Walrus Audio Monument Harmonic Tap Tremolo: Classic 1950s tones in a pedal
That 'ol Fender 'brown sound' tremolo in a little box
Walrus Audio’s new Monument Harmonic Tap Tremolo pedal is now available for pre-order via the company website. This interesting new box is aimed at players looking for a classic American vintage amp tremolo sound. Think 1950s brown tolex amps and the myriad classic albums that featured them and you’ll begin to see the attraction of getting that tone in a small, modern pedal.
Brown Tolex
The original old brown tolex Fender amps had a valve-driven tremolo section. You’ll be familiar with the sound, as it’s all over those classic ’50s records. Walrus Audio have tried to capture that special tone with the Monument Harmonic Tap Tremolo pedal. It’s a fair bit smaller then those old valve amps, and they reckon it does a good job of recreating that vintage magic in a modern piece of equipment.
Low and High Pass
By combining low and a high pass filtered versions of your guitar’s signal and modulating them at 180 degrees, you can make a tremolo nice and chewy. One signal rises as the other one falls, producing a modulated high and low pass filtered signal that gives you ‘that’ sound.
This compact unit features controls for Volume, Rate, Depth, Division and Shape, plus a two-way toggle switch for Harmonic or Standard modes. The pedal also has two footswitches, one of which is used to tap the tempo and the other one to bypass the effect.
The Shape control sets the tremolo to Sine, Square, Ramp, Lumps or Monument mode. This last intriguingly named setting gives you a random shape and gives the effect its name.
The Division knob can choose between quarter, triplet, eighth and sixteenth note patterns, while the Bypass footswitch has a momentary function. If you hold it down you can temporarily engage the effect and it will stop on release. That’s a nice touch, and useful if you want to quickly add a bit of trem during a solo, without having to stomp hard.
I do enjoy nice warm, chewy tremolo sound and would love to hear this new pedal in action. This is one to check out if you like vintage tremolo. If it sounds as good as they claim, it could be a bargain when compared to an old vintage valve amp – and less hassle too!
RRP $249 – pre-orders open now and available 25th April
Walrus Audio Monument Harmonic Tap Tremolo page
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