The Kittycaster FX Tremdriver is a high headroom (and high-quality, selling at $399!) preamp + harmonic tremolo combo built by Jean Mastaler and her small Portland, OR-based team. The company offers another pedal with a similar layout and structure, called Groovy Wizard Fuzz Driver.
With its combination of vintage all-discrete circuit blocks, the Tremdriver was designed to sound like the classic ’70s big wall-powered preamps and should be placed towards the end of your pedal chain, to interact closely with your amp. It employs three EP-3 style JFET preamps running at 24 volts on the preamp side of the circuit and specially voiced Univibe LFO circuits for the harmonic tremolo.
Notwisthading its name, the Drive knob won’t generate overdrive (guitar preamps aren’t supposed to, anyway) but will add gain to your tone as a clean boost.
Check out the first demos of it, below.
Kittycaster FX Tremdriver, Builder’s Notes
Tremdriver is a high headroom preamp that makes any rig sound bigger and better combined with a foot-switchable harmonic tremolo that gives you amazingly lush and swirly pulses. Designed to run towards the end of your pedal chain, the Drive and Output controls puts you in clean boost heaven. Then switch on the harmonic tremolo mode, adjust the Speed from a slow pulse to a quick quiver, and prepare to be mesmerized for hours!
Tremdriver combines three EP-3 style JFET preamps running at 24 volts with specially voiced Univibe LFO circuits to create its unique magic. Its novel combination of vintage all-discrete circuit blocks was conjured to create a new pedal that sounds and feels like the classic ’70s big wall-powered unit that never was. Don’t worry though, it comes in a pedalboard-friendly custom enclosure and runs off of a standard 9-volt power supply so you can get that huge vintage sound without having to have a huge vintage unit on top of your amp.
It’s like a mastering plug-in for your pedalboard!
