Empress or Diamond Tremolo?

Have you looked at the Dr Scientist?

 

Don't forget about Cusack Tap-A-Whirl v.3 (SICK!), and the Dr. Scientist Tremolessence v.3 (Also SICK!).

Wish I had some advice to offer, but I am also trying to decide which to upgrade my Voodoo Lab Tremolo with. Going only by the videos I've seen, the Tremolessence sounds the best to me, and the TAW is just freakin' awesome in it's feature set. I wish I could try them in person.

 

I have not owned the diamond.

Plus for the Empress is that it does these cool pattern tremolos as a feature of it's micro controller. I use these quite often, which is why I haven't needed or wanted to try the Diamond as of yet.

Tap Tempo is handy if you use it in many songs, and I like that you can pick multiples for the tap circuit, along with being able use different functions for the tap switch than tap. I don't know, but I think the Diamond has a dedicated tap tempo and the switch doesn't get used for other functions.

jacob

 

Red Witch PentaVocal Tremolo

It can do something VERY COOL that those other guys can't.

And it's musical


It has to do with the BOTTOM knob, unique
turn it one way and you get full throb, turn it the other way and the bottom
frequencies throb while the upper frequecies don't throb, they stay unthrobbed.
So it blends the signal to how much of the effect you want.
Plus it has five fidelity or eq settings to chose from
And it sounds as good or better than both the Empress and the Diamond, imo.
And I love Empress, have the ParaEq w/Boost 1+++ But the Red Witch is simply
the chewiest of these trems, the most fluid. The most Rosebud.

 

Pretty sure the Diamond is also mono in/out, right?

 

I think the Diamond Trem is super warm and sounds killer.

I have both and if i was stuck with one Id take the Diamond Trem for pure analog joy.

 

MXR 159

I rocked that for a bit. I still have one in my excess pedal drawer.

Its sounds great. but the empress and diamond sound better.

 

I've had both. Preferred the Empress. Not that the Diamond isn't great... I was just more at home with the control scheme of the Empress and really preferred its rhythm pattern options.

 

You want stereo, send the trem to a delay pedal or a reverb pedal, those are typically stereo.

I never put my trem after the verb or the delay, verb last
trem delay verb

 

I just picked up a VFE Old School which is a sweet trem, but also not stereo. I don't need tap tempo, and stereo isn't essential for trem for me.

There are only 2 trems I know with stereo ins/outs: Hardwire Trem/Rotary (which I've heard is no good) and the Lightfoot Labs Goatkeeper, which I've owned and is FANTASTIC.

I also owned the Empress Trem for a little while, but it didn't stay for very long. Not the greatest IMHO. I also have a Pigtronix Tremvelope, which I think also might be stereo, and is a very sweet trem which can be had for cheap.

 

The Cusack is stereo out. And if tap tempo is what you're looking for it has an awesome feature, after you tap in the tempo, if it slides slightly over time, you can tap it once and restart it on the beat. You can also save 24 presets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY0pUW0RJcw&feature=player_embedded

 

vfe makes a great trem

 

I own a few tremolo pedals.

A vintage Colorsound, a tiny Guyatone, Fulltone Supatrem, Empress, plus the built-in tremolo on my Vox AC15.

But I also own the very rare Lovetone Wobulator
http://www.lovetone.com/wobulator.html

You want stereo? Then the Wobulator is the one. They are rare but do come up on Ebay from time to time. However, it takes up a large chunk of real estate so is not on my board but rather brought out for special occasions.

As far as the rest? Then it is the Empress that has made itself a permament fixture on my board. To my ears it is WAY better than the others, including the Fulltone and I have been able to very closely match the built-on trem of my AC15, which sounds wonderful.

I also own a couple of Diamond pedals (Memory Lane 2 and Vibrato) and they are really fantastic, so I am sure their Tremolo is too. In fact, I don't think you can go wrong with either of the two Canadian boutique outfits as between them they are making some of the finest guitar pedals available today.

 

I owned the Diamond. Awesome tremolo. However, I switched to the Catalinbread Semaphore. It has a tap switch AND an expression pedal input. So you can do some cool gradual, ramping tempo changes. Plus, it has more waveform and time signature options than the Diamond. All the pedals mentioned though are great tremolo pedals.