if you have a pair of 6L6GCs running hard, modulating the bias can be detrimental to tube life, so they had to come up with something else …

Optical is very fact reacting and would be the tremolo you’d associate with a mid-sixties Fender amp. The waveform is a bit more abrupt than Bias tremolo, but sounds great. If you hear tremolo in a recording made in the mid ‘60s, chances are you are hearing Optical tremolo. Optical tremolo works well, even with a powerhouse like a Twin Reverb.

Harmonic tremolo is a different critter, altogether. Harmonic tremolo filters the signal by frequency, and then applies tremolo to the highs and lows, separately. So the highs are getting louder as the lows are getting softer, and vice versa. The effect is a rich, throbbing sound that is complex and interesting.

If you get to play an early ‘60s Fender with Harmonic Tremolo, you will love what you hear. It’s one of the greatest tremolo sounds ever to come out of an amplifier. The original circuit used five triodes, and added greatly to the complexity of the amp, but it was well worth the effort.

Tremolo is something the pedals can do pretty well, however. The Holy Grail, in the eyes of many, would be the five triode harmonic trem’ of a ‘62 Showman, but few of us have one of those decorating our living rooms. With modern electronics we can get some excellent sounds from compact stomp boxes. The logic which took five triodes in a Dual Showman can be accomplished quite easily in a pedal.

I’ve had several tremolo pedals over the years and all but one was pretty good. The one I didn’t like was an older Boss TR-2, which suffered from volume loss, which was a known issue with earlier production TR-2s. Later on, I bought a newer TR-2 and it worked very well. There was a Speed control, a Depth control and a Waveform control. Really, if you don’t need a feature-heavy tremolo, you could do a lot worse than the Boss TR-2.

Later on, I bought a Source Audio True Spring reverb pedal, which has exceptional tremolo as a secondary effect. The reverb is first class, and there are three tremolos: Bias, Optical, and Harmonic tremolo. I can’t say enough good about the tremolos available in this pedal. The only limitation is that this is the secondary effect for the pedal, which means that you have to hold in a small button on the pedal to adjust the tremolo. There’s a jack for a non-latching switch, which can be used for tap tempo, or to switch the tremolo off and on. The limitation is that you have to bend over to hold the switch in to adjust the tremolo, and I don’t like to bend over when I’ve got a guitar strapped around my neck, so for my purposes, as good as it sounds, I prefer to have a tremolo I can control separately, so I bought a bespoke tremolo pedal, with tap tempo …

… which is the Source Audio Vertigo. This has Bias, Optical and Harmonic tremolo, a selection of secondary modulation effects, and best of all, Tap Tempo. I have this on my working board, and it gives me foot-switchable tremolo I can use on the fly.

IceratzSurf wrote:

I have the TC Pipeline and a Princeton a reverb amp with tremelo.
When I compare the tremelo of each side by side its pretty difficult to hear the difference (but there is). The Pipeline has additional speed adjustment as well.

I’ve had pretty good luck with TC Electronic pedals.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

Another vote for the Valcoder, which has a weird wobbly trem (love it). Normally I'm using a Frantone Vibutron, but it's just like reverb pedals, you may have to get through a few to find which one works with your ear and your rig.

Bango Rilla!

DiPintos, Fenders and Reverb (oh, my!)

The GO-GO Rillas
Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Threads: thegogorillas | Spotify

I had spent around $2000 seeking a pedal that could do what the 5-triode harmonic trems do, and was disappointed. (I use the term "harmonic tremolo" because it's not vibrato.) Then I tried the Surfy Trem, and that pedal sounds really close. But that used to only be available in mono, so it wasn't going to work for me. I placed an order with Milkman for a stereo tube harmonic trem unit. Then the Surfy Trem Deluxe came out which is a stereo version, and I used that until I got the Milkman unit in. Tim built the version that only uses 4 triodes, as they did it just before the 5-triode trial version. It sounds brilliant and exactly the same as the brown amps. I have four brown amps that have harmonic tremolo and I did some A/B testing. Tim calls it the Dubble Wubble, and he's only made the one as far as I know.

That beautiful Milkman unit does the harmonic trem thing perfectly, but it does not cover the optical and bias trem sound. I found the EHX Stereo Pulsar to be absolutely perfect. Super versatile but I only really use it to emulate amp trem. It can make super trippy sounds, which is fun to mess with.

These other petals that are mentioned in this thread either weren't around or just not on my radar when I was doing the trem search. That's very exciting that there are all these other ones!

Daniel Deathtide

Seriously, Surfytrem a is head over both of them. I have sold Pipeline and Flint after getting it.

Waikiki Makaki surf-rock band from Ukraine

https://linktr.ee/waikikimakaki

Lost Diver

https://lostdiver.bandcamp.com
https://soundcloud.com/vitaly-yakushin

Last edited: Jul 07, 2023 11:05:53

+1 for the SurfyTrem.