Amp Tremolo

[GAD]

I don't understand the allure of amp tremolo. I assume it was an attempt to simulate a Leslie rotating speaker? I think a Leslie in the room sounds cool because it's something you experience and not just hear but for the most part Tremolo on an amp is a completely unused effect for me.

Doubting myself I did a search for hit songs with tremolo and found a handful of songs that I recognized. Was tremolo on an amp a super desirable thing at one time? Why do so many amps have it? I feel like I've been missing something for almost 50 years.

 

[shihan]

I guess it’s in the ear of the beholder. I really like it and use it frequently. It depends, too on the style of music you’re playing. I’m mostly a roots guy, West Coast Blues and soul and such. It works great on a minor blues or burning ballad if you kind of match the tempo of the song. I also, as you suggester, use a fast trem for a cheap Leslie sound. Doesn’t work on every amp, but I have an old Deluxe Reverb that I can do that with on a song or two.
Having said my piece, I think I’m probably in the minority. I’m curious to read what others think.

 

[GAD]

I guess it’s in the ear of the beholder. I really like it and use it frequently. It depends, too on the style of music you’re playing. I’m mostly a roots guy, West Coast Blues and soul and such. It works great on a minor blues or burning ballad if you kind of match the tempo of the song. I also, as you suggester, use a fast trem for a cheap Leslie sound. Doesn’t work on every amp, but I have an old Deluxe Reverb that I can do that with on a song or two.
Having said my piece, I think I’m probably in the minority. I’m curious to read what others think.

Thanks for your insight! I assume it's me in the minority because I've read of people raving about how great the tremolo sounds in x or y amp.

 

[Rocky]

There are several different types of amp tremolo. The one I find the best is the single triode power tube bias tremolo, as found on Princeton/Reverbs from 1961-81 and the 6G3 brown Deluxe. It's extremely lush and 3D-sounding and has the quirk that you can modulate the intensity by how hard you hit it.

 

[Walter Broes]

I don't understand the allure of amp tremolo. I assume it was an attempt to simulate a Leslie rotating speaker? I think a Leslie in the room sounds cool because it's something you experience and not just hear but for the most part Tremolo on an amp is a completely unused effect for me.

Doubting myself I did a search for hit songs with tremolo and found a handful of songs that I recognized. Was tremolo on an amp a super desirable thing at one time? Why do so many amps have it? I feel like I've been missing something for almost 50 years.

I'm not sure, I don't think Tremolo was necessarily invented to imitate rotating speakers, but it's very possible. It's probably the oldest "electronic guitar effect". I think (Later Danelectro's) Nat Daniel made some of the first amps with tremolo, he built amps for a number of companies before starting Danelectro. It might always have been an organ imitation, I think the first idea was to get some movement from longer chords, on lap steel too.

I love amp tremolo and have used it since I first had an amp with tremolo. And I love all kinds of amp tremolo, from the slightly mechanical sounding opto-trem in bigger Fender amps to small amp power tube tremolo to some of the wilder ones like the phasey trem in the bigger brown tolex Fenders and the vibrato in Magnatone amps.

Tremolo has certainly been "bigger" than it is now - Bo Diddley built a career on it, Duane Eddy seemingly never turned it off, and it's probably one of the most used guitar effects on arpeggiated Gospel and Soul electric guitar, big on classic country records too. I guess my love for tremolo goes hand in hand with my musical taste, haha.

 

[GGJaguar]

Yeah, like any effect, tremolo is one of those "when you need it, you need it" effects. You can't really shoe-horn it into a song, but like Walter pointed out, it's de rigueur at certain times in certain songs or in some genres. I like it and use it since it's built in to most of my tube amps. My Flint Strymon pedal also has a good selection of nice sounding tremolo effects, too. And you don't have to use tremolo in full warble mode. You can just have it turned slightly on to give some interesting texture to the sound.

 

[Default]

The first tremelo was built by DeArmond, to my knowledge. It used Windex as a fluid to make an break contacts in a shaker container that was motor driven. Billy Gibbons says it's his favorite.

 

[AcornHouse]

I'm not a huge fan of tremolo either. But every now and then, it suits. (Cue shameless self-promotion.)

 

[AcornHouse]

The first tremelo was built by DeArmond, to my knowledge. It used Windex as a fluid to make an break contacts in a shaker container that was motor driven. Billy Gibbons says it's his favorite.

Oil can...oil can...

 

[AcornHouse]

 

[chazmo]

I don't understand the allure of amp tremolo. I assume it was an attempt to simulate a Leslie rotating speaker? I think a Leslie in the room sounds cool because it's something you experience and not just hear but for the most part Tremolo on an amp is a completely unused effect for me.

Doubting myself I did a search for hit songs with tremolo and found a handful of songs that I recognized. Was tremolo on an amp a super desirable thing at one time? Why do so many amps have it? I feel like I've been missing something for almost 50 years.

Good question, GAD. In the small experience I have in the 'leccie world, I have never used amp tremolo. Reverb for sure, but never tremolo. Like you said, my guess is that it's based on the Leslie, but perhaps as Walter said we've got it wrong there.

It used Windex as a fluid to make an break contacts in a shaker container

For real, Steve? Hard to believe, but then necessity is the mother of invention.

 

[Default]

Oil can...oil can...

That's the Echoplex.

DeArmond Tremolo Control | Vintage Guitar® magazine

Even now – four decades on – Billy F Gibbons remembers the first time he heard a DeArmond Tremolo Control work its peculiar magic. “We first heard the effect not knowing what it was,” he says, speaking in the royal plural and summoning up recordings including Muddy Waters’ 1953 Chess cut “Flood”...

www.vintageguitar.com

Uncle Doug built one.

 

[shihan]

Here are a few of examples of what is (to me) excellent use of the effect.

 

[Walter Broes]

Dr John out-bo-diddley-ing Bo Diddley! (yes, on guitar on this one!)


there's not a lot more Duane Eddy in this than that big tremolo six-string bass lick in the intro, but boy, does it ever set a mood!

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

I don't understand the allure of amp tremolo.

I don't either. Or amp reverb. The ones I've had sounded awful.

I assume it was an attempt to simulate a Leslie rotating speaker?

Dunno.

I think a Leslie in the room sounds cool because it's something you experience and not just hear but for the most part Tremolo on an amp is a completely unused effect for me.

Leslies to me sound more swooshy than vibey.

Doubting myself I did a search for hit songs with tremolo and found a handful of songs that I recognized. Was tremolo on an amp a super desirable thing at one time? Why do so many amps have it?

Onboard trem and reverb sweetened the pot for people who liked the effects but didn't want to shell out for a DeArmond trem like Pops Staples' or a big reverb unit like Dick Dale's. Now we can get pedals that are a lot smaller and relatively inexpensive, so.

I feel like I've been missing something for almost 50 years.

You haven't. Onboard trem often (usually? always?) has an annoying tsk-tsk-tsk sound. Onboard Accutronics spring reverb sounds like tinsel. Some people like that. It gives me a toothache.

I tried several trem and 'verb pedals before I found ones that had clean, uncolored sounds. It was worth shopping around and experimenting. I'll never buy an amp with onboard effects again. Here in the Golden Age of Pedals, they're redundant. For the same price, you can buy a better amp.

On the other hand, though you only asked about amp tremolo, you might just not like how any tremolo sounds, regardless. If so, the corollary to Duke Ellington's If it sounds good, it is good is If it sounds bad, it is bad.

 

[Neal]

I almost never turn on the trem on my ‘73 Princeton Reverb. And when I do, I turn it back off almost right away.

 

[Minnesota Flats]

 

[GAD]

That is glorious. It reminds me of ancient farm equipment that still runs despite having zero maintenance in 59 years.

 

[GAD]

Thanks for the replies everyone!

I do think it’s an issue of musical preferences. Most effects I can get behind in some capacity or another but the music I (mostly) grew up with didn’t really use it, and come to think of it much of that music used amps that didn’t include any effects Marshall, Orange, Hiwatt, etc.).

I think some of the songs posted do sound “right” the way they are and certainly the songs in my original searches do, too. One that surprised me was Green Day’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams which I never even realized was tremolo. LOL

I think the idea of tremolo being a carry over from organs makes a lot if sense, especially considering the time frame of the earliest Fender amps along with the fact that so many amps had accordion labeled inputs. It was just a different time.

Thanks again for the great insights!

 

[Nuuska]

Difference Tremolo vs Leslie

Tremolo is ONLY volume modulation.

Leslie is COMBINATION of volume AND pitch modulation - w 90 degrees phase modulation.

One of my early tremolo favourites: