tjon901 « Versatile Tremolo unit with tap tempo »
Published on 01/11/12 at 09:20Nicholas Catalinbread is a boutique pedal maker out of Oregon in the United States. All their pedals are hand made and they make a wide variety of pedals. This pedal is the New Semaphore pedal. It has much more features than the old Semaphore. Across the top the controls are. A rate function that controls the rate of the tremolo effect. The Tap Divide function that takes the tap function and can divide it up into musical beats. THe Shape knob controls the waveform of the tremolo function. It can flatten it out or make it more abrupt. The Waveform knob is very cool. You can select different types of tremolo sounds with this knob. On the Waveform knob going clockwise you can get a ramp up sound, ramp down, square, triangle, sine, hyper triangle, lumps and finally random. After all that you get your depth knob which controls the intensity of the effect and then finally your volume.
UTILIZATION
Even with all these controls the pedal is pretty easy to use. The Bypass switch on the bottom right controls if the pedal is on or off and it has a blue LED light which tells you that. The Tap Tempo switch is like it says. It is a tap tempo switch. When you are using a tap tempo the red LED next to the switch will blink on and off to the tempo you have inputted. When you are not using the tap tempo the red LED stays off. There are jacks on the back for expression pedals and another pedal for inputting the tap tempo. Some not so good things about the pedal. The knobs are pretty small and close together. If you are use to adjusting the knobs on the fly with your feet you probably wont be able to do that with this pedal.
SOUND QUALITY
With this pedal you can go from really thick lush tremolo sounds to really subtle sounds. With all the different Waveshapes the tremolo pedal is very versatile and if you have a lot of tremolo pedals on your board this could replace all of them. The Waveshapes are very distinct from one another. They actually modulate your tone. not just volume up and down it actually shifts your tone in a very pleasant and Brownface Fender type of way. With subtle settings on the depth you can really get a soothing behind the scenes tone. With the Depth knob you can go from no tremolo at all to breaking your speakers level of tremolo. The Tap Divide knob makes it easy to tap out slower tempos. You can tap out a normal speed tempo and tell the tap divide knob to subdivide the sound giving you a longer tempo since it is kinda hard to tap out really slow tempos.
OVERALL OPINION
A tremolo pedal like this really puts just about every other tremolo pedal on the market to shame. If I was big into the tremolo sound this would be the only pedal I would need. If you are in to the Tremolo sound this is the only pedal you need. It is kinda pricey for a tremolo pedal but you can replace a ton of tremolo pedals with this one. You get all these features and boutique hand made in the USA build quality with this pedal. It is kind of pricey but you can replace a few tremolo pedals with this one.
UTILIZATION
Even with all these controls the pedal is pretty easy to use. The Bypass switch on the bottom right controls if the pedal is on or off and it has a blue LED light which tells you that. The Tap Tempo switch is like it says. It is a tap tempo switch. When you are using a tap tempo the red LED next to the switch will blink on and off to the tempo you have inputted. When you are not using the tap tempo the red LED stays off. There are jacks on the back for expression pedals and another pedal for inputting the tap tempo. Some not so good things about the pedal. The knobs are pretty small and close together. If you are use to adjusting the knobs on the fly with your feet you probably wont be able to do that with this pedal.
SOUND QUALITY
With this pedal you can go from really thick lush tremolo sounds to really subtle sounds. With all the different Waveshapes the tremolo pedal is very versatile and if you have a lot of tremolo pedals on your board this could replace all of them. The Waveshapes are very distinct from one another. They actually modulate your tone. not just volume up and down it actually shifts your tone in a very pleasant and Brownface Fender type of way. With subtle settings on the depth you can really get a soothing behind the scenes tone. With the Depth knob you can go from no tremolo at all to breaking your speakers level of tremolo. The Tap Divide knob makes it easy to tap out slower tempos. You can tap out a normal speed tempo and tell the tap divide knob to subdivide the sound giving you a longer tempo since it is kinda hard to tap out really slow tempos.
OVERALL OPINION
A tremolo pedal like this really puts just about every other tremolo pedal on the market to shame. If I was big into the tremolo sound this would be the only pedal I would need. If you are in to the Tremolo sound this is the only pedal you need. It is kinda pricey for a tremolo pedal but you can replace a ton of tremolo pedals with this one. You get all these features and boutique hand made in the USA build quality with this pedal. It is kind of pricey but you can replace a few tremolo pedals with this one.