Gain at your feet

[hydro]

This may be a stupid question, but does anyone know of a gain/OD pedal that has a wah-like treadle?

Like a volume pedal, but at heel position it would be at unity gain; at toe position, some max threshhold of gain/overdrive.

I realize people do stuff like this by using their volume knob or volume pedal to clean up from some max gain setting X to X-Y. So this is more like an ergonomics thing. Imagine a tube screamer with the drive knob hooked to an expression pedal, for example.

 

[blueman335]

Re: Gain at your feet

Like you said, players use volume to add or reduce gain. I personally see no appeal to a pedal that adds gain as you step in it wah-wah style. Never saw one that did that, so they're can't be much demand. And they make pedals for everything these days.

 

[hydro]

Re: Gain at your feet

I guess the idea would be, rather than a binary stomp box to add gain to your signal, it would be graduated. Basically like the preamp gain knob on an amp's dirt channel, but on a foot pedal. I see your point, nonetheless I am surprised no one makes a pedal that does this, considering all the other wacko pedals out there.

I think Morley makes a volume pedal with an adjustable min. volume. I guess if you calibrated your clean sound around that baseline you could accomplish the same thing.

 

[Falloffthebonetone]

Re: Gain at your feet

Not too bad of an idea. I'm sure someone could use it effectively.

 

[Hank-]

Re: Gain at your feet

Its harder to do in analog world. Would need dual pot things to counter the volume increase with gain increase.

There is the source audio soundblox 2 multiwave distortion pedal that allows expression pedal input to control a particular parameter. One of the ernieball volume might do it too. It can be done on a mfx unit like fractal, boss gt, l6 hd/helix/m(?), etc. Its fun when you want to gradually change the gain level without affecting the volume level.

 

[PFDarkside]

Re: Gain at your feet

Not sure if they are made anymore.

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/amplifiers-effects/tone-in-progress-third-hand-expression-pedal

 

[BriGuy1968]

Re: Gain at your feet

Its harder to do in analog world. Would need dual pot things to counter the volume increase with gain increase.

There is the source audio soundblox 2 multiwave distortion pedal that allows expression pedal input to control a particular parameter. One of the ernieball volume might do it too. It can be done on a mfx unit like fractal, boss gt, l6 hd/helix/m(?), etc. Its fun when you want to gradually change the gain level without affecting the volume level.

I have an old Digitech RPx 400 that will allow me to assign the pedal to amp gain, but my Line 6 Pod HD400 won't do it. Hank- pointed out the problem spot on... the volume difference was so great between the two that it was unusable. I wouldn't mind a little rise in volume... I'd even welcome it! But this was too much. Of course, I was trying to go from clean to very dirty with it... I'm sure it would be closer if you were trying to go from clean to slightly dirty, or between two levels of dirty (say from 50% to 70%). I was looking for a way to smoothly transition (while still using both hands to play) from clean tones to distortion without the sudden jump that comes along with a pedal button, but this wasn't quite there. I ended up giving up at the time, but I'd still be interested in hearing whether or not you're able to find anything.

 

[DrNewcenstein]

Re: Gain at your feet

The Line6 M13 can take expression pedals, which can be set up to affect gain of dirt pedals. You can set a min and max value, as well as all the other knobs in the pedal, so heel-down could be your rhythm gain with one Drive, Level, and Tone setting, and toe-down have your max Drive, maybe a bit less bass, and a different Level. So in that respect, it's a bit like doubling the potential number of pedals in any patch, especially on the more feature-laden pedals (separate hi/low EQs, etc).

 

[MojoMonster]

Re: Gain at your feet

This may be a stupid question, but does anyone know of a gain/OD pedal that has a wah-like treadle?

Moog Minifoogers all have an expression pedal in. OD is the Drive pedal.

 

[jimijames]

Re: Gain at your feet

So, this is similar to a pedal that I'm planning to build soon, except that the treadle will control volume and gain is controlled via the volume knob. Volume pedals are very popular, but for reasons mentioned earlier it's difficult to control gain in a linear fashion with a treadle.

 

[hydro]

Re: Gain at your feet

Yeah I kind of envisioned it as a volume pedal on steroids, where at some point it really acts like a slightly dirty boost. The chief advantage would be to keep your hands on the strings and off your volume knob, and maybe give some different expression possibilities.

 

[blueman335]

Re: Gain at your feet

The chief advantage would be to keep your hands on the strings and off your volume knob

Some players are constantly adjusting their volume and tone knobs, and it doesn't really slow down their playing. There's plenty of opportunities to do that as they let notes sustain.

 

[hydro]

Re: Gain at your feet

Yes but the key there is that those players are a lot better than I am.

 

[ehdwuld]

Re: Gain at your feet

I think there should be versions of every pedal with treadle control of their main effects

 

[Chickenwings]

Re: Gain at your feet

I guess the idea would be, rather than a binary stomp box to add gain to your signal, it would be graduated. Basically like the preamp gain knob on an amp's dirt channel, but on a foot pedal. I see your point, nonetheless I am surprised no one makes a pedal that does this, considering all the other wacko pedals out there.

I think Morley makes a volume pedal with an adjustable min. volume. I guess if you calibrated your clean sound around that baseline you could accomplish the same thing.

yep.
You will get different results if you use a passive volume or an active volume. An active volume like the morley will give you a more predictable and even graduation due to its low impedance, where a passive one like the ernie ball will act a lot more like a guitar's volume pot with the subsequent darkening of the tone as you roll back the volume.

It does surprise me that there is nothing on the market tho. However the advantage of using a volume pedal is that you can choose your favourite flavour of overdrive(s) whether it is in pedal format or even the gain channel on your amp.

 

[Rich_S]

Re: Gain at your feet

I recently modded a pair of Mad Professor Little Green Wonders for a friend of mine, adding an expression jack so he could plug in a standard Boss expression pedal to replace the LGW's volume control. When you unplug the expression pedal, the LGW goes back to normal. The same could be done with a gain control.

I'm about to build myself a Rat in a Cry Baby shell, it will be a volume pedal whether the Rat part is turned on or not.

 

[Securb]

Re: Gain at your feet

Moog Minifoogers all have an expression pedal in. OD is the Drive pedal.

The MOOG is a great pedal I have one. However, the expression pedal controls the filter which works as a notch filter. When you use it with an expression pedal it works like a wah. The Source Audio Classic Distortion Pro allows you to assign the expression pedal to two different presets. You could have two identical distortions one having more gain or with a different EQ curve and sweep between the two of them. Or you could go with two distinct tones like a fuzz and a creamy overdrive and sweep from one to the other. It is a digital unit but side by side with my analog units there is no difference in tone. In most cases the Classic Distortion Pro sounds better. The unit has a built in 7 band EQ and a noise gate and will nail anything from a Big Muff to a TS and even do classic amp overdrives.

 

[Gone_Shootin]

Re: Gain at your feet

I recently modded a pair of Mad Professor Little Green Wonders for a friend of mine, adding an expression jack so he could plug in a standard Boss expression pedal to replace the LGW's volume control. When you unplug the expression pedal, the LGW goes back to normal. The same could be done with a gain control.

I'm about to build myself a Rat in a Cry Baby shell, it will be a volume pedal whether the Rat part is turned on or not.

Wouldn't be too hard for the OP to do something like that but wire up the pedal's pot in place of the gain knob instead of volume.

 

[chadd]

Re: Gain at your feet

So, this is similar to a pedal that I'm planning to build soon, except that the treadle will control volume and gain is controlled via the volume knob. Volume pedals are very popular, but for reasons mentioned earlier it's difficult to control gain in a linear fashion with a treadle.

Couldn't you place a compressor or limiter of some type after the dirt pedal to keep your volume at roughly the same level?

 

[jimijames]

Re: Gain at your feet

Couldn't you place a compressor or limiter of some type after the dirt pedal to keep your volume at roughly the same level?

Absolutely you could - and really that's what you'd have to do to make it work.

I guess it would be more accurate to say that a volume neutral gain control is difficult to implement within a distortion pedal, but if you add a compressor/limiter it's possible.

My bad for the misstatement.