JOYO JF-09 Tremolo - A cheap and great sounding pedal (Video-Clip)

The Chinese company Joyo has a whole flood of pedals, mini pedals and other musical accessories in its range. They define themselves as a company that "focuses on the production of digital music oriented tools". It is an interesting company but for most guitarists it´s probably "just another clone-company". And it is true that they are making cheaper clones, but they also show tendencies to go towards a more innovative path.

It's not unusual for Chinese companies to draw the bow as hard as they can and at the same time look ahead to innovative world domination. The point is that many of them has a fair chance to be successful in a global perspective. To make clones in collaboration with other partners in the music industry is a smart and easy way to learn the basics and then when the timing is right take off to more innovative products. To ignore of these actors are both clumsy and stupid intimidation as they already have good stuff to offer.

The JOYO JF-09 tremolo is exactly such a product. In fact, it is a really good tremolo, from barely noticeable sweeping rate (speed) to fast and even large span of "intensity".

Tremolo, unlike Vibrato, creates variation in loudness (amplitude) which means that raises and lowers the volume. This technology has been around for vintage amps since the 50's. Vibrato on the other hand varies the pitch as you may already know. Anyway, Tremolo is a classic and very useful effect that throws pure or soft crunched sound back to the vintage mode. I think the best effects stays in the background and highlights the guitar without taking over. This pedal is outstanding on just that, it lifts the whole and it creates a good old fashioned vintage sound if you do not exaggerate settings, and it doesn't suck tone at all, at least not by my standards.

- True Bypass
- Built like a tank
- 9v battery or eliminator
- Light that indicates the rate

I made a little demo here which gives a hint of how it sounds. The pedal is connected in the effects loop on a Marshall JVMJS on the clean channel orange mode and the guitar is a Jeff Beck Stratocaster. There is a reverb there too, a TC Electronics "Hall of fame".

You can get one for $28 on Amazon and eBay, which is very cheap for this kind of quality pedal.

A tap tempo to easily change rate between songs had been great, but at the same time you may lose a bit of the vintage feeling.

Rating:
4.5 zombies (5)