Portland, Oregon-based pedal builder Catalinbread has unveiled an impressive new stompbox called the Tremol8.
As you would expect from the name, this is indeed a tremolo pedal, but it's also a box that looks to blend tremolo effects with tweakable reverb à la the Strymon Flint, Keeley Hydra, and Fender Tre-Verb.
As Catalinbread tells it, the pedal was born out of a drive to digitally replicate the "harmonic vibrato" of the Fender Showman guitar amp. The success of that experiment, in turn, led the firm to add more tremolo styles, with some reverbs thrown in as well.
"We really like the sound of tremolo splashing against a reverb like [the] Magnatone or [the] Vibro Champ and our previous work on the Topanga Burnside reflects this," Catalinbread says. "At the same time, we are suckers for bigger ethereal reverbs, so we decided to add some trem-specific reverb algorithms and a subtle tone control."
Layout-wise, the Tremol8 is reminiscent of Catalinbread's Many Worlds phaser pedal. Like the Many Worlds unit, the Tremol8 sports a trio of control knobs up top, with a Mix knob below those three on the left-hand side.
The Rate knob controls the speed of the tremolo, the Tone knob is a high-pass filter that occurs between the trem and reverb, while the Space knob adjusts the parallel reverb mix.
Just as on the Many Worlds unit, the opposite side of the Mix knob – which, naturally, controls the wet/dry mix – plays host to an eight-way rotary dial, with which users can select their desired flavor of tremolo/reverb.
The eight options on tap are: Sine Wave, Sine Wave with Long Reverb, Square Wave, Sawtooth Wave, "Showman" Harmonic, Sine Wave with Chorus, Envelope, and Ring Mod.
To make things even more interesting, each of the eight effects changes the functionality of either the Rate, Tone, or Space knob, depending on which you choose.
If that sounds a bit confusing, don't worry – Catalinbread has created a helpful chart detailing each effect and its corresponding relationship with each of the Tremol8's top three knobs.
The Tremol8 also boasts a pair of internal controls – an adjustable gain trimmer and a buffer switch – that are accessible by removing the pedal's backplate.
The former adds more overall gain to your signal, while the latter lets users switch the pedal to true bypass, should they so choose.
The Catalinbread Tremol8 pedal runs on 9V-18V power (with the latter providing, Catalinbread says, more output, a dry signal boost, and increased headroom), and is available now for $219.
For more info on the pedal, visit Catalinbread.
