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Topic: Pedal idea, why hasn't someone done this? |
James Mayer
From:
back in Portland Oregon, USA (via Arkansas and London, UK)
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Posted 15 Jul 2008 10:59 pm |
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I would like a panning version of the fender volume/tone reissue pedal. Instead of left/right axis controlling tone, it would control panning between two amps. Boss has a volume/panning pedal, but the pedal only does up/down and not left/right. You have to switch between the two modes.
This would probably be an easy mod to the vol/tone pedal, no? |
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David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
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Posted 15 Jul 2008 11:21 pm
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There are "blend" potentiometers that do what you want, you'd have to open up a Fender pedal and see how to hook up the pot in there. The blend pots tend to be finicky about load, they don't work well without a strong signal.
stewmac.com
Ebay |
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James Mayer
From:
back in Portland Oregon, USA (via Arkansas and London, UK)
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Posted 15 Jul 2008 11:41 pm
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| that blend pot you posted is used to blend the input from two pickups. would it work in reverse? |
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Greg Gefell
From:
Upstate NY
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Posted 16 Jul 2008 7:24 am
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| James, that circuit would be just like a pan pot in a mixing board. I looked into getting a pedal like this built but it was too costly. Apparently there's a lot more electronics needed to do this than you would think. If you figure out a clever way to do it, let us know! |
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Donny Hinson
From:
Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.
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Posted 16 Jul 2008 7:46 am
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Any pot pedal can be easily re-wired to do that. In fact, I wired mine to do that over 30 years ago to get a phasing effect before there were phase-shift pedals!
It's good for a once or twice a night gimmick, but not for steady use, IMHO. The "ping-pong" sound gets old real fast. |
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James Mayer
From:
back in Portland Oregon, USA (via Arkansas and London, UK)
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Posted 17 Jul 2008 6:52 am
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| Donny Hinson wrote: |
Any pot pedal can be easily re-wired to do that. In fact, I wired mine to do that over 30 years ago to get a phasing effect before there were phase-shift pedals!
It's good for a once or twice a night gimmick, but not for steady use, IMHO. The "ping-pong" sound gets old real fast. |
I wouldn't necessarily use it as a "ping pong" effect. I don't have the have the amps separated for a stereo effect. I was thinking more along the lines of panning from dry to wet effects. Think of long flowing lines where you can accent certain notes by simply turning your foot and having distortion or some other effect surface at just the right spot. Endless combinations. |
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James Mayer
From:
back in Portland Oregon, USA (via Arkansas and London, UK)
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Posted 17 Jul 2008 6:54 am
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| Greg Gefell wrote: |
| James, that circuit would be just like a pan pot in a mixing board. I looked into getting a pedal like this built but it was too costly. Apparently there's a lot more electronics needed to do this than you would think. If you figure out a clever way to do it, let us know! |
Look at this musiciansfriend.com
You have to flick a switch to change to "pan" mode, so it's not what I need. But, it doesn't seem like EB thought it was that expensive to build. |
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Greg Gefell
From:
Upstate NY
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Posted 17 Jul 2008 8:46 am
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James - I used to have that pedal. It will technically do what you want but here is the problem I encountered. When you are at either extreme setting (full heel down or full toe down) the output volume to one side or the other is 100%. When you are in the middle though, each output only receives 50% volume. Perhaps this won't be an issue for you but it was a deal breaker for me.
I wanted to crossfade from a distorted signal to a clean signal. Heel down would be full distortion and toe down would be clean. At the midway point I wanted an equal blend of the two. In reality though because the middle was only half of each signal the output volume dropped dramatically and my guitar was too soft.
Perhaps the potentiometers could be swapped for ones with a different log curve where they would overlap better than a linear curve. |
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James Mayer
From:
back in Portland Oregon, USA (via Arkansas and London, UK)
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Posted 17 Jul 2008 12:38 pm
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| Greg Gefell wrote: |
James - I used to have that pedal. It will technically do what you want but here is the problem I encountered. When you are at either extreme setting (full heel down or full toe down) the output volume to one side or the other is 100%. When you are in the middle though, each output only receives 50% volume. Perhaps this won't be an issue for you but it was a deal breaker for me.
I wanted to crossfade from a distorted signal to a clean signal. Heel down would be full distortion and toe down would be clean. At the midway point I wanted an equal blend of the two. In reality though because the middle was only half of each signal the output volume dropped dramatically and my guitar was too soft.
Perhaps the potentiometers could be swapped for ones with a different log curve where they would overlap better than a linear curve. |
Yep, that would be a deal breaker. I suppose it would have to be an active pedal, making it far more expensive to build. |
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Jon Light
From:
Saugerties, NY
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Posted 17 Jul 2008 1:16 pm
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I'm thinking on your thing and will keep considering it but....yes, my experience is that passive 'blend' pots don't cut it.
Side note---I've seen vocalists with two mics---dry and wet. Pretty much full time use of dry while bringing wet in and out for effect. I think I saw a Brazilian woman--maybe Flora Purim--doing that, very effectively. |
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Greg Gefell
From:
Upstate NY
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Posted 18 Jul 2008 5:17 am
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Yup - there's something about the passive approach that just doesn't quite work like you expect/want it to. When I investigated doing this properly my tech said that to do it right it needs to work like a mixing board pan pot. When panned in the middle you get an even blend of left and right signals. This is where the active/buffered circuitry comes in, hence the cost factor I wrote of earlier. I really think a pedal like this could be quite useful though.
Jon - that 2 mic technique reminds me of an old trick we employed for a live multitrack recording session once. You put 2 identical mics on the same stand a few inches apart with one of the mics out of phase with the other. The singer then sings up close to only one of the mics. The resultant vocal track has a greatly reduced amount of leakage from stage wash. |
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John Billings
From:
Ohio, USA
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Posted 18 Jul 2008 7:42 am
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| Well,,, How about two volume pedals? |
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Jon Light
From:
Saugerties, NY
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Posted 18 Jul 2008 11:38 am
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Yeah Greg---there was a recent Tape Op issue that discussed the use of out of phasing tricks in the studio for noise cancellation---also out of phase monitors. Some folks were recording the vocalist in the control room without headphones, just monitors, but cancelling them via phase voodoo.
Total thread hijack! |
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Chris Bauer
From:
Nashville, TN USA
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Posted 18 Jul 2008 8:30 pm
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Actually, if I understand the question correctly, Goodrich used to made a pedal exactly like what you're asking for. It looked just like a model 120 as I recall but rocked left/right to pan between either two inputs or two outputs depending on how you used it.
Anyone else remember those pedals? (Am I making this up?) |
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David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
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Posted 19 Jul 2008 1:20 am
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| Quote: |
| Well,,, How about two volume pedals? |
Steve Morse used to have a pedalboard with four volume pedals, for clean, distorted, guitar synth, and... something else... he's since gone to a integrated switching system, but he tried the pan pedals and couldn't get it to work right. It was most efficient for him and eliminated phasing problems to use separate channels and amps for each signal. Fitting four volume pedals under a pedal steel? Carry four amps? Ummm. I use three channels on a little mixer sometimes, for clean, (stereo) reverb/effects, and distorted signals. You have to turn the knobs by hand.
Most all of the new amp modelers have an assignable pedal function, so that the pedal can control the pre-gain of an overdrive, the speed or depth or level of a chorus, a left/right sweep etc. The Digitech RP's have an integral pedal, the Boss VF-1 needs a Boss pedal. The newest POD and the old Digitech Genesis 3 let you blend two amp models, but I don't know if you can place one "left" and one "right" then assign a pedal to sweep between them? Like, a Twin Reverb, panning to a Triple Rectifier...  |
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James Mayer
From:
back in Portland Oregon, USA (via Arkansas and London, UK)
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Posted 19 Jul 2008 7:42 am
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| The Zoom G9, which is my favorite of all the multi-fx units, has a 3D pedal that you can assign parameters to. I had one but it was stolen, last summer. I used the built-in effects loop to send a signal out to two and pan between them by swinging my foot out to the right. It would be the perfect solution but the volume pedal doesn't have enough range. |
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