Residual and tropical soils are particulate materials with a wide range of particle sizes. Usually these geomaterials have a fine particle matrix containing dispersed rigid inclusions that affect their mechanical behavior. This paper presents experimental results showing the influence of rigid inclusions on the shear wave velocity (V-s, or S-wave velocity) and small strain shear modulus (G(max)) of a residual soil. Load tests under zero lateral displacement were performed with simultaneous measurements of V-s in mixtures of a residual soil with different amounts of steel spherical inclusions. The results show that specimens with a volume fraction of rigid inclusion equal to 70% have a V-s up to 250% higher than the same soil without inclusions when tested at close-to-zero effective vertical stress. This increase reduces to 150% when the effective vertical stress is over 400 kPa. Also, increasing the effective stress applied from 0 to 400 kPa raises V-s 200% and 350% for high and low volume fractions of rigid inclusions, respectively. The results enabled the influence of both inclusion volume and effective stress on the G(max) of residual soils to be quantified. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.