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Volume pedal questions

1/5/2000 3:26 PM
frank	Volume pedal questions Hi, I’m looking to get a volume pedal, and was hoping someone could give me a quick tutorial on what’s out there and what’s worth looking for/avoiding. I’m looking for something passive (no batteries) since I don’t need a volume boost – just want to do volume swells and such. Stereo outs aren’t important but a tuner out might be nice. Do volume pedals in general muck with your tone, or do they pass it cleanly enough? I’m not a true-bypass junkie, but I do hear and dislike the tone-sucking abilities of really bad bypasses (wahs, Big Muffs, etc). Also, I’m planning on getting a Line6 modulation modeler and was hoping to use the volume pedal for controlling the speed of the effects. Can a passive volume pedal be used in this application, or does it need something different? If so, what DOES it need? Thanks for your help, Frank

1/5/2000 3:26 PM

frank

Volume pedal questions

Hi, I’m looking to get a volume pedal, and was hoping someone could give me a quick tutorial on what’s out there and what’s worth looking for/avoiding.

I’m looking for something passive (no batteries) since I don’t need a volume boost – just want to do volume swells and such. Stereo outs aren’t important but a tuner out might be nice. Do volume pedals in general muck with your tone, or do they pass it cleanly enough? I’m not a true-bypass junkie, but I do hear and dislike the tone-sucking abilities of really bad bypasses (wahs, Big Muffs, etc).

Also, I’m planning on getting a Line6 modulation modeler and was hoping to use the volume pedal for controlling the speed of the effects. Can a passive volume pedal be used in this application, or does it need something different? If so, what DOES it need?

Thanks for your help,

Frank

1/5/2000 4:37 PM
Mark Hammer	Wise choice of a volume pedal depends on your intended use. If you like to use your volume pedal in a set-and-forget manner, then the needs are somewhat less demanding. If you intend to use your volume pedal actively, for swell, backwards tape or pedal steel effects, then you will want someting that stands up a bit better, results in longer periods of clean scratch-free use, and provides good physical feedback. Opinions vary, but I suspect that the physical feel of a pedal plays a role in coordinating one's use of it, much the same way that keyboardists play differently on cheesy plastic keyboards than they do on a properly weighted piano mechanism. The Ernie Ball and Goodrich volume pedals are considered by many to be the top of the line. The Ernie Ball uses a regular pot but uses a cable-and-pulleys arrangement to turn the pot, identical to the cable-and-pulleys arrangement used by many non-digital radio tuners. The Goodrich uses an optical system. Both tend to result in smoother volume swells and less pot-noise. In the case of the Ernie Ball, the reduction in pot noise is simply because the pedal mechanism is more indirectly coupled to the pot than the more standard rack and pinion gear mechanism (standard on wahs) is. In the case of the Goodrich, there IS no pot. The Goodrich, being and active system, needs batteries. I'm partial to the Ernie Ball because the physical feedback it provides permits extremely smooth swells and encourages active use of the voume pedal. The Goodrich, I am less familiar with. Other contenders include these: 1) Roland/BOSS made a potless Hall effect pedal. The Hall effect refers to the production of a voltage as a magnet comes in proximity with the circuit. This pedal simply moved a magnet as you sweep the pedal, hence no pot noise. Not familiar with this one, but the size of it (small) suggests to me that the physical feedback aspect will be wanting. I may be dead wrong, though. Active. Requires batteries. 2) Craig Anderton published a "volume pedal retrofit" circuit in GP many years ago (reprinted in his last DIY Projects book, and scans are likely available on the net) that used the existing volume pot in standard commercial pedals to control a VCA. The additional circuitry smoothed out the volume swell so that even if the pot was scratchy, you wouldn't hear it. I built a stereo one for a buddy who wanted to pan between synths, and it worked fine. Relatively quiet. Needs batteries. Regardless of whatever pedal you might get, it is generally preferred that the pot be a relatively high value. Something at least as high as your guitar's volume pots (250-500k) or higher (1M) would be desirable to prevent high end loss and overall signal loss. If the music store doesn't know, you can always bring a meter, stick a patch cord in the input and measure the DC resistance between input and output. It's possible the full depression of the pedal does not result in rotating the pot ALL the way to the end, but at least you'll have an idea (e.g., if full "on" reads 410k, it's probably a nominally 500k pot). Also bear in mind that simple volume pots can be tapered to provide different and custom tailored "feels". For this, I suggest you look at the papers on pots at either RG Keen's GEOFEX site, or the one at Jack Orman's AMZ site. Finally, people generally don't like single pot passive systems because they lose a bit of high end as you turn down. This can be partially remedied the same way it is on Fender guitars and amps, via a small value bypass capacitor between input and wiper on the pot. From your desire to have a tuner out, you might be better served by wiring up your own circuit and installing it. Alternatively, stick a transformer or active splitter ahead of the pedal. Passive pedals (and the Ernie Ball one is too) tend to benefit by having some buffering ahead of them anyways. Best of luck. Hope you find a keeper.

1/5/2000 4:37 PM

Mark Hammer

Wise choice of a volume pedal depends on your intended use. If you like to use your volume pedal in a set-and-forget manner, then the needs are somewhat less demanding. If you intend to use your volume pedal actively, for swell, backwards tape or pedal steel effects, then you will want someting that stands up a bit better, results in longer periods of clean scratch-free use, and provides good physical feedback. Opinions vary, but I suspect that the physical feel of a pedal plays a role in coordinating one's use of it, much the same way that keyboardists play differently on cheesy plastic keyboards than they do on a properly weighted piano mechanism.

The Ernie Ball and Goodrich volume pedals are considered by many to be the top of the line. The Ernie Ball uses a regular pot but uses a cable-and-pulleys arrangement to turn the pot, identical to the cable-and-pulleys arrangement used by many non-digital radio tuners. The Goodrich uses an optical system. Both tend to result in smoother volume swells and less pot-noise. In the case of the Ernie Ball, the reduction in pot noise is simply because the pedal mechanism is more indirectly coupled to the pot than the more standard rack and pinion gear mechanism (standard on wahs) is. In the case of the Goodrich, there IS no pot. The Goodrich, being and active system, needs batteries. I'm partial to the Ernie Ball because the physical feedback it provides permits extremely smooth swells and encourages active use of the voume pedal. The Goodrich, I am less familiar with.

Other contenders include these:
1) Roland/BOSS made a potless Hall effect pedal. The Hall effect refers to the production of a voltage as a magnet comes in proximity with the circuit. This pedal simply moved a magnet as you sweep the pedal, hence no pot noise. Not familiar with this one, but the size of it (small) suggests to me that the physical feedback aspect will be wanting. I may be dead wrong, though. Active. Requires batteries.

2) Craig Anderton published a "volume pedal retrofit" circuit in GP many years ago (reprinted in his last DIY Projects book, and scans are likely available on the net) that used the existing volume pot in standard commercial pedals to control a VCA. The additional circuitry smoothed out the volume swell so that even if the pot was scratchy, you wouldn't hear it. I built a stereo one for a buddy who wanted to pan between synths, and it worked fine. Relatively quiet. Needs batteries.

Regardless of whatever pedal you might get, it is generally preferred that the pot be a relatively high value. Something at least as high as your guitar's volume pots (250-500k) or higher (1M) would be desirable to prevent high end loss and overall signal loss. If the music store doesn't know, you can always bring a meter, stick a patch cord in the input and measure the DC resistance between input and output. It's possible the full depression of the pedal does not result in rotating the pot ALL the way to the end, but at least you'll have an idea (e.g., if full "on" reads 410k, it's probably a nominally 500k pot).

Also bear in mind that simple volume pots can be tapered to provide different and custom tailored "feels". For this, I suggest you look at the papers on pots at either RG Keen's GEOFEX site, or the one at Jack Orman's AMZ site.

Finally, people generally don't like single pot passive systems because they lose a bit of high end as you turn down. This can be partially remedied the same way it is on Fender guitars and amps, via a small value bypass capacitor between input and wiper on the pot.

From your desire to have a tuner out, you might be better served by wiring up your own circuit and installing it. Alternatively, stick a transformer or active splitter ahead of the pedal. Passive pedals (and the Ernie Ball one is too) tend to benefit by having some buffering ahead of them anyways.

Best of luck. Hope you find a keeper.

1/5/2000 6:55 PM
Preben Hansen	I can add the following to Mark's comments on volume-pedals: Go to Stellan Lehrberg's site, he has documentation for: The Craig Anderton Cleaning up your volume article, and The Ibanez Stereo volume/ballance pedal. Preben Hansen

1/6/2000 11:31 AM
paul perry	A very cheap and very very quiet one is the George Denning optical one from Europe.

1/6/2000 6:47 PM
SpeedRacer	FWIW I use the passive BOSS pedal with the pre-set pot on the side (you can pre-set the range of the pedal which is very helpful) No batteries, no tonal-degredation IMHO, and it's worked reliably for nearly 8 years now I think.. most of those gigging 4-5 nights a week.. It's all plastic, but has held up very well. No scratches on the pots (I've never needed to clean it). It's not perfect for volume swells, but I use the strat's vol knob for that anyhow.

1/6/2000 6:47 PM

SpeedRacer

FWIW I use the passive BOSS pedal with the pre-set pot on the side (you can pre-set the range of the pedal which is very helpful) No batteries, no tonal-degredation IMHO, and it's worked reliably for nearly 8 years now I think.. most of those gigging 4-5 nights a week.. It's all plastic, but has held up very well. No scratches on the pots (I've never needed to clean it). It's not perfect for volume swells, but I use the strat's vol knob for that anyhow.

1/6/2000 7:13 PM
Mark Hammer	Many, many, MANY moons ago (more than 250 by my count), I used to use the EH Hot Foot as my volume pedal. This was a foot controller pedal using the same mechanism as all other EH sweepable pedals, but with a flexible shaft attached to the pot shaft in the pedal. You could secure the free end of the flexible shaft to any other pot, so that as you moved the foot mechanism, you could turn a pot somewhere else. I suspect EH was thinking in terms of marrying it to the Memory Man (or so their ads indicated), but I stuck mine onto the output volume control of my compressor, and used that as my volume pedal. The nice thing was that it could go from inaudible to overdrive, which was kinda cool.

1/6/2000 7:13 PM

Mark Hammer

Many, many, MANY moons ago (more than 250 by my count), I used to use the EH Hot Foot as my volume pedal. This was a foot controller pedal using the same mechanism as all other EH sweepable pedals, but with a flexible shaft attached to the pot shaft in the pedal. You could secure the free end of the flexible shaft to any other pot, so that as you moved the foot mechanism, you could turn a pot somewhere else. I suspect EH was thinking in terms of marrying it to the Memory Man (or so their ads indicated), but I stuck mine onto the output volume control of my compressor, and used that as my volume pedal. The nice thing was that it could go from inaudible to overdrive, which was kinda cool.

1/7/2000 12:36 PM
paul perry	CAn anyone think of an easy way to make a pedal to flexible drive to turn any knob by foot, like Mark Hammer said?

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