Volume Pedal Rant.

Gassage

Why can no-one make a volume pedal that works?

The latest POS to be tried and discared is the Lehle. Utter garbage.

Why can't anyone make a decent one?

Sporky

What specifically do you require of such an item?

Voxman

I have an old Carlsbro passive volume pedal - still works smoothly and flawlessly. 

ICBM

Boss FV-500.

So good Vertex removed the Boss labelling, claimed it removed any tone suck and sold it for an inflated price, and American gear-heads bought it… and the pedal.

dindude

Never properly understood the use for them if I'm honest, certainly not enough to justify them robbing more signal.

Its the lettuce of the fx world.

Moe_Zambeek

How did you manage to break a Lehle? It's a tank.

professorben

Put it after a buffer, I think Cornish makes one of those? 

BBBlues

I like the one installed on my guitar. Works great, but hard to use with a foot.

Jonathanthomas83

I hate the lack of resistance on the treadle, no matter how tight you screw it. The sweep isn't that wide either. Never noticed tone suck though and its a well executed idea to be fair.

Jonathanthomas83

Why don't you like ot @Gassage ? Rubbish rant without reasons! ;-)

sweepy

The Boss FV500 is an awesome volume pedal

not_the_dj

What does DG use, just buy that ;-)

dindude

Have you put it on your pedalboard that sits atop your rack? If so I think I know where you're going wrong!

guitarfishbay

I find Dunlop DVP1 fine, it's huge but that also makes it easy to use. I've never tried it without a buffer first though.

guitarfishbay

dindude said:

Never properly understood the use for them if I'm honest, certainly not enough to justify them robbing more signal.

Its the lettuce of the fx world.

Because I can't strum while doing a volume swell with my finger.

Also because using your volume knob is a pain with a noise gate. A volume pedal after a noise gate means the gate always sees the same signal so can be left on permanently. I get my gritty low gain sounds by backing off volume so this is much more practical for me

samzadgan

dindude said:

Never properly understood the use for them if I'm honest, certainly not enough to justify them robbing more signal.

Its the lettuce of the fx world.

primarily for slow fading in and out whilst playing parts, which would be impossible with a volume knob, on anything other than a strat maybe.

that's my use anyway.

Voxman

I use a volume pedal quite a lot and find it an invaluable tool.

I use one of the expression pedals on my Tonelab SE as a volume control to go from rhythm volume to lead solo volume on patches where I simply want a volume boost with no change to gain levels.  

On other patches, I'll set it to control gain level in a similar way to the guitar volume knob but with the advantage of no tonal drop off.  I realise the latter is strictly using it as an expression control, but some free standing volume pedals can do that too, so seemed a reasonable comparison.  

And like certain volume pedals I can set the range between toe down and heel down, or leave it as full sweep if I want. 

With my conventional pedal board I use a simple passive Carlsboro volume pedal. This is full sweep only with no parameter control.

With my Valvetronix AD120VTX, I have a dedicated volume pedal on my VC12 floor controller. This allows setting to one of three sweep characteristics - not as controllable as the Tonelab, but still useful options. 

downbytheriver

Shobud- over and out

dangriffiths

Tapestry Bloomery is the one I like so far - you tried that?

viz

I played for years with a Little Alligator in the loop. It was perfect. Now I just have a Keeley Katana Boost because it's smaller and I don't need the sweep. But try a Little Alligator. 

Gassage

The Lehle: I think, in fairness, it's faulty. There's a huge vol boost coming in and out. Just annoying.