Slapback and Tremolo Reccomendations, Please

[Disastercaster]

These two effects are my absolute favourites, so many of my favourite records use them and yet for some reason I don't have 'em. So I've gotta get me some.

I was just wondering what you guys use for them?

I've heard the Boss DD-3 is good for slapback (apparently Scotty Moore currently uses one, good enough for me!) and I would have guessed that the Boss TR-2 is a pretty good Trem pedal too, I've only ever fooled around with one once.

I've also been interested in the Carl Martin Red Repeat and Surf Trem pedals but they seem to be a bit difficult to locate.

I'd be very grateful for any tips you guys have.

[JohnnyCrash]

I've got both from BOSS. They're plenty good for me, live.

[Disastercaster]

Oh yeah? That's good to hear. I like the Boss Pedals for their ruggedness, the last thing I need to worry about is the pedal breaking when I smash my foot on it , but it's good to hear they sound good too. I'd be leaning towards them anyway.

[aznrambo481]

boss pedals are built like tanks. My friend has an ancient boss distortion pedal, half the paint peeled off, still works like a dream.

[fakeocaster]

Boss Trem is good.Voodoo labs is better but more expensive.To be honest the prices here are so high that I buy this kind of stuff off ebay

[JohnnyCrash]

Originally Posted by Disastercaster

Oh yeah? That's good to hear. I like the Boss Pedals for their ruggedness, the last thing I need to worry about is the pedal breaking when I smash my foot on it , but it's good to hear they sound good too. I'd be leaning towards them anyway.

They sound OK.

Like I said, for live stuff it's plenty good. For recording, that's a little different.

I've got a BOSS RV-3, which is an old, now defunct Reverb AND Delay built into one pedal.

Both the reverb and the delay can kind of sound metallic, "digital", and cold - but live you've got bad room acoustics, poor PAs, loud drummers, etc anyways.

If you're going to get really picky and blow a lot of money to get a true old original Rockabilly slapback, get an old style tape delay... but that is a pain in the ass, hard to keep up on maintainence-wise, and expensive.

Now that I've built my tube Fender Standalone Reverb Unit clone, I pretty much only use the pedal's Delay functions.

[Ben Harmless]

For delay, I was using a little Guyatone box for awhile, which to me, sounded a whole lot better than the Boss. Somehow it had a little more "natural" sound to the delay. Then I tried an Ibanez AD-9, and haven't used anything else since. It's true what they say about analog delay.

For trem, when I'm so inspired, I use the Boss pedal. Some will point out a slight volume drop when the TR-2 is engaged, and they're not wrong, but as I use mine in front of a somewhat gritty amp, it negates the drop a little. I've heard 'em used in front of squeaky clean amps too, and I never noticed any problems anyway.

I don't use pedals at all normally, but when I do, those two and a dirt box of some flavor is all I need.

[alotas123]

I've got trem built in to both of my main gigging amps but I use a Boss PN-2 Trem/Pan pedal for the others. They aren't made any more and I've managed to get my grubby paws on two of them in great condition. I have a friend with the current Boss TR-something pedal and it's pretty decent. Basically, to me the older pedal sounds a lot like the trem in my SFDR but the newer pedal sounds different. Maybe not any worse, but different. I like mine better...

[Disastercaster]

I might have to look into the Ibanez box. What exactly do they say about analogue delay?

[RomanS]

I personally like both the Rocktron ShortTimer and the Danelectro Wasabi Rock-A-Bye for inexpensive slapback echo; the ShortTimer is a bit brighter sounding than the Wasabi (which has a very natural, warm sound), the Wasabi is really heavy, and has quite a few options (high-cut, input selector for HB and SC pickups, overdrive); both aren't exactly compact.
ABout trems: I really like my George Dennis GD-125 PingPong Tremolo - it doubles as an active volume control pedal when the tremolo is not in use, when the effect is switched on, the vol.pedal allows to control the depth of the tremolo effect, very cool for fading out tremolo for short solo licks, and then fading it in again for chordal stuff; very natural sounding, what it can't do that well, though, is helicopter/staccato tremolo, the sine-wave / amp-type tremolo is great though (and if you want, you can use it in stereo, with the signal tremolo-ing between two amps).

[BluesOwl]

yeah, like J. Crash, I'm using an Boss RV-3 cuz my amp don't got reverb. So I choose a reverb + delay setting with a nice room reverb and the delay set for one slapback. I change the slapback delay from slow to fast depending on the song. It's pretty good unit except your effect level has the delay and reverb tied together so you can't separately control them. It seems to eat batteries after 30 minutes or so, so I had to do the pedal power daisy chain from the BOSS TU-2 tuner (another nice BOSS pedal to have )

I bought a demeter tremulator...its a real nice tremelo.

Analog delay I would like to try is the Maxon AD-900 or AD-999?

I'd like fancier reverbs too....some rack mount lexicon thing comes to mind, and it would be cumbersome I'm sure.

[Disastercaster]

Yeah I've got the TU-2, it's probably the most essential pedal anyone could ever own..

[JohnnyCrash]

Originally Posted by Disastercaster

I might have to look into the Ibanez box. What exactly do they say about analogue delay?

The old tape delays as used in those '50s Rockabilly recordings sounded different.

Analogue:
Warmer sounding.

The one or two repeats are mellower than the original note. This is something digital delays don't have - although some of the higher end ones try to copy this subtle effect. I think it had to do with the actual recording tape used for the delay recording and playback on those analogue ones.

Originally Posted by Disastercaster

Yeah I've got the TU-2, it's probably the most essential pedal anyone could ever own..

Amen to that!

For my bass rig I'll be getting a rackmount Korg tuner to sit under/over my SVT4-PRO, but for guitar it's the BOSS TU-2 all the way!

[davidge1]

Originally Posted by JohnnyCrash

If you're going to get really picky and blow a lot of money to get a true old original Rockabilly slapback, get an old style tape delay... but that is a pain in the ass, hard to keep up on maintainence-wise, and expensive.

I used to own a vintage tube Echoplex EP1, which I thought was the coolest thing when I bought it. I was assured that it worked perfectly, which it seemed to when I tried it out. However, if you left it on longer than 30 minutes or so, it would heat up so much that it would start to play back what was already on the tape. So right in the middle of the song, strange guitar licks in strange keys started coming out of my amp, and the other people in the band looked at me like "What the hell are you playing?" ...kind of embarassing, but at least it was a rehearsal.

[Disastercaster]

Well any self respecting rockabilly lover would love an authentic tape delay.. but I can't really afford that. A guy a know got this german made 'Echolette' amp, so if that's any good I may just go for one to shove on top of my Blues Deluxe, as you can get them absolutely dirt cheap. The Beatles used them on their Hamburg ventures.

Otherwise, I'm still in stompbox territory.

[stephent2]

I really like my Maxon ad-80 for delay, you can find them used, nice and warm tones. And the best tremolo for my use is the Fulltone Supa Trem. Very adjustable with a hard/soft and half speed footswitch

[Jef]

I'm very happy with my dirt cheap Danelectro mini pedals: Tuna Melt tremolo and PB&J delay. They both have a convincing warm sound. The knobs are very small, but they come with a cover so that you don't break 'em if you stomp on it. I'm using both for gigs for three years now and they never let me down.

[Disastercaster]

I woulda thought that they maybe give off some serious hum or suck alotta tone?

[Reno Sepulveda]

Originally Posted by Jef

I'm very happy with my dirt cheap Danelectro mini pedals: Tuna Melt tremolo and PB&J delay. They both have a convincing warm sound. The knobs are very small, but they come with a cover so that you don't break 'em if you stomp on it. I'm using both for gigs for three years now and they never let me down.

Owned them both the tremolo is OK but the delay was too brittle for me. I much prefer the Ibanez DL-7, another budget priced DDL. It has a treble roll off that lets you dial in some good short to medium slapback.

[RomanS]

Originally Posted by Reno Sepulveda

Owned them both the tremolo is OK but the delay was too brittle for me. I much prefer the Ibanez DL-7, another budget priced DDL. It has a treble roll off that lets you dial in some good short to medium slapback.

I alos have the Danelectro Tuna Melt - no hum, no tone-sucking, acturyll it has a great warm tremolo sound...


...BUT: there is a VERY noticeable volume drop when switching it on, and the Dano does not have a seperate vol. control.

[mad dog]

Totally loving the Maxon AD999 for ambient delay. Great sound, built to last. Getting to know a Catalinabread Semaphore trem pedal. Excellent sound, love that volume knob.

[Jeffscreamedcorn]

DD-3 is good, but if you can find a DD-5 it's more versatile. It has a tap tempo feature.

[Mojohand40]

I have a Dano Tunamelt trem and a PB & J delay. I like the tunamelt, but I like my Electro Harmonic Pulsar a lot better. Good warm sound.
Now the Pb & J is really sweet, like Sun Records lo-fi kinda' thing. It colors your tone, but to me in a good way.
Really a great rockabilly pedal in a cheap plastic case. Sounds better than the packaging and price would lead you to believe.
Just my opinion.
And like someone else said the PBand J can sound Brittle and harsh, but again, it's hard to explain, it's harsh-lo-fi-cheesy-sounding in a good way.

[bobthecanadian]

I have the Boss RV-3, DD-3, and TR-2 and a Dano BLT and Corned Beef. Holy Cow! I actually have four different reverb/delay pedals on my board. Bwa ha ha ha ha!!!!

The Dano pedals are good for short timed reverb/delay. And I have the boss pedals set up for longer delay and reverb times. Each one alone sounds really good. However, I am often using more than one at a time. Talk about thick texture... nice.

The TR-2 also works well for me. However, it woks a lot better with the C4 mod. If I had some other options available to me at the time I bought these pedals I may have chosen some different ones. However, these are the best that I could find at the time and I am learning how to use them well.

Good luck on yyour quest!

Peace

[getbent]

Lots of great choices here.... I had been using a Danelectro Dan Echo and a voodoo labs trem, but I have switched to a BYOC Delay and Trem... I love the sound of both and I also like that i put them together... big fun!

[bug music]

+1 on the Dano TunaMelt great tone for cheap money.
I also love the DanEcho, those are about the 2 best Dano pedals made IMHO.

- Jay

[aussie52]

Line6 DL4 - usually am reluctant for digital anything but this thing is awesome - having presets is wild. normally use a analog delay + compression for that chicken pickin sound, but you can get some awesome vintage-sound slapback from it.

As for trem, the boss tr2 does me fine.

[bo]

I've been using an old Ibanez AD-9 for slap and a Demeter Tremulator for several years now. Occaisionally I'll switch out to a Dano-Echo, which I like the sound of, but they're kinda flakey.

[eugenedunn]

Check out the Keeley modded Ibanez AD9... it has a wide open sound and some extra features. The Fulltone Supatrem is the tremelo...you can set it for two speeds and also a hard and soft trem setting....very versatile. Plus it has an internal gain trim pot that you can tweak to goose up the volume when the trem is engaged....the best for live performance!

[kp8]

I like my Empress Tremolo. Fully featured & sounds good.. not too keen on the plastic shaft pots, but it sounds great. I like the Voodoo labs trem too. It is very smooth & buttery. My bandmate has the Boss. It sounds good and gets the job done, but isn't outstanding to my ears.

[bender-freak]

danalectro reel-echo, an echoplex simulator has been working great for me for couple years now...all the features of the old Maestro units, the sound withOUT the annoying hiss, warble, farts or the "bleedover" from other licks when the tape would "come around" again, telling you that you need to clean the heads off...reel-echo has no tape..just a suggestion...try it...last i saw were running 125.00 to 135.00 on evil-bay...cheers

[ramseybella]

I have used Maxon AD-900, AD-999, Ibanez AD-9, Maxon AD-80, Guyatone MD-2 & MD-3, Arion AD-1 and a $35.00 Belcat Analog delay!!

I like the AD-900, AD-80, Guyatone MD-2 and 3 (good slap back for digital) and the little Belcat.

[Scottone]

I'm using a Demeter Tremulator and a Jacques Prisioner Delay. I dial in a small amount of modulation on the Prisioner to give it a bit of an echoplex vibe.

[Skully]

I used to own a vintage tube Echoplex EP1, which I thought was the coolest thing when I bought it. I was assured that it worked perfectly, which it seemed to when I tried it out. However, if you left it on longer than 30 minutes or so, it would heat up so much that it would start to play back what was already on the tape.

There's a documentary that came out with the 30th Anniversary reissue of Steve Miller's "Fly Like an Eagle" in which he talks about his use of the Echoplex on the album. To hear him talk, it was always a unreliable, high maintenance unit. Today, he uses a digital unit that emulates the effect.

[Fourth Feline]

Originally Posted by bender-freak

danalectro reel-echo, an echoplex simulator has been working great for me for couple years now...all the features of the old Maestro units, the sound withOUT the annoying hiss, warble, farts or the "bleedover" from other licks when the tape would "come around" again, telling you that you need to clean the heads off...reel-echo has no tape..just a suggestion...try it...last i saw were running 125.00 to 135.00 on evil-bay...cheers

I also have a Danelectro "Reel Echo" which I love for slapback echo. Very warm sounding. I prefer it over my Boss RV3. The Dano also looks very retro, and so the 'visuals' sit nicely in as well.

FF.