Product Review: Voodoo Lab Tremolo

My main amp delivers a lot of tonal options and has a great spring reverb, but it does not have tremolo. I really like the classic, clean Fender amp tremolos of the ‘60s and went searching for a stomp box solution.

I had heard a lot of good things about the Danelectro Tuna Melt at the low end of the market. I also considered the Demeter Tremulator at around $180, but I couldn’t bring myself to spend this much on an effect that I would only use sparingly. After listening to a lot of demos on YouTube and by ProGuitarShop, I settled on a used Voodoo Lab Tremolo that cost me about $80 on eBay – a decent discount from the $129 new street price.

The pedal comes in a strong metal casing and the footswitch is very smooth. This version has four controls (earlier versions had just two) and they are Intensity, Slope, Speed and Volume. The key to this pedal is the Slope control, which provides a wide variety of sounds – from subtle, smooth tremolo to extreme helicopter-like chops. Speed and Intensity give you more subtle control over the speed and deepness of the “throb.” Two nice touches are the Volume control so you can cut, boost or keep the effect at unity when engaged and an on/off LED, which is handy if you a playing live. Other positives are the pedal uses the same lamp and photocell assembly found in many popular vintage amps and it is true bypass. It is also made in USA, which is to be commended.

To be honest, I can’t find much wrong with this pedal at all other than it is larger than the Boss-type units so it does take up some valuable board space.

Plugged in, I really like how the unit sounds. It is very warm and rich and does accurately recreate the sounds of vintage amp tremolos. You can cover Duane Eddy, surf, scary movie/sci-fi, and avant-garde soundscapes with ease. I don’t care for the extreme choppy settings myself (but it’s nice that they are available) and I tend to use it as a subtle tremolo shimmer for clean picking and slow blues. My favorite setting is Intensity at 2 o’clock, Slope at 10 o’clock, Speed a little past 2 o’clock and volume at 11 o’clock (which actually sounds like unity to me). I run the pedal in my effects loop after my Small Stone Phaser and before my Boss Digital Delay DD-3.

If you a looking for a quiet, true bypass tremolo that delivers a wide variety of sounds from vintage to extreme, the Voodoo Lab is a good choice at a good price. Compared to the Danelectro Tuna Melt I think it is more subtle and controllable; compared to the Demeter it is considerably cheaper and less “throbby”, which I prefer. Since I purchased my Voodoo Lab trem, Seymour Duncan has introduced its Shape Shifter pedal and that seems like another good choice and well worth checking out at a similar price point.