Tonight, looking to see if I could get close to Johnny Marr’s sound on The Smiths “How Soon Is Now”, I picked up the Danelectro Cool Cat Tremolo. Fiddling around with it, I found that I could approximate the trem sounds on The Smith’s song, but it feel short in a number of ways. Marr is clearly using a more modern sound on his tremolo, not to mention a delay and probably layers of guitars. The Danelectro gave much more of a vintage tremolo sound, think “Mona” by Bo Diddley or the bridge on the original version (Tommy James’) of Crimson and Clover. Very much more of a vibrato sound rather than the choppy tremolo sound, even when set at on the “square wave” hard tremolo sound. Having played a Tuna Melt in the past, I believe it would be better suited to the less classic tremolo than the Cool Cat. Bottom line, if you are looking for a classic, “Fender Sounding” tremolo, the Cool Cat will meet your needs. If you need hard core tremolo sounds, I would look elsewhere. We will review the Visual Sound Garage Tone Tremolo soon, using the same characteristics, to see how it stacks up.
Keep Rockin!
Jack – Jax Music Supply
