Danelectro Tuna Melt Review — Forty Dollars, Looks Dumb, Wins

It’s called the Tuna Melt. It’s bright yellow. It’s named after a sandwich, it costs forty dollars, and it just beat a Boss on this very site. Here’s why that’s not the upset it sounds like: the Tuna Melt is a Boss. For all practical purposes, it’s a TR-2 in a cheaper (and much sillier) coat — the same tremolo, cloned.

The Not-So-Secret

Look at the controls and the whole thing gives itself away. Speed, Depth, and a Hard/Soft switch — which is the TR-2’s Rate, Depth, and Wave wearing different labels. Put them side by side and your ears confirm what your wallet suspects: this is the TR-2’s tremolo, doing the TR-2’s job, for a third of the money. Same smooth-to-choppy sweep, same amp-style throb. Danelectro didn’t reinvent tremolo. They cloned a great one and sold it for lunch money.

Let’s Address the Looks

It looks ridiculous. Fluorescent yellow, cartoon shape, “Tuna Melt” in a goofy font. And that plastic enclosure is the only real flaw — which is why people who know rip the guts out and rehouse them in a proper box. Full disclosure: I own several Tuna Melts, and one is on the bench getting rehoused as I write this. You don’t rehouse a bad pedal. You rehouse a good circuit that showed up in a clown suit.

Bottom Line

The Tuna Melt grades a 30 out of 36 — top of the Master segment — and yes, that’s higher than the Boss it copied, and yes, we meant it. This is exactly what “no sponsor’s thumb on the scale” looks like: it delivers the same beloved tremolo as the institution, sounds like it because it basically is it, and costs a third as much. Not a 33 — it invented nothing; it borrowed a great circuit. But it borrowed it faithfully and priced it like a rounding error, and value that loud earns a 30 and a seat at the grown-ups’ table. Ugly, cheap, and correct.

Cash Rules Everything Around Gear. The forty-dollar clone is the proof.

Discontinued. Find a Tuna Melt on Reverb.

Built something too. Fretsmith — the reference I actually use on the bench: verified specs, string tension, setup calculators. No accounts, no subscriptions, one-time purchase. The pedals plug into a guitar. Somebody has to know what the guitar needs.