Stomp Audio Labs Waves

The Stomp Audio Labs Waves is a tremolo pedal announced on September 19, 2016, and described by the maker as "a modern tremolo, with tap tempo, three waveforms, hold mode, tempo subdivision and waveform symmetry distortion"¹. It was designed and built at the company's Belo Horizonte, Brazil headquarters and was shipping as of that announcement, at a suggested retail price of $230.00¹.

Analog path, digital brain

Stomp Audio Labs describes the Waves as having "a digital brain, but everything else, including the audio signal path is fully analog"¹. The digital circuitry handles the tap tempo and logic, while the analog circuitry manipulates the guitar signal, and the two circuits are separated by a custom optical component¹. The maker says this gives the pedal "an organic tone, characteristic of an optical tremolo circuit"¹.

Controls

The Waves is laid out with five knobs and a toggle switch¹. The toggle selects the waveform in three positions: sine, triangular and square¹. Among the five knobs, the Shape control changes and distorts the waveform, generating sawtooth, ramp and distorted sine waves, and can even change the proportion of time the sound is on, or cut, on the square wave¹.

Tap tempo, Hold mode and expression

Tap tempo is built in, and holding the tap tempo switch activates Hold mode: in that mode, the effect is only activated while the switch is held down¹. The pedal can also be controlled by an expression pedal¹, which opens it up to use with expression pedals for hands-free control.

The stereo output is a distinguishing feature: the maker notes it lets you create panning effects, placing the Waves among tremolos that can do more than simple amplitude pulsing when fed to a stereo rig¹.

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