 Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuge and in this video today we're going to be talking about some cool ways to get the most out of the tremolo effect built into your Blackstar Amp2. So all the tones you're going to be hearing in this video are coming directly from the Amp2 that is on the desk in front of me. I am running straight out of the XLR output of this pedal straight into the front of my audio interface so all my cabinet and room simulations are coming from cabrig that is built into the unit. So the tremolo effect lives in the modulation section. It is on the middle toggle of the three position switch. So tremolo is a guitar effect that lives in the modulation factory. It modulates the volume of the guitar signal that you put in in a rhythmic time-based way. So we can think of tremolo as being an effect that subtly just dips the volume or we can use it to create some quite cool choppy guitar sounds. So we're going to dial in a few different tones with the tremolo effect in this unit and I'm going to show you how you can use this in a couple of different situations. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to show you straight away the choppy side. So this is a more extreme tremolo effect. Now in the tremolo setting on the Amp2 there's actually two different types of tremolo. Up to the halfway point we have regular tremolo. This is a lot more extreme and this sort of harsher cutoff and start point for each of the notes. Then when we get past midnight we go into a harmonic tremolo. This is a little less extreme. It's more pulsating and the waveform is a lot smoother. So harmonic tremolo actually sets us a little bit more in the ballpark of a rotary speaker type effect. It doesn't sound exactly like a Leslie-style rotary speaker but it's the same sort of principle. We get the same sort of pulsating movement again like a univib for instance. So we're going to be looking at the regular tremolo to start with and I'm going to set this as high as I possibly can. So I'm going to actually have this on 10 so that's right at the cusp of the control there. The time I'm going to set quite slow. I'm going to set that on 2 but I will move that when I'm playing just so you can hear the difference because I want the slow effect to be really pronounced at first and the level I'm going to have on full because I want the maximum amount of the tremolo effect. So without the tremolo on I'm using this clean tone. So that's completely clean from the Amp2 but the only thing I do have on is I've got a room reverb on as you can see there on the unit. So when I turn the modulation on we're now activating the tremolo and it's going to do this to the sound. So the reason I wanted to set the time very slow is so you could hear that obvious choppy effect. If I raise the time it's going to sound more like this. So that's a pretty choppy sound. It's great for textural guitar parts where you're just ringing a chord out and if we push the time even further we get into some really fast rhythmic ideas. So the time actually determines how fast that choppiness happens. With the depth at its maximum we get the most amount of chop. If I push that down we get less of that. Get more of a pulsating sound. The second thing I want to show you is how to get some 60s univibes style sounds with the harmonic tremolo. So for this I'm going to set the harmonic tremolo on half so five and I'm going to match the level at roughly the same point so that works out about 7.5 on the scale and then the time I'm once again going to set quite slow to start with. With the harmonic tremolo because it doesn't have that hard cut and start point this is a much smoother tremolo effect so it sort of pulsates gradually as it goes up and down. Sounds a bit like this. Now this one is really cool with some drive because we get into some 60s Jimi Hendrix C-style lead tones. That pulsating effect is very reminiscent of a univibed type circuit. We can obviously make that faster and we can increase the depth. And that gives us a bunch of different flavors to play with. If we set that on maximum like this we have quite an extreme harmonic tremolo. That really takes us away from that more subtle 60s thing so if you want that Hendrixy vibe you definitely want to sit more around the sort of five to six to even seven on the depth control with a slower time. You don't want the time too fast because you don't want that really choppy effect. And the third way I'm going to show you how to use this is a subtle lean tone. So I'm going to set the time at around about six and a half but the depth control I'm going back to the regular tremolo here that's going to be very very subtle so that's just going down on one and then I'm going to have the level of this about three and a half because again we don't want too much of this tremolo effect we just want this to subtly make the clean tone shimmer. So without the tremolo it sounds like this and then with that on we're going to get the same clean tone but we're going to get this little pulsating sound alongside it. That is a little bit more reminiscent of an amp-based tremolo where we get this warmer pulsating style tremolo that isn't quite a harmonic tremolo. Again we can be more subtle with that if we want we can set the time slower so we get a slower pulsating effect. What you don't want to do with this kind of thing is go too fast because that gives you a much more extreme sound. The depth is really key here because we want as little of that tremolo in as possible the time you can just set to your own taste and then the level this shows us how much of that we get so if that's higher it becomes a bit more choppy with kind of like a fading but again because we're going for a more subtle amp style tremolo we want that level lower because we're just blending a bit of the effect in with our clean sound. So tremolo is a great rhythmic modulation effect it can create some really cool textures but can also be used for some really nice subtle sounds as well. If you're playing with a drummer you definitely want to be aware of your speed of your tremolo because you don't want this to go offset with whatever the drummer's playing so it can be quite a hard effect to really dial in sometimes because you really need that to lock in with the rhythm of whatever you're playing but there's a lot of fun to be had with tremolo. Let me know down below in the comments what your favorite songs or riffs that use tremolo are and don't forget to hit the subscribe button to the black star amplification youtube channel because there's a bunch more videos just like this one on the channel and don't forget you can check out the other videos where we talk about the other effect types inside the amp too. If you're looking for a guitar teacher in your local area please head over to musicteacher.com check out the music teacher database over there there's a great network of teachers all around the country waiting to help you guys out. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you soon.