Boss Tremolo TR-2 w/ C4 Mod +Gain Boost


This little guy is currently on eBay. I always thought that this tremolo wasn’t bad, but the volume drop was insatiable and drove me nuts sometimes. I thought I would try modding this one by cutting out the C4 cap (a 0.1uF bypass cap) which is the alleged cause of the gain loss. It is, but not without good reason. It does keep the effect sounding smooth and really clean. Removing the cap also opens up those capped frequencies which some people report a more warm and/or harsh tremolo tone. I enjoyed the more dramatic effect of the pedal myself, and decided to make it even more so by substituting the 10k ohm resistor before the non-inverting terminal of the first opamp for a 4.7k. This added a nice volume boost which gives the tremolo more cut especially when combined with heavy reverb or a washy delay. We’ll see if anyone decides to buy it. I think it’s a huge upgrade from the original sound.

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