Rocktron Surf Tremolo

Dial and go. Easy. Not a 10 because Compress, Enhance, and Hush need some trial & error, but it's by no means difficult to grasp the pedal's functions.

I got it used, no manual.

The screw-off battery compartment is potentially bothersome, but I use power adapters so I don't care. It's metal and solid, but screwing and unscrewing would probably annoy battery users. Or, who knows, maybe they'd approve of the metal door, being that it's strong and all. Like I said it's not even an issue for me.

I use a variety of guitars and amps and this pedal sound REALLY good with everything I've tried so far. I first tested it with something of cheap beater guitar, in order to get a quick sense of the compression side's capabilities, and it worked surprisingly well with minimal investigation.

Compressor + Hush, both dialed in but not to extremes sounds very good. The compressor does color the tone a LITTLE bit, but I backed of it just a little and it sounded almost transparent and very nice, surprisingly nice actually. I like that it's one knob (easy to set), and that it's SEPARATELY foot switchable. I like it better than my CS-3 actually, which, unlike the Surf, does color tone a lot and also is a pain to set just right sometimes.

I didn't use Enhance at all at first. With clean tone I didn't like the "added enhancement" and didn't think the compression was taking anything away from the tone, anyway, so it wasn't needed.

With distortion (in front of it) I had to dial in some 'enhance' to get the "ZING" in the sound I wanted, though still it only took a little to do the trick. Too much 'enhance ' is not for me, tone-wise, but it's good it's there for fine tonal tuning.

The "hush" is the famous gating technology from their "HUSH" pedal. It works well, reduces noise, but it's not a really 'hard' gate, which I suppose makes it more musical. This is a definite bonus feature, and if you're using noisy distortion pedals before the "Surf" (like I do) then it definitely helps. Like most things, extreme settings yield extreme results, so use with moderation.

OH YEAH: The tremolo. HMn-HMh-HMh-HMh-HMh-HMh.... Love it! I like a LIGHT trem so I dialed it in at MAX speed and around "1" (nice and shallow) depth, on triangle. When I hit the foot switch and strummed a chord my knees buckled!

Really nice sounding. No volume drops or boosts when engaging/disengaging. I ended up leaving it on all evening as I played and played. I just love the way it makes the sound richer, not so much as an extreme 'special effect' but rather as an overall effect. But, if you want, the depth can be dialed in more for trippy extremes, but I just personally prefer the shimmers to the crazier helicopter chops settings.

The alternate "Square" wave output is a cool addition, though for me I think I'd rather just have a switch. Curious to run it out in stereo, if it would work (don't see why not) and experiment. On extreme settings with the Square wave you get a synth-y sequencer sounds, which is cool. Still, the "triangle" wave output is so buttery smooth I'll probably be using it more often.

The tremolo speed does not go extremely fast at MAX, but does go VERY slow if you like. This suits my taste, so no complaints from me. If you're looking for breakneck amphetamine-wired speed though, be advised this (unmodded, anyway) may not be what you're looking for.

I like it a lot actually. I used to think all tremolos are pretty much the same, but this sounds (and FEELS) so obviously better than others I've tried in the past.

I got it used, works fine. The thick metal housing is heftier than most any other pedals I've ever seen. The knobs are very sturdy, and recessed. Both switches work firmly and without audible pops. I literally think I could drive my car over it and it would still work.

It's SUPER heavy-duty. The metal battery door system is probably the least inspired aspect of the design, though like I said this doesn't matter to me anyway.

Let's see, I've emailed them in the past and they're responded. But then again there's no manual for the Surf Tremolo on they're site. They have manuals, just not for this, not even under "discontinued" products.

And that's another thing: Why is this discontinued??? I think that was a mistake on their part! I noticed they have a new tremolo, but still... the SURF TREM kicks ass.

I'll give them a 8, with room for improvement.

Hmm, I usually don't like rating as "10" overall because that's like saying it COULD NOT BE ANY BETTER, but it easily gets a 9+. Given the generous features I don't know that it could be realistically improved much. I mean, every pedal could, technically, have yet another bell or whistle, hypothetically, but Rocktron really went the extra mile here.

The unique and creative thinking behind this pedal (I don't think there's anything else quite like it) bumps it up to a 10.

Shame they don't make 'em anymore!

very easy..

5 knobs: Rate, Depth, Hush, Enhance, Compress. 2 footswitches: Trem and Compress
this is very modern tremolo sound.. i think .. because enhance&compress. Even though the pedal throbbed, careful setting of the Hush control could eliminate it.
Enhance control seems to operate like a tone control and extra high frequencies could be dialed in to compensate.
Square angle modulation.. I love it. bababababa.. really good.

it's not important.. for me..

I can't explain many details.. get this pedal.. you'll know what i think..

there are so many knobs... hmmm... difficult for someone...

wow.. this pedal is great... depth is very deep.. and rate is very free.. really better than voodoolab..
especially hush is useful.. many tremol pedals have LFO throb - when tremolo is on, no play, ground noise is throb...-
this hush is great for LFO throb.. I think...
enhance is very sexy and modern.. mmm..
compressor is a sad limiter..

I DON'T KNOW..

I play various music.. - surf, noise pop, power pop, radiohead.. etc..
this is best one among stompboxes that I've used for ten years...
only voodoolab tremolo can be compared to this..

Dead easy to get a nice tremolo sound. Depth and Speed knobs are quite obvious and are decent. Very good point: recessed knobs. This should be standard on all pedals: you don't loose setting during transport.
Speed is visualised by two flickering leds that are lit when engaged, which is nice.
If you want square wave-trem you have tot use the second output jack, but you don't want to use it: it's ugly.

I currently use this a lot, since I swapped bands and my new 'colleagues' sometimes create this old-fashioned, groovy atmosphere, where a tremolo is the perfect addendum.
I'm using decent equipment; no need to brag and bore you with my gear; when I read too many reviews I sometimes believe all guitarists are wanking Johnies the Selfkicker (sorry;-)), but anyhow: the Surftrem fits in nicely; no additional noise or dreadful loss of tone.
The lack of noise is due to the incorporated Hush. Very nice of Rocktron to let us share with their noise-suppressing skills, but you can't turn it off !!!! This would't be a pain if it was very subtle, but even at minimum it cuts off your signal. The place we currently practice isn't grounded very well, so it's useful at the moment, but I'm conspicuous of this feature, I mean: if I want to use it, I'll turn it on. Otherwise, it should be off !

The compressor is totally crap. I honestly don't understand other reviewers when they say it's decent. It's a limiter, not a compressor. It doesn't boost single notes, it only squashes your sound. At best 'average' sounding when you're strumming chords, but if you want to play a solo you definitely have to turn the compressor off. I was hoping that it would be a pedal with two functions, but NO WAY will this replace my Marshall ED-1.

So with a trem that deserves a 9, one effect you cannot control and a lousy effect, I give the pedal a 6

Bought this secondhand, looks beaten but functions great.

I bought it for a decent price, but remember: this is a tremolo with HUSH, not a tremolo with a compressor.... this was slightly disappointing, but hey: what did I expect for the money. When I see what it cost new....hmmmmm.... I would complain if I'd bought it new.
Maybe after I bought other things I will buy, in the future, a Fulltone Supa-Trem. No comparison of course, but I'm just pondering here, sorry, I'll quit writing.

i think this is pretty good, i was looking for a tremolo that did the really hard total on-off gate thing and this does it. it's a shame it doesn't have a footswitch input for speed control like the Lovetone Wobulator but then you can't have it all. it has a built in compressor which i don't find much use as it's output is too low. it has a noisegate thing which might be useful in some situations and an enhancer which brightens up the sound quite a lot and helps you to get that super clean surfin' sound if that's what you want. the fastest this thing can go is about ten pulses per second which is adequate for most styles but doesn't come anywhere near the Lovetone Wobulator which goes to humming speed. my main complaint is that there's seperate jack outputs for triangle wave and square wave so if you want to change the sound you'll have to unplug the jack from one socket and plug it into the other. you could always build a selector box with a Y cable or something i suppose but it's extra hassle isn't it. it would have been better to have a switch, although there is a bonus to this in that if you make a Y cable and connect up both jacks at once you get this really sharp cut-off tremolo which is the sum of both attenuations and it makes your guitar make that metallic noise that used to come in to the Six Million Dollar Man when he jumped up onto a roof or something. a man barely alive.

i think this sounds great. it has a totally different character to the Lovetone Wobulator which sounds soft and subtle. this thing can be hard as nails and soft and it can make the Guitar sound sparkle.

i get the feeling this thing is going to last forever, it just SEEMS that way. i wouldn't want to step on this with bare feet though, you could really hurt yourself. this has got sharp edges all over it. i even made a sheepskin case to put this in to protect my other effects 'cause if this thing gets into a fight it's gonna win every time.

no idea about support, Rocktron is a big company i think but i don't know about getting it fixed in the UK. this thing looks like it wasn't built to be taken apart easily. the pot shafts are coming up through a sort of thick plastic strip with holes in it which is STICKY on the underside, and once you've peeled this off it's never going to look the same when it goes back on, that's if it even survives the operation. no that's a SHITTY design feature. that means it really HAS to go back to Rocktron for repair.

i think if this was lost or stolen i could live without it. it's good for idling away half an hour but it's not the basis of my sound. sometimes i think i'll sell it but then i play with it and i think i might find it hard to find that Six Million Dollar Man sound with another tremolo. i wish it had a decent battery compartment design that you don't have to go hunting for a phillips screwdriver for. i think it might prove useful someday. until then it lives in a box under my bed.

The controls are fine, if a bit steep on the tremolo (very small adjustment produces big depth change). The battery cover is very ill-designed, and it isn't just the fact that you need to remove two screws. The screws are self-tappers that go into a long slot rather than a hole, which leaves a very small bearing area for the screw (50% of it fits air). This is a cheap trick often used by auto manufacturers to compensate for imprecise alignment of components, and would be very likely to lead to stripping over time. Luckily, I don't plan to find out, since I'm using an AC adapter. One other quibble: separate output jacks for square and triangle trem signals are an unnecessary complication. I use triangle only.

I run this unit as first in line on my (very small) pedal board, using an Am.Std. Strat or Tele, into a Fender Hot Rod (DeLuxe or DeVille). For me, the sound is excellent. I bought it for the combination of compression and tremolo, and both are excellent. The tremolo is clean, has plenty of range in both rate and depth, and is free of any extraneous pulsating noises, so far as I can hear. The compression is very subtle; I like it much better than the dedicated units I've tried (e.g. Boss CS-3). The enhance, when used with compression, adds an excellent shimmer to the high end, and livens up the sound especially of tube overdrive. This one feature adds significantly to the value of the unit. I don't use the noise suppressor much, but it works OK. The main problem I have with it is that it makes it difficult to use the volume controls to level out the signals between my two guitars. If I set it up for the loud one (Tele), very quiet passages or fades may disappear on the Strat. Contrary to at least one other review here, it DOES appear to function at some level even when all the other effects are switched off.

No problems yet (over 2 years). I don't use backups at gigs, but I'm not worrying about it quitting any time soon. Apart from the unbelievably chintzy battery cover arrangement, it's built like a tank.

No problems = no experience.

I play 80% contemporary country and 20% vintage pop (could be almost anything). The way I quantify my overall value for this unit is this: If I had to lose all my effects but one, this would be the one I'd keep. I bought it first, and in view of the fact that I get all the overdrive I need out of my amps, this is THE essential pedal. The other two I have (chorus, delay) are frills by comparison. One of its biggest attributes is that, via a combination of enhance and compression, it can make even a mediocre amp sound good. An excellent multi-function unit.

This pedal combines Tremolo with Compression and Noise reduction. There are 5 recessed knobs in the top of the unit. Temolo depth, Tremolo Speed, Noise Reduction, Enchance, and Compression. There are two footswitches on the front of the unit - one activates the tremolo (with two led's bouncing back and forth to determine speed and depth), the other activates the compression. One input jack, two output jacks - one jack is for triangular trem (a gradual up down of volume) the other jack for square (on/off of volume).
Trem rate and depth knobs are pretty standard. It's easy enough to find a decent sound by adjusting. There's a pretty intense range to chose from. Hit the footswitch to turn it on. Hush noise compression only activates when you turn the dial clockwise. At it's most counterclockwise point it's off, and this is where I usually leave it.
Enchance and Compression is compression, and enhance brings out the high end when you turn on the compression (through the footswitch).
So all that ease of use is pretty nice and easy. Thus far, a 10.
Needing to pull the output jack to go from Triangle Wave trem to Square Wave trem sounds is . . . easy enough, but kinda obnoxious. The result is that I just keep it on Triangle Wave (which I think sounds better anyway) and don't use the square wave. This takes it from a 10 to 9 for me. Then 9 to 8 is cause I would like to have had a preset or two for the tremolo sounds. That would have made it real nice and easy. Instead I just find a nice place in the middle of what I like for the songs I play and mostly leave it there for gigging. I'd probably tweak it to perfection in a recording situation. Oh - and I think the manual it came with was OK, but once I read it months ago, I said "OK" and stuck it back in the box, where it's not been seen since.

When I use the Tremelo - it nicely preserves both my guitar's tone (Ric 12, Tele, or old Danelectro) and my amp's tone (Fender - The Twin). It does SEEM that when I engage the Tremolo, the volume on the loudest end of the range is a tad quieter than my no trem sound. I think I'd kind of like it (it would well suit how I use the effect anyway) if when I turned the tremolo on, I got a slight volume boost from which the volume could then fluctuate down and back up. As I'm likely the only person in the world who'd like this, I shalt quibble about it. I haven't compared this to the sound of tremolos other than the boss pedal. Boss seemed fine too, but I went with the surf because it had these other nifty features.
Hush noise reduction - this I don't use. As long as it's set to the far left (zero) it's not on (despite what an earlier review here states). It's nice to have with the compression I guess, but seems to defeat the purspose of the tremolo - cutting out the sound completely when it gets down to a certain point. I've also not compared it to other noise gates so I've no idea how a noise suppresor (good or bad) really should sound. I find the tremolo really quiet anyway though, and the bit of noise I hear from the compression totally acceptable for a compression pedal. (it's very very slight. I don't notice it playing live at all, and only barely at rehersal where the outlets are non grounded. At home with just the guitar and amp and grounded plugs, I don't think I hear hiss at all.)
Compression / Enhance. A main reason for my purchase of the unit. I play a Ric 360-12 and was going for the jingle jangle Byrds tone, which is all compression. In guitar center (the worst place to hear how gear sounds!) I compared it to a MXR Dyna Comp, at home I compared it to a ART Levalar mini tube compressor, and in both instances when with the Roctron. I've also played through a Boss compressor and thought that I liked the Rocktron better (the Rocktron seemed warmer, though less versitle, but I've never side by sided the two). Nice compression - you can get pretty squashed, then the enhancer makes the high end stand out a tiny bit to compensate for the high end loss through the compression. If $ ever were to permit, I might look at a high end tube compressor, but til then, this seems about right for me.

Wow. This thing weighs a ton. Solid metal housing recesed control knobs. I've had it for nearly a year and had no problems with the circuitry. Yeah - I'd say it seems reliable. The only possible quibble is that you need to take off two screws to remove the battery plate and change the battery. Now since I don't believe in using batteries and just use an AC adaptor, this doesn't bother me, but you 9 volters, beware. As I said, I've been depending on it for nearly a year (with no backup) and gigging and/or rehearsing once or twice a week with no problem.

When I had a question about it, I looked up the web-page, sent an e-mail and got a prompt answer, plus some additional clarification when I sent a follow-up question. Since I've had nothing go wrong with the unit, I haven't had further reason to contact them. I think there's likely a warranty, but I'd need to look that up.

Overall, I'm very happy with this, and I'd recomend it to other people. Getting the compression and tremolo all in one unit is great (keeps my pedal board a little less overcrowded) and both of the effects seem to be of great quality for a stompbox. I mostly play jangle-pop music (Byrds / REM esque originals) and this suits me just fine. I actually rely a lot more on the compression than the tremolo, but it's great having them both. If I was looking for better equipment, I might be able to find it by buying an individual temolo pedal for the same amount I paid for this, plus an individual compression unit for another $150 - so I still feel like I'm getting away with something here. Whether I'm using the trem or the compression, it doesn't interfere with my guitar to amp tone, and it sounds great when I use it in conjunction with my Dano Cool Cat Chorus, the amps reverb, or the amps distortion. Would I buy another if it were stolen? I'd sure strongly consider it. I might shop around a bunch more and just see how some of the other trem pedals out there compare, as well as looking at a few other compressors, but I bet I'd be hard pressed to find a better combination for the money.

this pedal is kind of complicated. you have two effects, tremelo and compression, and if either of them are on, you have hush and a presance on too. it was pretty easy to get a good tremelo sound, but compression was tough. if you want to swich between square and triangle wave trem, you have to switch output jacks. changing batteries (you have to alot!) was a pain, and it didn't tell you how to do it in the manual

like i said, the trem sounds good on it. the compressor was not very noticable. the crappy part about the unit was the hush circuit. it cuts off your sustain as your note is dying down. it would do this if the unit was activated or not, which led to me dissmissing it quickly

i don't like to use adapters, and this thing sucked the life out of batteries. i wouldn't have used it in a situation where i had to count on it.

to get the company to look at the cutting out problem, i would have had to send it to their head quarters and pay the shipping both ways. plus they said it would take 6 weeks after i sent it. musicians friend, who i bought it from, were no help either

while i was playing it through my fender 75 with my ibanaz talman, it sounded great until i wanted to let a note sing out. i play surf, alt. rock, and pop and i liked to use it with a danelectro daddy-o to get that cool love battery sound out of it. i liked the double flashing lights for the trem, but the cutting out "hush" feature was just to much. i sold it to my friend for half i paid for it and got a dunlop trem, much better.

Sound is basically easy to obtain, and comes with a good manual.

I have a Fender Jazzmaster and an Ampeg amp that comliments this pedal well, the rate of speed was a concern for me, and this one lives up to the test with a very fast rate. Works much better than the very disapointing DOD vibro thang.

It has worked flawlessly so far

There is a great user manual with solid instructions, But I haven't had to deal with them 1-on-1

I play surf, primarily, and really like the performance of the Surf Trem. It also acts as a compressor. There is a variable output from a triangular wave to a square wave to determine the amount of cut-out.