Advice on Wah and Pitch blocks

Chriscwt1

Chriscwt1

Inspired
Hi everyone,

Can anybody help with two infuriating problems I have encountered? Both (I think) are caused by the use of an expression pedal)

Firstly, if I use a wah block with an external expression pedal, I can't seem to get a 'clean' tone with it. What I mean by this is that the sound is affected, even when I have the pedal totally 'up'. I can contrast this with my old Morley wah which was in the signal path all the time, but only affected the sound when you stepped on it. I hope that makes sense.

Secondly, if I enable a pitch block (again with the expression pedal) it does two weird things. when I switch to the scene where the PB is enabled, it sounds awful until I stand on the expression pedal. If I rock in back and forth once, it 'rights' itself. Also, having this in one scene seems to screw around with the other scenes in that preset and I get a PB effect that I don't want in one scene and can't enable it in another scene where I DO want it. Again, I hope that I have explained this adequately.

any advice/guidance would be greatly appreciated...
 
Do you know all the various ways to set up an expression pedal? You may just have it set up in a way that it is not responding the way you expect it to, but is responding in the way it is set up.
 
White Light of Death said:
Maybe get a new mission engineering pedal, and I know one for sale, cheap and new $115 shipped, lmk if you want link/email
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Which one of their pedals is that? I assume it's definitely Axe compatible, or you wouldn't be talking about it here, right?

PM me, might be interested, but that doesn't seem much cheaper than new. Tried to PM you directly, but either I'm dumb or I can't for some reason, maybe because I'm pretty new here.
 
I am not in front of my AX but you need to calibrate the pedal. There are also parameters for messing with the range of the wah. I would check/mess with those. You probably just need to adjust so the top of the slope isn't cut off. You won't break anything by messing with anything in there. If you don't like it, just don't save it.
 
Chriscwt1 said:
Hi everyone,

Can anybody help with two infuriating problems I have encountered? Both (I think) are caused by the use of an expression pedal)

Firstly, if I use a wah block with an external expression pedal, I can't seem to get a 'clean' tone with it. What I mean by this is that the sound is affected, even when I have the pedal totally 'up'. I can contrast this with my old Morley wah which was in the signal path all the time, but only affected the sound when you stepped on it. I hope that makes sense.
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any Wah pedal that isn’t turned off affects the tone. Do you mean the wah pedal doesn’t turn off when you’re done using it? It can’t know when you’re done unless you set it that way. You can use auto-engage for this. The owners manual describes this. A spring loaded Morley Wah specifically is designed to turn off automatically when you stop using it. That’s not a normal Wah thing.
 
Hi, yes, come to think of it, I do know what you mean about the wah and maybe it is no more than that. Thanks for the tip about auto-engage. I will check that out. What I don't understand is why (in whammy mode) it seems to mess up the pitch block on scenes where I am not even using it. I love the Axe FXiii but, for the likes of me, it is a very complex bit of kit and so I am inching my way through challenges. Thanks again for your help
 
Chriscwt1 said:
Hi, yes, come to think of it, I do know what you mean about the wah and maybe it is no more than that. Thanks for the tip about auto-engage. I will check that out. What I don't understand is why (in whammy mode) it seems to mess up the pitch block on scenes where I am not even using it. I love the Axe FXiii but, for the likes of me, it is a very complex bit of kit and so I am inching my way through challenges. Thanks again for your help
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If the block is on, the axe can’t know if you’re using it or not. What if you put the pedal to a position and want it to stay there when you take your foot off? This is popular with Wah and even pitch.

Again, if the block is on, you’re “using it.” You need to turn the block off with either a switch or auto-engage.
 
Chriscwt1 First off settings for the expression pedal to work like a wha. The Morley activated by the pressure of your foot being on it. With the expression pedal auto engage is the closest thing to that, by default when you right click on Control knob of the wha block you assign auto engage with one of the settings from that menu, Fast Position is what most use. Blocks such as the wha don't need to be enabled in a scene for auto engage to turn them on, meaning wha block should be on bypass thanks to auto engage when the expression pedal is heel down. You could also set it up so toe down is off rather than heel down.

Are you trying to use one expression pedal for both the wha on one scene and pitch on another scene? If so you can do that but it's a bit trickier to set up. Each block has ABCD channels, you would need to set the wha control modifier for the expression pedal to only operate on say A channel. then when your on the scene that you want to use pitch on set wha channel to BC or D so that it doesn't operate the wha. And the same would need to be done for the Pitch control so that the expression pedal doesn't work both blocks at the same time if they are both turned on my auto engage.

From what you wrote it sounds as if when you switch scenes to the one with pitch your wanting the pitch to be active. In that case your wouldn't need to enable auto engage for the pitch, you can just have the block enabled.

If you could explain a little further what you want to happen on what scene's it may help.
 
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Here is an example of a simple Wha/Pitch/Amp and Cab block chain with scenes 1 and 2. Scene 1 has a wha on it and scene 2 has a 2 octive whammy up pitch shift.

I use an FC-6 with the expression pedal-1 connected to the FC. You'll need to assign your expression pedal per your setup for the modifier of the wha and pitch.

On scene 1 the wha is off till you move the expression pedal then turns off again at heel down. Same on scene 2 for the pitch.
 

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Tom Morris said:
The Morley activated by the pressure of your foot being on it
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As far as I know, they have an optical sensor the detects movement of the pedal treadle... It's not really anything to do with pressure other than that moves there treadle.
 
Thanks I stand corrected. Been a really long time since Ive used one. Was glorious not having to click that damn switch. alway hated having to quack a wha on if ya know what I mean.
 
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Tom Morris said:
Thanks I stand corrected. Been a really long time since Ive used one. Was glorious not having to click that damn switch. alway hated having to quack a wha on if ya know what I mean.
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Oh, I know!

I never could use a Wah untill I got a Bad Horsie... And then I got addicted! That damn switch :(
 
I hooked up a Source Audio expression pedal to my FC-6 yesterday, cracked open the FC manual and set up / calibrated FC Pedal 1. Yay me! And it works as expected - heel down for more than a second reverts to normal tone, press on the pedal and the wah kicks in immediately. I actually feel like I accomplished something :smiley:
 
Awesome! Well on your way to mastering this beast.

Honestly just wrapping your head around plugging an expression pedal in, then calibrating it' then having to assign it the the control knob of a wha just to get a wha working seems like a monumental task for anyone new to the platform. But once see how that works it opens up a whole world of endless possibilities. And the fact you can adjust 100 differant settings at one time with one pedal is just mind blowing.
 
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