The Caroline Guitar Co. Parabola Pawnshop Edition is an incredibly lush and perfect sounding higher gain preamp-assisted, amp-style tremolo pedal

Caroline Guitar CompanyModulationTremolo

I had kind of overlooked the Caroline Guitar Co. modulation pedals for a while, where the one that had always interested me the most was the Arigato Phaser – which took me a while to get to for whatever reason! I eventually landed that one near the start of this month!

I was so impressed with the Arigato – Phaser / Vibrato / Vibe that I decided that I should go for all 3 of the Caroline Modulation pedals – Arigato Phaser, Parabola Tremolo, and Somersault Lo-Fi Modulator.

One of my readers – Joe said I should definitely go for the Pawnshop edition which delivers more of Magnatone feel with a higher-gain preamp section vs the standard Parabola. I wasn’t going to go for that until the following month – but there weren’t many around with shipping to the UK. And so I sprung for one of those this month too. The Somersault was also supposed to be a later acquisition – but someone gave me a deal on one of those rare Black and Lavender editions – and so I snapped up that one also – albeit that won’t arrive until June.

I had only intended to feature the Arigato this month – but the Parabola arrived in good time – and it made sense to cover that one also per this article.

Caroline’s Philippe has such a good ear for tone, and he makes wonderful sounding pedals that are effortless to deploy – and always sound superb. We’re 2 for 2 now on the modulations – and I have to assume that the Somersault will be equally brilliant. That brings my Caroline Pedals total to 6!

I have going on for 40 tremolos now in my reference collection, but the Parabola is still a standout within that category – it doesn’t have the extended waveform coverage and expansive feature set of some of my other ones – but is sounds consistently superb. I love the classic Amplitude voicing – and the Filter option give you a slightly subtler different take with a slightly different character.

Generally though I operate mostly on the Amplitude side of things, and I love being able to ramp up the Speed and Intensity with the second Havoc footswitch. It’s a really smartly thought out pedal – and the extra gain oomph in the preamp section makes it a really worthy acquisition. So many of my favourite modulations and delays have notable preamp sections that add warmth and richness to those pedals’ outputs. Friend Joe was definitely right to recommend the Pawnshop edition – and I’m delighted I managed to snag one with relative ease. I’m not sure any were ever available this side of the pond – I think they were mostly a USA-based special edition.

Controls – Volume, Gain, Mode : Filtered / Amplitude, Range : Fast / Slow, Depth, Speed, Bypass Footswitch (Momentary + Latching), Havoc Footswitch (Max Depth & Speed).

The recommended starter positions are pretty decent – per the above recommended presets.

I just played it by ear really to settle on – Volume, Depth and Speed @ 2 o’c, Gain @ 9 o’c, Mode : Amplitude, and Range : Slow. The Havoc footswitch works brilliantly with those settings – and you get a moderate pulse as a default – with a more intense trill when you hit the second footswitch – it really works brilliantly for me.

This is a beautifully simple and elegant tremolo, I would possibly have preferred Harmonic as the second mode, but the Filtered option sounds pretty decent too – a sightly different timbre and more subtle than the Amplitude voicing – but it has its own advantages – depending also on which gain pedals are engaged upstream!

There’s still a handful of Pawnshop Parabolas on Reverb.com. When I looked first – there was only a couple with reasonable shipping to the UK. And now there’s just Sound Shoppe NYC, I bought mine from Chicago Music Exchange – which has always been reliable for me!.

I don’t believe there’s many Pawnshop Parabolas still in circulation – but those I’ve seen are all still new and going for $219 – they’re well worth seeking out. Long since sold out on the Caroline Guitar site – while you can read up more about both the Standard and Pawnshop versions there!