Throne Room Tremolo

Throne Room Tremolo

The Throne Room tremolo touts quite a few features. 

At first glance it may look like a fixed wave Tremolo, but you do have the ability to modify the wav's somewhat with the "Dist" control.

The TR sports 8 different wave shapes, covering all the bases.

Going from Left to right.

First the Sawtooth wave form.

Sawtooth Waveshape at Various Depths

As we can see here, even at 100% depth we still aren't hitting the 0 volume point.

Sawtooth Dist Settings

The above picture is maximum depth, the only difference is changing the "Dist" knob from fully counter clockwise to all the way clockwise. 

The manual states the Distortion knob "...stretches or squishes the waveform for an extremely wide pallet of sounds within each waveform"

I don't believe this is an adequate description of  what this knob does. We can see from the above example, that the only thing getting squished there is the overall volume. The only thing it looks to be modifying on the sawtooth wave shape is the same thing the "depth" would be doing.

Next we have the reverse Sawtooth wave.

Reverse Sawtooth Wave at Various Depths

 
 



Again we can see that even at full depth, we aren't hitting the 0 volume point.

Reverse Sawtooth Dist Settings

The Dist knob has a similar effect on the Reverse Sawtooth wave shape. Just in reverse.

Next up is the square wave.

Square Wave at Various Depths

While we never really reach the 0 volume point here either (Dist set at noon), it is pretty good. Here the dist knob does do what is expected, and controls the on/off time in the duty cycle. So you can get a square wave with barely any off time, or small choppy helicopter blips.

Square Dist Settings

 Next we have the Triangle wave.

Triangle Wave at Various Depths

Now funny enough here... Dist doesn't do what you expect. Here it is leaning the wave shape left and right. Giving us a sawtooth or reverse sawtooth wave... So if they didn't happen to give you sawtooth or reverse sawtooth waves as base shapes. You could still achieve them this way.


Triangle Dist Settings

 Next up we have sine.

Pretty good sine wave here, still not quite hitting the 0 volume mark at noon on the Dist knob

Dist does a bit more round sawtooth and reverse sawtooth here.


Sine Dist Settings

The next 2 shapes we very rarely see on many pedals. 

Inverse Lump at various depth settings

Inverse Lump Dist Settings

 

Here we can see this is similar to the sawtooth/reverse except with a slightly con-caved rise and fall. 

Lump at Various Depth Settings

Lump is an interesting shape, it is a bit more rounded sine wave that isn't quite as deep. It is good for a more subtle effect.

Lump Dist Settings

Again, the Dist gives us a rounded sawtooth or reverse sawtooth waveform.

Lastly we have random.

Random at Various Depths

So as far as wave shapes go, and modification of those wave shapes, while I find the "Dist" knob and what it does completely confusing, considering it doesn't do the same thing on each mode a bit daunting, it still gives you pretty much all the modification capabilities you'll need.

You can dial in those nice off center shapes we all know and love.

Slowest Speed: ~9817 ms/cycle
Fastest Speed: 40 ms/cycle

Now I know what you are thinking... No Volume knob. I'm out!

Well hold the hell on...

Note the little Volume trimmer there... They got you covered. You can set that to adjust your output volume.

You've got tap tempo, with 6 different sub divisions, along with a jack you can hook up an external tap switch to. Throne Room pedals also makes an external tap switch which has more than one connection jack, so you can simultaneously control the tempo of 2 different pedals! That's pretty cool.


Pro's
 - 8 Different Waveforms
 - The ability to control on/off time on the square wave
 - The ability to have Sine, Triangle, Lump, or Inverse Lump fire off a bit early or a bit late
 - Ability to adjust volume via internal trim pot
 - Ability to hook up an external tap switch
 - Tap Tempo
 - 6 Different Time Divisions


Con's
 - Pictures do not align with the knob perfectly, sometimes hard to tell which shape you are actually on , especially on lump/inverse lump.
 - Depth isn't as deep as it could be when maxed out on some modes
 - Dist knob is plain confusing, and what it actually did was not documented well until this article ;)