12 of the Best Compact Tremolo Pedals - Updated

The Gravitas is currently my pride of place tremolo - with its other 3 Chase Bliss modulation siblings all in a row - it does though get rotated out every now and again for the Tremotron - which involves some slightly annoying cabling machinations. For most modulation effects based on frequency / signal oscillation - volume is a real concern. In fact I had issues with both my primo tremolos when I first got them - both had signifiant volume issues - which I solved with the Gravitas by going up to an 18V power supply, and for the Tremotron I had to tweak the internal output trim-pot. This means that when I switch those effects around I need to detach the Xotic voltage doubler from the SL Drive - put the 18V into the SL Drive, and that one's original 9V supply into the Tremotron! In any case there is little overall to split the Gravitas from the Tremotron - as they are both amazingly capable tremolos - the Gravitas gives you the Harmonic option and bounce ramping across several parameters, while the Tremotron gives you dual simultaneous tremolo effects - both are supberb!

Coda Effects is one Benoit Meijer of France - who has 3 excellent pedals to his range currently - the Sunn T 'Black Hole' clone, Big Muff+ Dolmen Fuzz, and this 6-waveform tap-tempo tremolo. This is a great premium quality device using all highest quality parts and assembled by hand by Benoit himself. Note that there is often a waiting list on these as they are made in batches. It's not quite up to the versatility of the Gravitas or Tremotron, but is near the top of the chasing pack.

Another new pedal-maker to me, but one with an extensive range of pedals (20) - this is a relatively simple tap-tempo tremolo with toggle switch to activate manual rate or foot-tapped-tempo. Then you have Volume, Range and a 6-waveform selector with all the usual suspects. Pricing here is fairly keen, but then it does not have some of the extra touches of some of these other pedals, still a decent proposition though.

I can't remember how I came across this boutique brand - again a nice small range of 4 pedals including this optical tap-tempo Tremolo with Harmonic voicing option. You have 4 dials here - Boost (Level), Shape (Waveform), Depth and Speed - alongside 2 x 2-way and 1 x 3-way toggle switches. Type allows you to switch between regular Amplitude and Harmonic Tremolo, Voice is a sort of Tone switch - which boosts certain key frequencies of the Harmonic voicing. The third 'Double' toggle allows you set up a sort of secondary speed preset which you can add to your regular tremolo signal - you hold down the bypass switch to assign dial values to that secondary effect. So a really quite smart pedal and it does something genuinely different to the rest in a way, albeit the Tremotron does that Secondary Tremolo thing somewhat better and adds presets. It's features though put it quite far up the ranking. I think it's well worth consideration as it combines some of the best bits of the Gravitas and Tremotron, but does not really match either of those in their full specialisms.

This is quite a different proposition to the earlier Dual-speed Honeycomb Deluxe - in fact it sits quite nicely alongside the second tier alternatives here - and offers something a tiny touch different. The 4th 'Rhythmatic' waveform is really cool and gives you something closer to what the Chase Bliss can do. Having the Ratio Sub-divisions and Waveforms easily accessible makes this an easy and fun pedal to operate - it sounds great - but there are others here that give you a touch more variety.

I've already written about this pedal's sibling - the Midnight Phaser, which has a very similar layout - albeit with a couple of extra voicing toggles. In many ways it's quite similar to the above Flower Pedals Dandelion - both are optical and have tap-tempo - and the Heat Wave has slow/fast speed ramping versus the Dandelion's Secondary Tremolo, that pedal also has a Harmonic mode which probably elevates it slightly in appeal - then again it is around $60 more than the Heat Wave. I think both do interesting things on a roughly similar framework - so it really depends on what feature set you prefer - both sound great.

This is my current equal favourite with the above Chase Bliss Gravitas - the latter though has been getting more play-time of late after the Tremotron was principal pedal for several months at the start. I just ended up getting the whole row of Chase Bliss modulations and thought I may as well keep them all together - and I do really love those pedals. Yet I am almost 100% likely to switch out the Chase Bliss Spectre for the EQD Pyramids, so I may as well bring the Tremotron back in again - it's time it had its go in the rotation. What makes the Tremotron particularly special is that you have a huge range of waveforms to select from and you can run 2 Tremolo effects simultaneously by pressing and holding the various dials. You also get tap-tempo with sub-divisions and 4 definable footswitchable presets. The only thing it's missing really is the Harmonic option - other than that this thing has it all - and sounds tremendous too. As mentioned above - I had to fairly significantly tweak the internal output trim-pot of the pedal as this was one of the earlier models which was set a touch too low - it's been fine since that adjustment.

The Suhr effects division is likely best known for its Riot, Shiba Drive and KokoBoost pedals - while it has a couple of really decent modulations too within its range - including this Jack Rabbit Tremolo. You get 4 dials - Rate, Level, Shape and Depth - along with a 3-position sub-divisions toggle. The smart thing here is that the tap-tempo is set with the single footswitch via the press-and-hold methodology, although you can also press, hold and strum for tempo - which is a similar thing that TC Electronic used to do on the Flashback Delay. It's overall a very simply pedal, and not quite up to the Gravitas and Tremotron overall - I also really do prefer the dedicated tap-tempo footswitch - but this is a really cool simple alternative with most of the essential onboard.

This one is kind of the odd one out here as it has no additional speed settings - no dual or secondary speed, and definitely no tap-tempo. This takes the legendary Supro Amp tremolo and puts it into a pedal format with Amplitude and Harmonic voicing options. Other than that you just have the basic Depth, Gain and Speed dials. Do note that the Gain dial is more of a pre-amp style boost - like on the Gravitas, and gives increased warmth in sound as well as relatively mild amp-like saturation. It's for sure a great sounding Tremolo but probably overall the most basic here in many ways.

I've had my eye on this one for a while as the only compact-sized stereo tremolo that I know about. This means it can be placed between my Delay and Reverb workstations - or even after them - so that the tremolo hits the original signal only and not the repeats. It has most of the high level functionality that most of the more advanced pedals on this page do - separate tap-tempo footswitch which also activated speed ramping, 6 waveforms, 6 sub-divisions and a phase inversion toggle switch - oh and a single preset which can be activated by press-and-hold on the bypass footswitch. It's still not as clever as the Gravitas and Tremotron overall, but it does that that key differentiator in both stereo ins and outs.

This was one of the 3 compact pedals I featured in my earlier Best 9 Tremolos post - and I really liked the look of it at the time - but did kind of expect it to be full stereo like most of TC Electronic's modulations are. You get the choice of just 2 manual waveforms here - Vintage (Sine Wave) and Square - with still most of the magic happening through the TonePrint function - which allows you to create your own custom preset wave type etc. In fact the Sub-Divisions dial has a 'Custom' mode too - again adjusted via TonePrint - this allows you to sequence up to 4 different Tremolo tempo patterns together for very unique stuttery effects. So I think The Pipeline is cool, but it suffers the same criticisms I have of the smaller TCE pedals - as in there are not enough selectable features onboard really, the pedal is somewhat too reliant on TonePrint - of which you can only have one onboard at any give time. I feel that for a digital pedal specialist like TC Electronic it's a real oversight for this relatively new pedal not to have more TonePrint options available, and not to have an easy way to footswitch between options. I feel that TC Electronic could have build a far more appealing Tremolo here - which has certain advantages, but there's too much 'under the bonnet'. In most ways I feel I would prefer the superficially quite similar Suhr Jack Rabbit - even though The Pipeline can create pretty much any kind of Tremolo for you - it should have been stereo, dual-fooswitch and with presets - that would all make it make sense. Otherwise in this present company, it's somewhat at a disadvantage.