MWFX Pitch Trem 2010

The MWFX Pitch Trem is a tremolo pedal with a difference: the speed of its volume modulation follows the pitch of the note you are playing. MWFX describes it as "A new type of Tremolo exclusive to MWFX, the higher the note, the faster the LFO rate," and calls it "the first of it's kind." In a conventional tremolo, the LFO (the low-frequency oscillator that swells the volume up and down) runs at a fixed speed set by a knob. Here, the note itself drives the rate, so the wobble stays musically locked to what you play. It sits in the wider family of tremolo pedals and, at its extremes, reaches into octave and pitch territory.¹

How it works

The Pitch Trem divides your signal down by an amount dictated by the 12 settings on the Rate switch, and the divided signal is then used as an LFO to modulate the amplitude. Because each Rate setting is an octave relative to the note you play, MWFX says "it sounds… right," meaning the wobble tracks the pitch of whatever you are fretting rather than sitting at an arbitrary speed.¹

The two ends of the switch behave very differently:

• Slowest settings: the division goes up to 12 octaves down, or 1/4096 of the note, and the modulation is very slow.¹
• Fastest settings: the modulation is so fast it acts like a strobe, going fast enough to trick the brain into hearing a note an octave below the one played.¹

That octave-below effect at the fast end is, according to MWFX, produced "all perfectly clean without any need for a second 'octave' signal." In other words, the pedal does not generate a separate octave-down tone the way a dedicated pitch pedal or an octave and pitch pedal would; the illusion comes from the speed of the amplitude modulation itself.¹

Hearing it

MWFX hosts a SoundCloud demo of the pedal, "Pitch Trem, Pitch Controlled Tremolo Pedal," on its own SoundCloud page.¹