Saturday, November 3, 2012

Boss TR-2 Tremolo


Not a bad little trem pedal. I traded a guy on CL for this pedal--I gave up a Rocktron Hush noise reduction pedal that I wasn't going to use. Traded a pedal I bought for $35 for this guy--I'd chalk that one up in the "win" column.

I'm not a fan of modulation pedals for the most part--flangers tend to be one trick ponies for me, and phasers tend to be only slightly better. Chorus is interesting, as Andy Summers figured out a way to make it less cheesy, and Kurt Cobain somehow made it sound menacing (while also helping revive the Electro Harmonix name in the early 90s), but I just don't really like it. I have delay pedals that can do a more interesting effect, I think, and I'd rather reserve the space on the board for more fun stuff.

Having said that, tremolo is a not-quite modulation pedal in that it just adjusts volume levels according to a spectrum of waveforms. I like the hard square-wave chop style trem that turns out more like a "stutter" effect, but most often use this as a more subtle triangle wave effect with the depth at about noon and the rate at about ten o'clock. That tends to give my playing an illusion of movement when I'm playing drone passages, pedal tones, or volume swells.

It's a Boss pedal, so it's built like a tank. I have no special love for Boss, having owned a handful of them, but there's something to be said for having a solid, small, inexpensive and easily replaced pedal on my board. I'm no true bypass geek, and this thing doesn't cause the volume drop older TR-2s are famous for, so I'm happy. Eventually I'm going to pick up a Boss SL-20 slicer pedal, which is a mutant tremolo that sounds like you're playing guitar through a drum machine, and then I'll evaluate the TR-2. I'll probably keep it, as the subtler settings are nice to have around.

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