Among fellow psychedelic music-making chums in the ’90s, few tools were quite as essential as a Boss PN-2 Tremolo Pan. Few of us had two amplifiers with which we could make use of one. But if you could borrow an amp, you could make even the lamest riff sound mind-bending.
Walrus Audio’s Monumental Harmonic Stereo Tremolo is far from the only modern tremolo pedal that offers stereo panning. And it’s one of many that digitally approximates the elastic, phasey sound of brown-panel Fender harmonic tremolo. But the Monumental’s economical design and compact dimensions conjure memories of PN-2s I’ve known and missed. It brims with features an old PN-2 user could only dream of in the midst of a stereo amp reverie: the harmonic tremolo, a more traditional optical tremolo-style voice, the ability to blend the two, six wave shape options, and a subdivision switch that enables precise rhythmic variations on any given modulation pattern.
Rhythms Carved in Rock
The Monumental is, as any Walrus-watcher will know, is an evolution of theMonument, which was built around harmonic and optical-inspired tremolo voices, and features tap-tempo, subdivisions, and five waveform types. So, the big news here is the stereo capacity, presets, and the ability to blend the harmonic and optical tremolo types. You’ll pay 60 extra bucks for these extended capabilities. But if you really get into using tr-molo to its fullest potential, these are no small matters.
“The big news here is the stereo capacity, presets, and the ability to blend the harmonic and optical tremolo types.”
The Monumental uses the same-sized enclosure as the Monument V2. The only real drawback from this layout is the proximity of the tap-tempo switch to the bypass, and, as I was reminded at a jam last week, I for one, can easily miss my footswitch target if I’m deeply involved in a musical moment. That issue aside, the Monumental is impressive for the way it accommodates stereo in and out jacks, a tap and expression pedal jack, six knobs for volume, wave shape, stereo pan spread, rate, depth, and the optical/harmonic blend. The subdivision button is situated just below these and is easy to access and operate. None of it, save for the footswitches, feels cramped or difficult to navigate.
Soaring Skyward
It’s good that Walrus added presets to the Monumental, because while it can often seem subtle, the deeper you venture into the possible textures, the more detail and difference you hear among them. Waveforms like the square and sine wave sound great at low- and medium-depth settings. Other options benefit from a more-aggressive depth setting. I tended to like the optical and harmonic tremolo voices in their purest forms, but you can find many intricacies to probe and unravel in the blended settings. Some of those differences might go missing in the wash of a dense arrangement, but when they breathe in more spacious musical settings they are lovely. This is especially true when you use the pedal in stereo.
If you don’t intend to use the Monumental in stereo, you should carefully consider whether the presets and blendable voices merit the extra expenditure. For many, they will. But using the Momumental in mono alone means missing out on some of the pedal’s most infectious sounds. While square, sine, sawtooth, and random waveforms sound particularly exciting here, the other waveform types bubble and percolate all over the stereo field, often sounding percussive in optical mode and woozy in harmonic settings. Maximum depth settings sound particularly immersive. You can also enhance the effects of a dramatic stereo spread by equalizing your two amps differently. I boosted the bass and removed most of the treble from a black-panel Fender and did the inverse with a Vox-style amp for my stereo experiments. The resulting combination of detailed pick attack, strong transients, and peaky top-end popping over a fat, rubbery foundation sounded liquid and surreal—even with the pronounced treble peaks in the mix—making an already basically rich tremolo voice sound extra three-dimensional. By the way, yes, I tried the “How Soon Is Now” riff through a stereo setup. And yep, it sounded fantastic.
The Verdict
At $279, you will want to ask yourself how much tremolo you intend to use before you invest in the Monumental. There are certainly simpler ways to swamp-rock. The Monumental also lives at the more expensive end of its category—coming in a little pricier than pedals like the Keeley Hydra and the crazy-feature-rich EHX Super Pulsar. But there’s no contesting the high quality of this USA-made pedal or the thoughtful way the sounds within were conceived. And studio rats and texture obsessives that love the sensation of swimming in a stereo field may find the Monumental worth every penny.
Walrus Audio Monumental Stereo Harmonic Tap Tremolo - Orange
The body shape of this 6-string seems surprisingly ergonomic, but that perception changes when you hold its neck!
And so it goes that I pondered this proliferation of Virgos and Libras, and my hypothesis came into focus. Were we all the result of our parents’ Christmas and New Year’s celebrations?! I have to say, there was a camaraderie discovered among my fellow party babies when I presented my findings to them. Now, being born in the early ’70s also had me thinking of the culture of the times. Hippie life was fading as young people started to realize they had to get a job, and alas, long hair and beards were being replaced by staid 9-to-5 gigs that could slowly suck the life out of you. So, given the cultural mores of that era, I thought that this month I should write about the Sorrento Swinger.
“Hippie life was fading as young people started to realize they had to get a job.”
Born around 1967—maybe in September—these Swingers hailed from the “crazy” design period of the Kawai Co. Kawai produced some of the coolest guitar designs from 1967 to ’69, and there were some very creative guitar designers there on the job. Kawai had poached some of the finest employees from the wreckage of the Shinko Gakki factory (Pleasant, Intermark, etc.) and through the purchase of the Teisco brand. In this era, Kawai usually used three different standard pickups and they all sound great, plus the units are always wired in series, which is just awesome.
For a 25-buck, Japan-made guitar from the ’70s, the Swinger has an elite-looking headstock—and, on this example, most of its tuners.
Now, the Swinger (and similar Kawai-made guitars) came from an era where U.S. importers would order small batches of instruments that were often unique and extremely gonzo. The guitars might have been destined for medium-sized music stores or direct-order catalogs, but whatever the case, the importer usually gave the guitars names. In this instance, it was Jack Westheimer who featured this model as an “exclusive” design. In Westheimer Corporation catalogs from the time, the Swinger carried the A-2T model name (there was another one-pickup model called the A-1) and sold wholesale for $25 in 1967! As the catalog mentioned, these were “priced for the teenaged trade.” This particular guitar featured the Sorrento badge, and was sold through some sort of music store that’s probably long out of business, but all the Swingers were the same.
The Swinger’s large mahogany neck (sans truss rod) is robust and beefy in all the nicest ways. Like, when I was a kid, I was considered a “husky” fit. That’s this neck: husky! The striped pickguard is a Teisco holdover and the controls are as simple as it gets. Two knobs (volume, tone) and two pickup selectors is all there is, but the beauty is in the body. That lower bout is shaped like some sort of 1969 lounge chair. The strap pin is totally in the wrong place, but the big bottom swoop is worth it. Yep, the Swinger was ready to bring in the dawn of the 1970s, but alas, the guitar came and went in a blink.
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