Is it Tremolo or Vibrato? Which is Which?

A Floyd Rose style bridge. Is this a tremolo or vibrato?

Admit it. At one time or another, you’ve asked this question of yourself. Whether decades ago or this morning, the question is still relevant and to some extent the root of the question lies at the feet of departed genius innovator Clarence Leonidas Fender.

Look at any Fender ad today. They’re hard to miss, Fender is a marketing machine. Many Fender guitars have an arm device attached to the bridge that for the moment we will call the Whammy bar, or Wiggle Stick. Fender calls it the Tremolo arm. This would be beautiful if it wasn’t incorrect.

My point is not poke Fender. Leo Fender transformed guitars and with great respect all around, basically created the electric guitar as we know it. You can correctly argue that Leo was not the first maker of an electric guitar, nor the inventor of the magnetic pickup. His company built amplifiers long before the first Broadcaster. What Leo Fender did was build electric guitars that were easy to play, simple to use, lightweight, portable and cost effective. That Leo wanted to make guitars for players of different styles of music than where Fender is strongest today is not a flaw, it’s evidence that he did such a good job, the electric guitar evolved in ways even he did not expect.

Now that I have finished trumpeting the genius of Leo Fender, let’s get to the point. We will start with some clear definitions.

Tremolo

The sound that we should know as tremolo is a variation of the amplitude of the volume signal over time. This variation may be consistent in that the sine wave pattern does not change in amplitude or displacement, but does not have to be. Our experience however, with an effects pedal or an amplifier with a tremolo circuit is that the wave is predictable by controlling the intensity (amplitude) and speed (displacement). It’s kind of a throbbing sort of sound that you know when you hear it. It can be wonderful or migraine inducing depending on how it is used and how the listener reacts to it. The critical thing here is that the pitch of the tone does not change, only the volume changes.

Vibrato

The sound that we know as vibrato is a change in pitch, a variation of the frequency signal over time. For simplest example, take your whammy equipped guitar, hit an E chord and then press down on the bar. The frequency drops and as you return the bar to neutral position, the frequency returns to its normal position. The duration of the bar down defines the time scale and the amount of frequency change is dependent on the amount of bar movement. Pedals and amplifiers that do true vibrato will use circuits to cause this frequency variation repeatedly over and interval determined by another control typically called Speed.

In an Amplifier

Fender amplifiers are often advertised and even labeled as having Vibrato. There are a host of famous Fender amps whose names start with Vibro, such as the Vibrolux and Vibro King amongst others. Fender’s current advertising text correctly refers to the vibro function as tremolo, but this has not always been the case. Those vibrato indicated amplifiers do not do vibrato, they instead offer a very flexible tremolo, although different makers have altered the speed range to permit slower and faster tremolo rates.

Magnatone amplifiers, which are enjoying a resurgence had an actual and unique Vibrato option. When engaged, this function actually changed the pitch over time on a user controlled cycle as to how much pitch change how often occurs. It is a very different tone, and very special. There are Vibe pedals of course, but with a couple of exceptions, I have not heard many that bring that awesome Magnatone vibrato to the player who is not using a Magnatone amplifier with their internal stereo vibrato.

Non-Fender Options

As noted elsewhere, the Fender implementation is decent for limited pitch down, and not so hot for pitch up. To provide a more capable solution to those who really need to wango tango on the arm, there is the Floyd Rose system, built specifically to help those users. The other very common option comes from the design work of Paul Bigsby. There are many different designs of the Bigsby system, but all are vibrato systems. Bigsbys have a reputation for being detuning devices, but a well set up guitar and a properly set up Bigsby don’t have to drive the guitar out of tune on first press. They do down better than up, but that is a friction issue as noted in the Back to the Arm section below. Restringing a guitar with the pin style Bigsbys has driven musicians to drink. That said, they look really cool.

Use Cases

We hear tremolo fairly often in early California style surf music, because Fender amps tended to rule the roost there. Vibrato was less evident until the Univibe pedal although its tone was not like a Magnatone Vibrato and was also most often heavily distorted. You play the way you want, I find that distorted versions of either effect quite annoying. A nice subtle vibrato adds width and depth to a single player’s lines although you can speed it up if you prefer to induce nausea. Your music, your decision.

Effects Pedals

As you expect there are effects pedals that can be used to deliver both tremolo and vibrato effects. As also expected, there are lots of them. The Boss TR-2 is a widely used and inexpensive tremolo pedal. The Memphis from Crazy Tube Circuits is a pedal implementation of the Magnatone vibrato and I think it’s brilliant.

Back to the Arm

Whatever you want to call that arm on the guitar, if your guitar has one, it is performing user managed vibrato. The very subtle pitch change in a line that you hear from Jeff Beck is vibrato. Grabbing the arm and giving it a shake is vibrato. Dive bombs are pitch shifts without the pitch going up and down, so not really vibrato. The Floyd Rose system was designed to address tuning stability issues with the Fender design when used aggressively and to allow for pitch up with return to pitch as well as pitch down. We see Floyd Rose bridges and clones on guitars built for players who are going to aggressively use the arm. The Fender system handles pitch down ok, to a limited extent, but pitch up is harder because you have to float the bridge plate and then any friction at the nut or in the string trees makes tuning stability a nightmare. If you look at Jeff Beck’s Strat, you will find a special nut called an LSR Roller Nut, along with perfectly smooth and polished string trees designed only to manage string break angle and to avoid friction. These changes do help in tuning stability of the Fender bridge with an arm. I can validate this because I have a highly customized Strat with these features that has superb tuning stability.

Ending the Wiggle

Thus we recognize that any guitar with a bridge that has an arm that varies pitch has a vibrato arm. A tremolo arm would not touch the strings, it would be attached to the volume control if such a thing existed. Heck, one probably does. Now you know. Does this mean that you need to go around correcting everyone who calls the thing the trem arm? Only if you want to and don’t mind being viewed as a know it all.

Thanks for reading and until next time, peace.