Dunlop TS-1 Tremolo

The Shape knob was a little confusing at first because i lacked the manual which would have explained it right away. as it is, it took me about 6 minutes to perfect the use of this knob, so it is pretty easy to use.

i use a jazzmaster into a superrack head and a two twelve cab. the trem can go anywhere from silky to fat. the stereo pan is a good effect to have, although i cant use it in shows because i am too poor to afford two amps. it sounds good after a distortion although the rem can get annoying if you have the shape to the right. its pretty good but nothing really special in this catagory. At first i thought this pedal was pretty clean, but after comparing it to a fultone, i knew better, but then again, what sounds as good as a fultone or lovetone??? This pedal distorts like a MAD DOg if your batteries are low, i recommend a power suppy, so you dont even have to worry about it.

its in a big metal box,i would go to a gig without a backup. DUnlop is pretty reliable, just not the best there is.(which is pretty weird because 4 of my pedals are made by them.

ehhh, i never talked to them.

i play effects/noise music. it's a good dependable tremelo. if it were lost or stolen, i would probably look at a FUltone SupaTrem, realize that i couldn't afford it, and buy this trem again. the stereo option will be hard to give up if i ever get two amps for shows. ive compared this trem to: COlorsound TRemelo FUltone SupaTrem BOss TRemelo DOD Vibrothang
this trem is by far better than the boss or dod cheapo's, and not nearly as clean or good as the colorsound or fultone counterparts. i dint like the way the fultone was setup, the hard/soft switch instead of the knob, but that is just personal preference. the colorsound pedal didnt even have a shape change of any kind, but it was still good. i wish this pedal had a little cleaner sound, but its not bad for the money, and i would definately buy it again.

The three knobs are straightforward: depth, shape, and speed. One reason I bought this was the shape knob, giving more versatility than pedals with a smooth/square wave switch with two settings or pedals with no settigs at all (e.g., the Tremadillo). The other big selling point was the LED that allows you to see how fast the signal is being cutout. If only it could be on all the time like the old BOSS pedal. There is a stereo pan setting, but I never used it. The manual explains it all.

The tremolo effect is nice by itself, but it's noticeably quieter, which ultimately why I ended up selling it. Perhaps it was my guitars (in particular the Epiphone Sorrento), because I didn't notice this when I was trying it in the store. 10 for the sound, 3 for the quietness.

A sturdy steel case that I would not have been afraid to hurl into a wall had I a worse temper.

Didn't take advantage, though perhaps I should have.

I couldn't use this pedal because of the volume cut. It might make a useful studio toy. More interesting is the Volume+ pedal that Dunlop made, which had a volume and tremolo mode, using the pedal as the speed control. I actually bought one of these at first ($100 used!), but my ineptitude with pedals was distracting, and the LEDs were at the front of the pedal which made them hard to see. I have a feeling that being a VOLUME pedal, it doesn't suffer from the lowered volume, but I'll never know now.

Two switches, three dials, one input, two outputs, and an extra switch for stereo input. A bit confusing at first, but sounds good without much trouble. The manual is pretty much "duh" information, but the explanation for the shape knob was handy.

Quiet on, quiet off. Your signal gets faintly quieter when you fire it up, but not too bad. The shape knob is really cool. Cranked to extreme left, it makes a sine wave oscillation in volume (like old Vox amps), in the middle it makes a trapezoidal wave, and extreme right it acts like an on/off switch. When you run it in pan mode through two amps, it sounds great. The speeds range from less then one pulse per second to about ten or eleven pulses per second.

It's in a thick steel case, so I trust that it won't crush under my girth, but I haven't had it too long so I can't say how it's going to survive. Seems sturdy enough.

I had a Rotovibe puke on me and they took about two months to get it back to me. Then they told me that they had replaced the whole unit, which was ironic because I had put a piece of yellow tape on it and it was still there. To top it off, it puked again and took another two months to fix. It has worked flawlessly since, except one LED is dead. Take your chances.

This is a really cool effect. It adds a cool throbbing texture to my bass sound, and is cool for otherwise boring bass lines. Definitely a better buy than the Diaz tremolo pedal, which cost more, didn't have a stereo option, and had no LED's. In the stereo pan mode, you can really impress people when your signal suddenly changes sides of the room on them. Even the color was cool. It has been easy on batteries except when I left it plugged in overnight (which was silly).