Seymour Duncan – Shape Shifter Tremolo Pedal Review

After selling my old Traynor YGM-3 guitar amp, I didn’t realise how much I actually used the Tremolo.

…you can produce a chunky, “on/off” tremolo effect, which is great for adding atmosphere to your playing…

Visiting The Guitar Store in Southampton earlier this year was great, as they have a huge range of mass produced and boutique effects pedals in stock. They provided me with 3 or 4 different tremolo pedals to try, and I subsequently chose the Seymour Duncan Shape Shifter due to its hugely versatile offerings and quality tone.

Features:

The Shape Shifter is true-bypass and has loads of usable features:

• Depth: this controls the amount of tremolo that features in your signal. Extremely versatile, allowing you to dial in subtle to extreme settings.
• Shape: very cool. Allows users to specify the attack and trail of the tremolo. This allows users to dial in a reverse tremolo effect if desired.
• Wave: My favourite dial on the pedal. Allows users to go from smooth sine wave tremolo to edgy Triangle through to chunky Square wave. It was the flexibility from this dial that caused me to choose this pedal over its competitors.
• Rate: two modes (rate or ratio) adjustable from one to 20 Beats per second with a fantastic tap tempo control.

Ease of use:

Using the pedal is relatively easy; simply plug the pedal in, choose the depth, wave and rate and off you go.

If you want to use the tap tempo however, users need to change the mode from “rate” to “ratio”. This provides users with the extra functionality of choosing four ratios: 1:1, 2:1, 3:1, or 4:1 (1/4 notes, 1/8 notes, triplets, or 1/16 notes).

One thing I would say is that if you don’t use the pedal for a while, you may fall into the trap that I made and forget which mode was the correct one to use with the tap-tempo! You may find yourself having to refresh your memory by quickly consulting the user guide.

Sound Quality:

Excellent – I haven’t experienced any problems whatsoever. I use this pedal with a Marshall Vintage/Modern 2266C combo and I haven’t had any issues with background hum, either on clean or high-gain settings.

All the controls are highly versatile and users can really dial in a huge range of tremolo options.

My personal favourite setting is using the Square wave, with a mid-set Depth. With your amp set to a fairly high gain, you can produce a really chunky, “on/off” tremolo effect, which is great for adding atmosphere to your playing.

Equally impressive is experimenting with the Shape control. With a fast attack, the Wave set to Square, and an extra dose of echo/delay added, some very trippy backwards sounding tremolo is available – perfect for those Gilmour-esque moments.

Reliability:

So far so good. I’ve been using this pedal consistently for 6 months and it’s been fine.

Overall Rating:

If you are looking for an extremely versatile tremolo pedal that does the job well, you can’t go wrong with this unit. The tap-tempo feature is excellent, as is the wide range of depth and wave that can be easily applied.

The only negative aspect I would mention is the pedal has a fairly large footprint and takes up about a quarter of my PedalTrain Jr pedalboard.