Expression pedal Question

[jetdriver1775]

Ok guys, I need some help on this one. I have an expression pedal on my board, that in all scenes (except one) it functions as an auto on/off wah pedal. In one scene it controls the speed of a trem (no wah option on that scene).

My question is, under 'MORE X' layout I have a whammy effect button assigned. I would like to have the capability to hit that button to activate a classic whammy effect and use the expression pedal to control it without getting wah. I also don’t want to create a separate scene for whammy. Is this possible? For now, I have it set up to function on pedal 2, and I’d have to add a second pedal dedicated to whammy. But it would be cool to have it assigned to a button, that I can whammy with the pedal then switch it off, and not conflict with the wah block.

I’ve been racking my brain for a solution that doesn’t involve adding a second pedal or creating a separate scene. I have the switch set to smart bypass, since we only have one pitch block and i have other buttons assigned to pitch fx, like a POG, and Octave down. I'm trying to squeeze as much functionality out of that one block as possible LOL. Thanks guys!

 

[Infuseguitar]

I’m absolutely no help to you but I’m not sure if that is even possible. I’m sure one of the big brains in here will chime in soon. I’m interested in the responses. Curious though... Why wouldn’t you want to duplicate a scene and just add that block to it? Or add another pedal? I have 2 pedals and I love it. One is just for Wah and the other is multi purpose for changing delay levels, other modulation changes and increasing gain as needed. Sorry like I said I’m no help just inquisitive.

 

[jetdriver1775]

I’m absolutely no help to you but I’m not sure if that is even possible. I’m sure one of the big brains in here will chime in soon. I’m interested in the responses. Curious though... Why wouldn’t you want to duplicate a scene and just add that block to it? Or add another pedal? I have 2 pedals and I love it. One is just for Wah and the other is multi purpose for changing delay levels, other modulation changes and increasing gain as needed. Sorry like I said I’m no help just inquisitive.

It's true, creating a new scene would be the easy way. Or, adding a second pedal. In fact, if I stayed with adding a second expression pedal dedicat4ed to whammy, I could also set that to auto engage and wouldn't need the switch anymore. But I'm still curious.

I tend to run my FM9 kind of like an old school pedalboard, with individual effects buttons. I have 3 basic scenes that are in essence gain stages (crunch, heavier rhythm, and solo) and the other 6 switches are fx. It's just how I like to work... staying on one scene (mostly) and bringing fx in and out. I'm just curious if there's a way to make it happen in the manner I've explained.

 

[Infuseguitar]

Yeah I know exactly what you’re going for. That’s how I ran my rig for years. Now I’m running my Axe III with an FC12 and FC6. The 6 is dedicated for the looper and bank +/- and my primary solo/lead channel. On the 12 I decided to just have all 8 scenes, 2 switches for presets, 1 for +/- tap tempo/tuner and the last one for used for virtual capo. Having 2 pedals is awesome for me. Having complete control over multiple effects perimeters is essential to me at this point.
Hopefully someone comes in with an answer to question though.

 

[mr_fender]

If you put the Wah and Pitch blocks in parallel, you can select between their outputs using a Multiplexer block. You can then assign the same pedal to Control in both Wah and Pitch blocks with auto-engage, but you'll only hear the one that you select with the Multiplexer block.

 

[mr_fender]

It depends on if you plan to use any of them at the same time. If not, you can put them all in parallel and use channels in the Multiplexer block to select between them.

Kitchen sink presets get complicated very quickly with issues like this because there are so many permutations of combinations of blocks.

 

[jetdriver1775]

If you put the Wah and Pitch blocks in parallel, you can select between their outputs using a Multiplexer block. You can then assign the same pedal to Control in both Wah and Pitch blocks with auto-engage, but you'll only hear the one that you select with the Multiplexer block.

That's cool, but I'm struggling to wrap my head around it in application.

 

[jetdriver1775]

It depends on if you plan to use any of them at the same time. If not, you can put them all in parallel and use channels in the Multiplexer block to select between them.

Kitchen sink presets get complicated very quickly with issues like this because there are so many permutations of combinations of blocks.

I have a wah, a whammy, and a trem speed function - none of which I want to use at the same time.

So let's just say that for most scenes I'd the wah available via auto engage. I have the trem effect of a switch and when its on, I'd like the expression pedal to control its speed. And I could put the whammy on a button, and likewise control its pitch with the pedal while it's on. When those are bypassed, I'd like wah back. Is this possible? How would I do it? I guess the obvious answer is using scenes. It seems to me to be exactly the kind of thing that scenes are designed for. But if I didn't wanna do it that way, what are my options? My current solution is to add a second, dedicated whammy pedal - which is ok, since I rarely use whammy. I'm just trying to make it all happen without it.

As of know, I'm using 3 channels of the pitch block - for octave down, a POG style effect, and whammy - all assigned to their own footswitch using smart bypass. Which leads to another question... if I do plug in a seconf expression pedal for whammy, is there no way to use auto engage for the whammy effect, since I'm also using 2 other channels of the pitch block for other things (using smart bypassed footswitches)?

Sorry for all the questions... this is kind of a deep dive for me.

 

[mr_fender]

It gets more complicated if you only want auto engage on just one channel of the pitch block. You can set the modifier for the control parameter to be active for only the whammy channel, and that will make it auto-engage for just that channel, but I'm not sure you'd be able to manually control the bypass on the other channels. I think it might work that way, but I'll have to test it.

You can use the same trick with modifier channels to stop one block from auto-engaging when you're using the expression pedal with other blocks. The tricky part is controlling all of those channels easily. You have to be able to change the channel of both the blocks in order to use that method. Currently you can't assign modifiers to channel select, so you'd have to use either two separate switches to control that or use scenes.

 

[mr_fender]

ok just tested the modifier channel trick with smart bypass on the other channels and it does work as expected. The rub is you have always switch back to one of the other channels anytime you want to use the expression pedal for something else.

 

[Bakerman]

Is it important that one switch accomplishes this in any scene? With the multiplexer, you'd also have to switch the pitch block channel if it was initially on another channel.

There is a way to do what you described using a channel switch & smart bypass, with the right routing/settings. Some slight adjustment to other pitch block channels might be required if you want to use wah while the pitch block is active on those channels. Also the solution is slightly different if the block order is wah-pitch or pitch-wah, but block order only matters if you use wah & pitch together at times. I could put basic examples together for each order but it might be good to post your preset if you have a chance.

 

[mr_fender]

It gets a lot simpler if you are willing to forgo auto engage on the whammy too. You can use the pitch block MIX and a second modifier to simulate auto engage in that channel.

 

[jetdriver1775]

Ok, well I tried to go in another direction. I was inspired by Cooper Carter's latest video about creating a dive bomb effect on a momentary switch. So I tried to do the same, except use whammy to go 2 octaves up. I was able to get it to work smoothly with a nice ramp time etc., but it doesn't play nicely with the other to pitch effects switches set to smart bypass (octave, and another channel making a POG type effect).

If I could get this to work, I could forego using an expression for whammy altogether. I'm thinking what I really need is two pitch blocks LOL... or stick with my original plan and add a second pedal as needed.

Update: In an effort to at least get the momentary whammy switch working, I deleted the Octave and POG PP switches. Strange things are happening. The whammy is on channel C, so I forced channel C to all scenes as well, because it was acting weird and choosing the octave or POG effect if they were the last thing selected, when i pressed the momentary switch. Also, it only acts like a momentary with the switch on FS 1 (bottom left) or FS 9 (top right). I wanted to put it at FS 6 but it lags a bit before engaging, which is annoying. No idea why.

I've attached the preset here that ends in _whammy, along with the original preset before I made changes, utilizing PEDAL2 for an optional expression pedal for whammy. I could really use some help on this one. I know it's a lot.

It's probably gonna look weird on your FM9, because I've customized my layouts to have scenes 1-6 on buttons 1-3 (with a hold to change view to see scene 4-6 that I rarely use) and buttons 4-9 for effects. Button 7 toggles to MORE FX.

 

[jetdriver1775]

I solved one of the issues with whammy coming on on a certain scene - it was a controller conflict (CS1 was already used for an amp boost). So i switched the whammy effect and bypass state to CS2 (unused my anything else) and it's fine. Also, I figured out that switch 9s issues was caused by the underlying MLM switch being enabled, so I disabled that.

So, I'm making progress LOL. All I'm really trying to figure out now is if it's possible to have a block that has channels using a mix of momentary switches and latching switches with smart bypass?

For now, if I have the Pitch block with one channel using a momentary switch (whammy) and two other channels using bypass switches for POG and Octave Down strange things happen. If I select either Octave down or POG then later go the the whammy momentary switch, its momentary but with the last channel used - not whammy.

I've looked thru the Footswitches Guide, and can't find the answer.

 

[jetdriver1775]

I think I figured out a workaround. It would seem that if I want to continue to use the momentary whammy switch I can only use one other channel of the pitch block - not two other channels. So, in my instance, I chose the octave down effect. The POG 12string type effect was just for fun to see how much I could get out of one block. So, if I set the Octave Down switch's second press function to 'previous channel' it will go back to the whammy and be ready for that. This works great, and frees up a switch or something else that I might use more often.