Caroline Parabola Solid State Tremolo

PARABOLA™ is the sonic equivalent of riding your space mammoth through giant puddles in the astral plane while feeding it extra-caffeinated energy drinks.

Think of this as your rig’s new “tremolo channel”. Caroline adapted the deliciously sloshy, transistor-based LFO and distinctive waveform from their favorite “West German” device, modified its speed and depth ranges to match and go beyond those of your favorite classic amps, and then added pre and post effect gain stages for both overdrive and volume boost. Then they offer the classic, dramatic amplitude modulation (AM) you might expect, or a filtered frequency-based modulation (FM) that is subtle, beautiful, and less invasive on your playing.

In this pedal, Havoc™ increases the speed and depth of the effect. To give your effect a little juice, hit it and hold it down, then release to come back to your settings. Or, leave the depth all the way off, and hit Havoc for momentary bursts of tremolo.

Designer’s note: "One of the things that I’m most excited about with Parabola is the sound quality. I loved how the old Schaller TR-68’s transistor based oscillator and feel had a wonderful, very “Wim Wenders/Hal Hartley early days of indie film soundtracks” vibe. But the originals had some issues. The input would get loaded down a lot, and there was a definite volume drop when you’d use the effect. As a result, they were great to record with – you’d adjust your EQ to work with the constraints – but live use could be tough, and that’s before we even get to the very bunched up potentiometer tapers or limited speed ranges.

So with improved input impedance and gain staging, we’ve been able to recapture the lush sound that I loved about the originals, but give you plenty of first stage gain AND a second stage volume boost, keep it entirely analog and transistor based, and maintain that sound and vibe that may not be for everyone, but is something I find specific and beautiful. The speed ranges have been improved to go from AC-30TM style slow speeds to faster than Fender® “Silverface" levels of fast, the depth control actually does cool things before 3:00, and the AM/FM modes have to be heard to be believed."