Based on the 60’s Kent Tremolo Pedal - essentially a re-badge of the Schaller Tremolo, the Tru-Fi Ultra Tremolo has a fairly unique sound signature. I heard something I really liked in the YouTube demo and sound samples, while I’m always suspicious of Modulation pedals that come without a Level control.

The nature of LFO Modulations is that you get a noticeable drop in volume as the signal climbs and dips in alternating fashion. To counteract volume drop, lots of tremolos employ a preamp ...

An interesting fact is that this collaboration almost happened several years ago, but evidently the timing wasn’t right then for various reasons. This time around though there was an added ingredient in the mix - ’Yours Truly!’ - and I was somewhat instrumental in bringing the two sides together and finally making this happen!

It’s great news for us Brits - as these Lastgasp Art Laboratories Pedals have always been somewhat beyond our reach until now.

I obviously recently covered my 9 ...

I’ve been on something of a Tremolo kick this year - I decided that said capsule collection was a little slim in comparison to my other modulation categories - so I determined that I would focus on Tremolo for 2024.

The Drunk Beaver Chernivtsi Trembita Optical Tremolo kick-started this year’s journey, and I already have the Lastgasp Flikrrr and Tru-Fi Ultra Tremolo inbound - which will take that capsule to 15.

I had further identified around 8 or 10 targets for the reference collection ...

I always get pangs of sorrow when a pedal brand retires for one reason or another. Late last year Luca Romanelli announced that he was pulling the plug on his Mastro Valvola pedal brand - which at times I have referred to as ’The Strymon of Italy’.

There are so many complications and complexities with pedal-building in general - chip sets and key components increasingly harder to source, and numerous challenges with logistics and red tape. It’s a wonder more of these don’t go to the wire. ...

As mentioned previously - I meant to feature Lastgasp Art Laboratories (LAL / Lastgasp) quite a while back, but access to pedals from the UK has been rather limited, and most of these therefore fairly hard to come by! I detailed how there were only two properly active current dealers that had most of the range in stock - my good friend Andy Ebsen’s Effekt Boutique in Germany, and Perfect Circuit in the USA. I also was instrumental in getting Joe’s Pedals’ Joe Light to connect with Lastgasp’s ...

February can often seem a rather odd month after the hustle and bustle of NAMM Show January - where a lot of new stuff always gets announced - while increasingly outside the NAMM schedule - but certainly in and around it! Projects delayed from the previous year often get released in January, but this year those kind of seem to be more spaced out - with some not feted to happen until March / April. February always seems slow compared to January, and that sometimes extends into March too before ...

I’m not sure any of us were really expecting the return of the Condor. A lot of us are rather waiting for a stereo Dark World, the assumption was that the Condor was largely obsoleted by the Automatone Preamp MKII.

Yet here we have a new and improved version of that well loved format - and whether this is exciting news depends largely on how you mostly use this pedal.

If you mainly use the EQ and Filter elements - then the newer lower noise, smoother breakup and higher headroom HiFi ...

I’ve had my Rise & Shine for about a week - and it’s very evident that Luke Hilton and his team have pulled out every stop with this very unique Octave / Trem Fuzz. It’s most certainly full-fat-flavour on both the core Fuzz Voicing and Upper Octave Effect. And then it does some even more clever things in how it can further modulate that octave effect [Octapulse].

I’m going to start off with some of the trickier aspects of the pedal - not that anything here is particularly tricky - you ...

I’m delighted that following my recent monthly pedal-chain update - saying that I could do with more Tremolos in my reference collection - we now have the first Drunk Beaver Tremolo as its 18th Pedal Drop!

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As Vitalii notes - this is an LDR + LED Optical style Tremolo with Digital controls and 6 different wave-shapes onboard - Triangle, Ramp Up, Ramp Down, Square, Sine, and Square Pattern [1-1-0-0-1-0-1-0].

Controls - Output, Intensity (Depth), Rate, Wave Shape : 1-6.

The digital ...