Walrus Audio has launched the Monumental Harmonic Stereo Tremolo, a tremolo pedal that is monumental by name and by nature, presenting both harmonic and regular tremolo modes, and allowing players to blend them in stereo.
“The Monumental is capable of blending between harmonic and standard tremolo in stereo to produce rich, luscious, warm pulsating modulation producing valleys as smooth or as jagged as the real ones that our dear mother nature created long ago,” reads the blurb from the manual, and the demo videos prove Walrus Audio is as good as its word.
Tremolo might be one of electric guitar’s oldest effects, but stompboxes such as this prove it remains relevant, offering a rich sonic frontier for players of pretty much any style.
The Monumental can certainly do classic tremolo. But it is built for taking your sound off-road, with six waveforms to choose from, and five sub-divisions to add some rhythmic intrigue to the modulation.
Your waveform options comprise since, square, saw, ramp, bump and random. These are all selected via a six-way rotary dial.
Other controls include Rate, for setting the LFO speed, Volume, which sets overall output and can give you +10dB of clean gain to play with, Pan, which adjusts the stereo spread of the tremolo, and S-B-H, which blends the standard tremolo with the harmonic modes (e.g. fully counterclockwise it is fully standard tremolo, fully clockwise, it’s all harmonic).
The standard tremolo affects all frequencies equally, while harmonic offsets the pulse between high and low. Walrus Audio advises experimenting with the S-B-H blend and Pan controls for dialling in polyrhythms.
There is much to explore with the Monumental. The tap divisions add another layer of intrigue. Use the tap tempo footswitch to set the rate of the LFO, then choose from quarter note, quarter note triplets, eighth note, eighth note triplet and sixteenth note divisions. Setting the tap tempo is as easy as tapping on it, but the more you tap the more accurate the rate will be. Tap it once to reset the rate.
The tap tempo footswitch pulls a double shift as a Ramp control. Holding it down, you can adjust the ramp speed of the LFO via the Rate dial. There are also three onboard presets, accessible by holding down both bypass and tap tempo footswitches, with the LEDs illuminating Red, Green and Blue, to let you know which preset you’re in, and White if you’re in Live mode. In Live mode, what you see is what you get; wherever the controls are set, that’s how it will sound.
There are connections to run the pedal in mono or stereo, and there’s an expression pedal input that can be assigned to control any of the Monumental’s parameters.
The Monumental takes 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply, drawing 100mA, and it is available now, in orange or black enclosures, priced £269/$279.
For more details, head over to Walrus Audio.
