Strange Auto-Wah Issue In Presets

C

ChiroVette

Inspired
Okay, I have the feeling this is simple, and I am just missing the boat on an easy answer. One of the many presets I purchased from Marco Fanton is the Viva Santana preset. He has a wah block in there, and he has it set to Bypass. I figured out that this means his intent was to make this expression-pedal driven. I went through the manual and a bunch of Youtube videos, and figured out how to have it function as an Auto-Wah, because I really don't use any expression pedals.

Now, here is my thing: In this preset, he only has 4 scenes, which works out fine. When I purchase a preset, I don't want to edit any of the scenes, because I am quite sure he knows what he is doing, and I clearly don't! lol So I am trying to edit only an empty scene, in this case #5.

So, I kind of figured out that I could only use The Wah Block's B channel for that scene. I have played around with it, and have it nice. I basically am using the hot lead sound, with the Drive Block in scene 5. Like I said, I want to leave his stock scenes completely untouched. So I set the Wah Block so that I can use it as an Auto Wah on channel B in Scene 5. The wah isn't where I want it yet, but it's getting there, so no worries on that front.

The problem that has been driving me nuts is that engaging the Wah Block in Scene 5 forces it to be on in scenes 1 through 4, which I don't want. I want no auto-wah in those stock scenes, only in scene 5. This way, if and when I buy an expression pedal, either from Fractal or someone else, I can work the wah the way that Marco intended for it to work in his stock scenes, and the Auto-Wah only on scene 5. I thought that forcing the Wah Block into the block's B channel in scene 5 would stop this from happening, but it doesn't. I even tried putting a second Wah block on the next row, but the same thing happens, and I cannot shut the wah off in the first 4 scenes.
 
Assuming you are using something like an 'Envelope Follower' modifier on the 'Control' parameter in a Wah block for the "Auto-Wah". Just make sure to set 'Auto Engage'="Off" in the lower-right corner of the modifier dialog box. My guess would be that Marco has it on for use with an expression pedal. You can set it back on if you want when you decide to use an expression pedal. Then just save scenes 1-4 with the Wah bypassed. Active in scene 5.
 
@playmusic, just revisiting this. I can't get the Wah off bypass no matter how many times I click it.

Here is what I did. I copied scene 1 to an empty scene (scene 5), because I only want the wah to engage for like 20 seconds at the end of Europa. So the intent is to use the foot switches to switch from scene 1 (lead) to scene 5 (the same scene, only I want wah engaged only there) but no matter how many times I click on "bypass" or click on the block, "Bypass" stays lit, and I have no wah. I even tried right-clicking on the block to force it to engage, as well as hitting spacebar, but nothing.
 
iaresee said:
I'd say post the preset but it's a paid-for preset. So instead I'd suggest contacting @Marco Fanton for help -- it's his creation.
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I did, but his English isn't great, and he is hard to get in touch with. I remember looking in the manual when I first posted this thread a couple of weeks ago, and I was able to get the wah to function as an "auto Wah" so I'm sure I can figure it out again. I hope. I think it was using the B channel on the Wah, so I will look that up again and see if I can get it working. Once I get the wah to engage, without an expression pedal, it's actually pretty easy to get a decent auto wah sound.

The reason I bailed on it is that I couldn't get the wah to ONLY engage in the one scene. Whenever I got the auto wah to work in this preset, it engaged in all the scenes, not just the one I wanted it to. So I bailed on it, and have been using my Mutron III between the guitar and the FM9 until I figure this out, which really defeats the purpose lol.

Edit: Okay, back to where I started a couple of weeks ago. I was able to get the auto wah to work. Got a decent sound, and set the Wah Block the the B channel, and used a modifier. Which I think is what I tried originally. But now I can't shut the Auto Wah off in the other scenes! Thankfully I had the presence of mind to NOT hit the save button on the preset, so I switched presets, went back the the Santana one, and I am back to Marco's default preset at least. So that's something, I suppose.

Also, even weirder, when using the modifier to get the wah to engage as an auto wah, the wah block was still stuck on bypass. Which I don't get. The auto wah is/was working but still stuck on bypass?

Oh well, back to my Mutron for now at least.

Edit 2: I just emailed Marco through his website email address with this problem. Maybe he can help me, since, as you said, it's his preset.
 
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Modifiers are present for all channels in the block once assigned. You can make it active for just one channel or all of them, but the modifier will stay assigned either way. You can't change the modifier source or settings on a per channel basis. Changes there will affect all of the channels.

How are you trying to engage or bypass the wah block?
 
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mr_fender said:
Modifiers are present for all channels in the block once assigned. You can make it active for just one channel or all of them, but the modifier will stay assigned either way. You can't change the modifier source or settings on a per channel basis. Changes there will affect all of the channels.

How are you trying to engage or bypass the wah block?
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I had a feeling modifiers weren't the way to go for what I want, but I couldn't figure any other way to get an auto wah for that preset, which has the Wah block in it, but it appears to be set for use with an expression pedal. It sounds like what you're saying is that if I only want an auto wah in one of the scenes of the presets, that modifiers aren't the way to go? Or am I missing your point?

However else this is supposed to be done, without using a modifier, I cannot seem to get an auto wah at all, and I also can't get the "Bypass" button to disengage.
 
ChiroVette said:
I had a feeling modifiers weren't the way to go for what I want, but I couldn't figure any other way to get an auto wah for that preset, which has the Wah block in it, but it appears to be set for use with an expression pedal. It sounds like what you're saying is that if I only want an auto wah in one of the scenes of the presets, that modifiers aren't the way to go? Or am I missing your point?

However else this is supposed to be done, without using a modifier, I cannot seem to get an auto wah at all, and I also can't get the "Bypass" button to disengage.
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Is the bypass button on the Wah block assigned to a modifier by any chance? Is the yellow dot on it lit? If so change 'Source 1' = "NONE" on the bypass button's modifier page. Modifier should be fine to use on the Wah block's 'Control' parameter for the auto-wah effect. Once you have the bypass button on the wah block issue resolved, and the 'Control' knob assigned to the 'Envelope Follower' with auto-engage set to 'Off', you should just be able to bypass the wah block in all the scenes you don't want it in and activate it in the scene where you do. Make sure after you save the preset that the bypass state and channel selection is correct in all scenes.

Maybe you could delete all blocks in this preset with the exception of the wah block, save the preset and upload it so we could look at it. You could even change some of the other parameters in the wah block so that we don't encroach on Marco's intellectual property.

Other than maybe something going on in the 'PER-PRESET OVERRIDE', and I can't imagine what, you should be able to turn the wah block's bypass on/off in each scene.
 
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ChiroVette said:
I had a feeling modifiers weren't the way to go for what I want, but I couldn't figure any other way to get an auto wah for that preset, which has the Wah block in it, but it appears to be set for use with an expression pedal. It sounds like what you're saying is that if I only want an auto wah in one of the scenes of the presets, that modifiers aren't the way to go? Or am I missing your point?

However else this is supposed to be done, without using a modifier, I cannot seem to get an auto wah at all, and I also can't get the "Bypass" button to disengage.
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you need a modifier to turn it into an Auto Wah.

in the same way you attached the modifier to... something... do the same process to the Bypass button and change the source of that Modifier to NONE.
 
Thanks @chris!

@playmusic, you just unintentionally solved another problem I was having!

I wanted to post this first, and then get back to the rest of playmusic's tips. I was NOT at all happy with the auto wah I was getting in my homemade Jerry Garcia preset, for some reason. It was all right, but not great. But playing around with the Marco's Santana preset, just doing what you said ironically enough, and just set the "Source" in the modifier from "Pedal" to "Envelope Follower", and I also turned "PC Reset" to "On" as well as "Auto Engage" to "Med Pos". I remember reading somewhere a few weeks back to change those last two (maybe it was the manual?) and without even ANY more work, I have like the perfect Jerry Garcia auto wah sound, which is literally almost as good as my Mutron III, without me even fiddling with it. Like I could use just these exact auto wah settings on my Jerry Preset right out of the box, and it is like 70% there without me doing anything else.

Weird!

Just wanted to post that. So I am going to use my phone to take a pic of how this wah black is set, and do this on my Jerry Preset, because it literally just blew me away, with zero other settings changed.

So I am going to try the rest of the things you mentioned, playmusic, and see where I'm at.

Shit, I was totally not expecting that little surprise!
 
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Turn Auto Engage to off unless you want the wah to turn on every time you play. Because you're using the envelope controller, you'll need to enable the wah block with either scenes or manually using a footswitch.

The trick to using the envelope controller is setting the controller's gain and threshold so that your playing level gives you the response you want. Switch to the Controllers screen and select the Envelope Controller. You can see the response on the meter there while you play. If the gain is not set high enough, the controller won't utilize its full range in the meter (your wah won't go all the way to full toe down). If it's set too high, it will max out too soon. Either way you'll loose dynamics in the controller's response. Tweak the gain until you get a good range of controller movement on the meter as you vary your pick attack. The Attack and Release controls set how quickly the controller responds to changes in your input level. Attack sets how fast it can go up and Release sets how fast it can go back down. Low setting will make it more touchy. High settings will sort of smear the response and make it sluggish to respond
 
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Okay, just an update and a few questions. I ended up just saying screw it, and picking up the EV-1, which I received on March 1st. Since I am completely and totally lazy, I just basically used TS cables until now, only utilizing the pedal for volume, not for wah; guitar into Volume In and Volume Out into Input 1 on the FM9. I have spent my whole guitar-playing life exclusively using auto-wahs, mostly my very old Mutron III, so I was kind of adamant about never using a manual wah.

But today, I got a little ambitious, and broke out a TRS cable to use some expression functions. For now, only wah and volume.

Anyway, I watched Leon Todd's Tone Tip Tuesday video from 2021, so he was working with the FM3. Great video, by the way. Very clear instructions. I followed along, step by step, and managed to get both the Volume and manual wah working. Honestly, for the Santana stuff, I couldn't even be bothered with setting Marco's preset up as an auto wah, like I had originally wanted to do when I started this thread. Especially since the only time I need a wah is the last minute or so soloing in Europa. So, it seemed like the path of least resistance to just use the manual wah, which as it turns out, is fine. I REALLY like that I can use volume or wah in the same preset, which I learned how to do from Leon Todd's video.

So here are my questions, and mind you, I am still not interested in tinkering with my gear, or at least doing it as little as possible. Which is why every preset I use now are ones I have purchased, with the one exception being the Jerry Garcia preset, which I grudgingly created myself based on a couple of Deadheads on here who really helped me dial them in.

Anyway......I want to make sure I didn't screw anything up. Which means, I probably should have asked these questions BEFORE I just implemented all the changes, particularly to presets I paid money for lol.

I am using 7 or 8 Marco Fanton presets I purchased from him, and in the ones that don't have a volume pan, I added one, setting the source to "Pedal 1" same as the wah.

1. If all I did was add a Volume/Pan block to every preset, and set it Pedal 1, doing literally nothing else, is there a chance I could have broken the presets? I am guessing no, since I did play around with them, and it was a little tedious adding this to every preset, but it wasn't too bad.

2. In one of @Marco Fanton's presets, "Luke Style 90 Dyn" he already had two volume blocks in the preset, which seemed to already be functioning in whatever scenes they were active in. Soooooo I decided not to try messing with any of them, since Marco's presets have a level of complexity that is way over my head, and so instead, I added a third Volume/Pan to this preset that is always engaged in all scenes, and just set that to "Pedal 1". Is this a decent solution, or am I missing something?

3. In his Santana preset, "Viva Santana", which is the reason I started this thread in the first place, I noticed each scene obviously has an "Either/Or" option for volume and wah. I also noticed that the entire preset is "Wah ready" so that the default setting means that the EV-1 functions as a wah. Which is fine for when I want a wah. So I copied Scene 1 to Scene 5, which is empty, and set the Volume/Pan to channel B (as Leon Todd instructed) for that scene. Scenes 2 through 4 have the default setting of the Volume Block to Channel A, same as Scene 1. So they are all set for wah. Only scene 5 has my EV-1 functioning as a volume pedal. So my question is, since I really only want to use the EV-1 for volume in those scenes, can I just go ahead and set the Volume Block in scenes 2 through 4 to Channel B and call it a day? Or will that break the preset somehow?
 
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