swell (slow attack) pedals with retrigger?

dougjonez · July 2014

I think one of the major problems with most "slow gear" type pedals is that they are essentially noise gates with a retarded attack.
The weakness of the approach is that the gate control is simply level sensing - the gate is open as long as the signal is above the gate's threshold which means that the signal must drop below said threshold for the unit to trigger another swell.
the net effect I've always found strange...to get a the swelling, fluid sound, one has to play if not staccato at least in a very articulated manner (so that the signal drops below threshold).

I believe, back in the day, EHX did an analog implementation of a "look ahead" strategy (sometimes done digitally now in compressors, etc) to detect signal peaks related to pick attack which would retrigger, thereby resetting the envelope.
This allows the player to do legato lines and still have the unit track the actual picking as the control for the swells

rocktron touts "pluck detection" on their upper end prophesy units, but there isn't a lot of solid info (even after writing them) and none of there lower line appears to contain the technology.

any other thoughts on units that might retrigger

steamabacus · July 2014

I use a volume pedal.

You have to learn a bit of 'technique' to get your foot coordination going but it's far, far more flexible and expressive than any slow gear style effect.

viz · July 2014

Wizdom.

dougjonez · July 2014

I've good a goodrich myself (big Tuck fan), but the effect is never quite the same, esp for fast "attack scrubbing" (and when the foot is involved with filter control)

an interesting side note , automation opens the door to polyphony (certain bos products such as the VG-8, WP2-0, etc have poly slow gear) --

Fretwired · July 2014

steamabacus said:

I use a volume pedal.

You have to learn a bit of 'technique' to get your foot coordination going but it's far, far more flexible and expressive than any slow gear style effect.

This is what I do, or you could copy Jan Akkerman who developed a great technique using his pinky on the volume control of his Les Paul .. doesn't work on the Strat.

dougjonez · July 2014

one thing that slow ger type effects can do is scrub just the attack...this is very fast swell as opposed the the slow bloom you are typically getting with a volume pedal.

One area I'd find it particularly useful is rounding the bass side of the Chapman stick (it tends to have a very 'articulate' bass sound - especially the newer railboard), but also applies to guitar.

if it were just a slow bloom, then any volume control would work - and even the typical autoswells would not be too bad as there would be significant gaps between plucks

unfortunately, the hex processing is pretty much restricted to Roland at this time, so I have little hope for that (monophonic is one area where pluck detection can help...each articulation during an arpeggiation can retrigger, scrubbing the attack even though the entire sound swells monophonically )

Drew_TNBD · July 2014

I do fast blooms with a volume pedal, no problem. I know what you mean though, would be uber if there was a pedal that could do it automatically.

dougjonez · July 2014

I'm talking pretty damn fast - not much slower than you can pick since it's really just about processing the transients, not terribly differently than a hi-fi pop filter for vinyl record

On guitar I'll use a VG-8 as it has hex processing, which helps quite a bit (I play fingerstyle, not with plectrum)

but for stick...I don't find it works quite as well (and the stick can benefit from the effect more) -- not to mention with two sides....(though I think the bass side benefits from that sort of treatment more )

I think it has uses elsewhere, with more traditional swells (hence the old EHX unit) too though

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swell (slow attack) pedals with retrigger?

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