Volume pedal advice

[J.J]

I think I need a volume pedal. My setup is pretty simple, Guitar-->Wah-->ED.

All I really want to be able to do is adjust my volume a bit from song to song to match the band and to sometimes get a volume boost for solos.

I would think a volume pedal in the loop is what I need.

So what is good and what works ? Should I be worried about tone suck and is it worth the extra pair of cables to trip over ?

 

[toneocaster]

I run a Morley Volume through the front of my ED without any tone loss. To me it really helps. I run a Boss tuner, the Morley and that's it. Hope this helps!

 

[dunstanmus]

Sound Sculpture Volcano. Put it in your loop and run a single cable to your expression. I use one all the time.

Cheers Rich

 

[LesMesa]

Anyone tried one of teh Dunlop volume pedals through the loop?

I'll second the OP's question - do you have to worry about tone loss with volume pedals? I haven't used one in a loop before.

 

[dunstanmus]

You definately lose tone, but then you do by chaining a couple of pedals together. When I used vol pedals I always had on full other than for swells. If it is solo boost you are after, there are much better ways.

Cheers Rich.

 

[J.J]

Ok, the Volcano does sound like a good solution in terms of tone, but it would add more complexity than everything else I use together.

I don't want to use a volume pedal up front since I use the vintage gain modes and don't really want the gain to change with volume.

In the mean time, I just discovered the TC Flashback delay. I had been wanting to get a TC Nova delay for a ages, but didn't need all the features. The Flashback is perfect for me, small package plenty of features and sounds great 8)

 

[MrMarkIII]

If you are putting the volume pedal in the loop, get a low impedance model.
The Morley Little Alligator or the Ernie Ball 6181 work well.

 

[J.J]

I like the look of the Ernie Ball VP Jr (25K).

I've been doing some tests to see what I can expect by putting a straight cables to the loop. I tried a couple of 10' leads and a couple of 20' leads. The 10 foot leads sounded fine. The difference was just audible. One of the 20' leads sucked the life out of my tone while the other soudned fine, but a little more rolled off than the 10' ones.

Next I added a load reisistor to emulate the pot in a volume pedal. I started with a 5K Ohm resistor and was a bit surprised that the bottom end was rolled off and the mids had lost their punch. At 25K Ohms there is a slight loss of volume and tone, but I don't think that would be an issue playing live.

Adding a bufferd pedal (in bypass) to the loop before the pot helped a lot. I tried a Boss GE7 first, but found it to have some tone suck. My TC Flashback (set to buffer not true bypass) worked much better which is good, because that is the only other device I want in the loop.

 

[J.J]

Ok, so after way to much lost time playing with this. I ordered some Dimarzio cables and they improved things a lot. I even have to turn the trebble back a little to compensate. I also have an Ernie Ball VP jr in the mail.

I think a 250K pedal would sound best in the loop, but the killer with that is that the reverb is added back after the effects loop and as you bring the volume pedal back, the reverb increases. The 25K pedal will not completely stop the reverb getting louder, but does work much better. I did try turning the reverb off, but missed it to much.

I'll place my TC Flashback before the volume pedal to help buffer things and prevent roll off.

With the new cables, I have improved my tone at home (without the volume pedal) and my live tone should be at least as good as before with crappy cables and no volume pedal.