Mattoverse's excellent TremStortion is finally in the Reference Collection - as a unique etched acrylic facia edition with red LEDs

May 21, 202408:00 by

Stefan Karlsson

DistortionMattoverse ElectronicsOscillating FuzzTremolo+-

I guess timing is everything!, and I was lucky that Mattoverse’s Matt and I finally synced to the same frequency. My first Mattoverse pedal was the Just a Phase in October 2021, where the idea was to add a couple more ideally in that same etched acrylic facia edition style. While I had to wait until this month to finally get in a matching AirTrash Fuzz - as featured back on May 7th.

One of the Mattoverse pedals I had intended to get initially was the TremStortion - but the waiting around for the Acrylic AirTrash kind of put that on hiatus for quite a long while. When the AirTrash finally came around I also contacted Matt about the TremStortion - which was by then seemingly mostly discontinued.

Matt had some final boards and components in stock - which turned out were enough to create two more - a wood-facia edition with white knobs, and this acrylic edition with silver knobs - which I thought would complete my Mattoverse Trifecta nicely. Matt says he had hoped to get in similar metallic Red, Yellow and Blue knobs - as on the Just a Phase and AirTrash - but those were alas not made in the smaller size needed for the TremStortion topology.

In any case I really love the look of those silver knobs with acrylic facia onto the raw aluminium enclosure.

It’s a really simple pedal to operate - while I initially found some of those waveform options a touch tricky to apply fully musically - i.e. The final 2 stepped and random variations. In the end I concluded that those sound at their best with a slightly faster oscillation speed / Rate, while you can apply a wider variety of rates to the others.

Controls - Rate, Depth, Waveform : Ramp Up / Ramp Down / Square / Triangle / Sine / Lumps / Stepped / Random, Output, Gain, Mode : Pre-Trem / Distortion Only / Post-Trem, Bypass Footswitch, Tap-Tempo Footswitch.

I generally mostly tend to live on the Ramp Down, Square, Triangle, and Lumps Waveforms - where I apply them pretty equally as both PRE and POST - and at various different Rates of oscillation speed.

For some a good starting point is probably with all the knobs at Noon - and then just working your way through the different Waveforms and Pre- and Post- options. While optimal for me tends to be the 4 corner knobs all at 3 o'c, and Waveform set to Square - that's where you get immediate and richly textured results.

I feel this is one of those pedals where you keep discovering more sweet-spots the longer you play it. It's also the case of slightly adapting your playing style and rhythm pattern to some of those specific waveform oscillations.

The Distortion voicing is surprisingly good for me - where optimal output and texture for me is at 3 o'c on both Output and Gain, and amazingly it doesn't really need a Tone control! I have so many distoritions, and several on the board at any given time - that I'm very unlikely to use the middle Distortion only voicing purely on its own - the choppiness of it is the fun part really.

As a further iteration it would be nice to have a 'Pattern' mode here - where you can tap in your preferred pattern / rhythm of oscillations - introducing as much offset syncopation as you like!

I'm delighted that it's finally mission accomplished, and very thankful to Matt tfor being so obliging along the way - to deliver me my perfect Mattoverse Set / Trifecta. I feel so lucky to have snagged one of what might be the last 2 TremStortions. Hopefully whoever snags the other one likes it as much as I like mine.

As the saying goes - good things come to those who wait!

I believe all the TremStortions have all been sold now - they were priced at $195, and I paid $39.21 shipping for mine to come to the UK. ACTUALLY! - it looks like as of my writing this - that the final white-knob wood-facia edition is still up for sale on the Mattoverse Electronics Webstore - I can't imagine that's going to be unclaimed for long!

Thanks once more to Matt for being so responsive!