Tc electronic flashback x4 and m-audio ex-p expression pedal - Now with Demo!

littlethoughts

I bought an expression pedal for my flashback today and I thought I'd share my experiences. I saw on the proguitarshop vid for the flashback x4 that they used an m-audio ex-p expression pedal and so have kept my eye out for one. One cropped up on gumtree recently so I pounced on it. It is reasonably sturdy although a bit plastic-y. It's got a nice smooth travel too. I found that it worked best with the unit by setting the pedal to m-audio rather than other and turning the output on the side all the way up. You set the travel on the pedal within a toneprint and saving like a toneprint, but that travel is reproduced in all the toneprints (I.e 20% heel and 80% toe for delay on a tape setting will be the same on the slap back setting). You can amp multiple controls to the pedal at once, I quite like having a normal delay at the heel setting and a shorter longer feedback setting at the toe for nice spacy feedback. Perhaps more interestingly, if you set the pedal to one of the weirder toneprints such as flanger in the editor, the chorus or the ring modulator, then again those same sweeps you've set work on those models too. I particularly enjoyed using the ring mod setting where adjusting the pedal with some distortion gives some collosal fuzzed out filter sweep to feedback sounds that you wouldn't have access to without the use of the pedal. Obviously with the tap tempo you don't need something just for setting a delay time, but for smooth transitions between two settings you like (set one delay setting at the toe, set the pedal to heel, then the other setting there and save) its a very powerful tool.

EricTheWeary

I have a tc4 and a Roland expression pedal. Haven't spent much time with it, I think all I managed was to turn every preset into crazy self modulation. Obviously I need to go back to it and to have a go on the editor as well!

littlethoughts

EricTheWeary said:

I have a tc4 and a Roland expression pedal. Haven't spent much time with it, I think all I managed was to turn every preset into crazy self modulation. Obviously I need to go back to it and to have a go on the editor as well!

Yeah it's quite fun for infinite delay repeats and the like, but it's rather more fun to have faux-univibe effects with the modulation toneprints. I managed to get the sweep just right for really pitch bending weirdness with the ring mod last night too. It's just a bit more expressive and maybe produces sounds that are appreciably harder to get when playing melody lines - whereas fiddling with delay feedback to get space sounds is quite easy to do on most delays.

littlethoughts

thought i'd make a quick demo of the expression pedal with the ring mod setting as well. Lots of beautiful noise, although the Mrs didn't appreciate some of the more high pitched feedback...

gambit

ringmod on the X4?! will check out the demo later, but filter sweeping sounds like its worth checking out!

if you assign the delay time to the exp pedal say 300ms up to 4 seconds, with lots of feedback, and rock the pedal back and forth quickly does it capture a loop of the delay including all the pitch shifting caused by the delay time being changed?

i did this years ago with a Boss GX-700 and midi controller and it was pretty awesome.. not disimilar to the Digitech Space Station's 'warp' modes..