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Suede·Social·Issue No. 20
Tone recipes·2026 · JUL
Rock1984

01The Smiths

How Soon Is Now?

The famous 'helicopter' tremolo — multiple guitars playing the same shimmering open chord through Fender amps with synchronized tremolo at high depth. Each guitar's tremolo is set to a slightly different speed, then they're tape-synced manually. The effect is a wide, pulsing shimmer that sounds like one giant guitar. Underneath, a slide guitar plays the bluesy hook. Marr layered up to 8 guitar tracks for this one song.

02Signal chain

Guitar to amp, 2 pedals between.

  1. In
    Guitar

    Fender Telecaster (multiple tracked guitars)

  2. 01
    The defining helicopter effect
    Fender Twin Reverb's built-in tremolo

    Speed: ~4Hz, Depth: maxed

  3. 02
    Used in the studio to chop the trem more aggressively
    Drawmer noise gates
  4. Out
    Amp

    Fender Twin Reverb (tremolo channel)

03Field note

The secret sauce

Each tremolo'd guitar is tuned to a slightly different open chord (D, F#m, A). When they're layered, the harmonic shimmer doesn't repeat — it spirals. A single guitar with one tremolo can never duplicate this.