EHX Pico Swello- (polyphonic) Attack Envelope: bass arco sim?

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I made an example clip of the Attack Decay and my Sire G5 fretless 5. Repeats the same riff (more or less) many times with different things on:

1. EHX Attack Decay
2. EHX Attack Decay Harmonix fuzz
3. Pigtronix EP-2 envelope phaser
4. Joyo Double Thrust overdrive
5. Joyo Monomyth distortion

The dirt pedals are in front of the Attack Decay in order. So here are what's on during each iteration:

• nothing on
• 1
• 2, 1
• 1, 3
• 2, 1, 3
• 4, 1, 3
• 5, 1, 3
• 4, 5, 1, 3
• 4, 5, 2, 1, 3

Sorry about the volume changes, it's devilishly tricky to get everything working together while keeping volumes reasonable. Very tweaky with the dirt boxes, especially the EHX Attack Decay Harmonix fuzz.

 

[mannysilvers]

I already have the Attack / Decay though, not clear on what the differences are?

The algorithms for the Swello and the Attack Decay work pretty differently. For the Attack Decay you have to set a sensitivity control and sometimes adjust your playing style with that in mind. It works like many other dynamic effects such as a compressor, gate, or envelope filter. When the signal crosses a threshold it triggers the effect.

The Swello doesn't require setting any sort of sensitivity control or adjusting your playing style at all. It very naturally slows down the attack of everything going into it, which is part of how it tracks more flawlessly with fast playing than the Attack Decay does.

The Swello is fully polyphonic and works very well in that regard. The Attack Decay has the poly mode but that works very differently and has a decent amount of glitchy-ness, which a lot of people seem to like. No glitchy-ness with the Swello. The regular mode on the Attack Decay is monophonic.

Past that, the Attack Decay has decays and the Swello has the modulated filter.

 

[bholder]

The algorithms for the Swello and the Attack Decay work pretty differently. For the Attack Decay you have to set a sensitivity control and sometimes adjust your playing style with that in mind. It works like many other dynamic effects such as a compressor, gate, or envelope filter. When the signal crosses a threshold it triggers the effect.

The Swello doesn't require setting any sort of sensitivity control or adjusting your playing style at all. It very naturally slows down the attack of everything going into it, which is part of how it tracks more flawlessly with fast playing than the Attack Decay does.

The Swello is fully polyphonic and works very well in that regard. The Attack Decay has the poly mode but that works very differently and has a decent amount of glitchy-ness, which a lot of people seem to like. No glitchy-ness with the Swello. The regular mode on the Attack Decay is monophonic.

Past that, the Attack Decay has decays and the Swello has the modulated filter.

Ok, you convinced me enough to want to try it, I found a Pico Swello open box slightly reduced and grabbed it - wow, you're right - it tracks and sounds much better, and the poly support is better, too. Very cool indeed, and much smaller and less tweaky; (Tweaky is great for basement fun, but lousy for actual playing lol). It's a winner!

 

[bholder]

Back to OPs original question, I think I stumbled across a fair simulation of upright arco, short strokes style, by fooling with the attack time and enabling the filter at its lightest setting (green led) and fiddling to get a hint of fretboard "mwah" or "bloom" during the attack, I'll practice up a bit more and post a clip.

Yeah, much closer than the Attack / Decay. More natural. (Well, on the mild settings.)

Haven't tried for long sustained arco sounds yet.

 

[stubbsonic]

Thanks for checking that. I'm probably going to order one soon.

Do you find the lack of wet/dry problematic? Sometimes I want a sort of "level" sustain, but in order to get the overall shape, the attack is gone. Blending in some dry would help, -- but then the issue is whether the dry and wet will have phase issues.

 

[bholder]

Thanks for checking that. I'm probably going to order one soon.

Do you find the lack of wet/dry problematic? Sometimes I want a sort of "level" sustain, but in order to get the overall shape, the attack is gone. Blending in some dry would help, -- but then the issue is whether the dry and wet will have phase issues.

Yeah, I can't say I've missed the blend function yet, but I've barely scratched the surface of this beastie. I can see it being useful, more so on bass than guitar, as the lowest octave can get lost on the attack. Depending on the settings, of course, but on bass, it's the low B notes. Om guitar on the other hand, I sometimes find it harder to trigger the attack on notes on the high E. Go figure. But it has widely varying behavior with even small knob tweaks.

 

[bholder]

enabling the filter at its lightest setting (green led)

correction - green is disabled, low resonance is orange.

So here's a little sample, I didn't try too hard to "sound upright", but yeah, liking the "short strokes arco sim".

 

[mannysilvers]

Yeah I got out my attack decay and it still works, surprisingly. It got corroded along with a couple of my other pedals power was left on and some waste solvent leaked on them. But it still seems to work just fine and it has the same polyphonic function the only thing it's missing is the LPF, but I think I'll skip the new box, because the old one does everything I need. I could even put an LPF in the effects loop of this thing but I think I'll try the envelope phaser first.

View attachment 7323370

This is super hardcore.

 

[stubbsonic]

So here's a little sample, I didn't try too hard to "sound upright", but yeah, liking the "short strokes arco sim".

Thanks again for posting this.

I'm sort of on the fence about this pedal. If I get it, there may be one or two multis that can go. There are only two Swello demo videos on YT at the moment, and the only bass demo is a moment with a bass VI. Your demo is pretty subtle. It almost seems like it isn't swelling every note.

I'm curious about the envelope filter stuff. Could it act as a stand-in envelope filter if the attack is at the shortest setting (CCW)? How "snappy" is it? The only envelope filter moment in the demo sounded cool, but it was it's own unique little flavor.

 

[bholder]

Thanks again for posting this.

I'm sort of on the fence about this pedal. If I get it, there may be one or two multis that can go. There are only two Swello demo videos on YT at the moment, and the only bass demo is a moment with a bass VI. Your demo is pretty subtle. It almost seems like it isn't swelling every note.

I'm curious about the envelope filter stuff. Could it act as a stand-in envelope filter if the attack is at the shortest setting (CCW)? How "snappy" is it? The only envelope filter moment in the demo sounded cool, but it was it's own unique little flavor.

Yeah it takes some practice to pluck cleanly enough to trigger the attack phase without overwhelming the effect with too strong a pluck sound. I had it set very short, I'll try again with a longer setting and with the filter set to high resonance so it's more audible.

 

[bholder]

I'll also try it with the attack set short to see how the envelope filter "by itself" sounds...

 

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ok 3 more clips, high resonance, resonance maxed:

1. longer attack, Mod level high
2. shortest attack, mod level high
3. fake arco attack, mod level medium

Tried to remember to pluck every note to trigger attack instead of sliding

 

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Another short attack, reso maxed clip



Might be a little too restrictive to be your only autofilter pedal, depends on how strong you like it. The filter effect is very tweaky, dependent on the Freq. knob setting. It does follow the attack, so no attack, you don't get much sweep to the filter either - it goes by fast.

 

[bholder]

the thing I've always found with auto filters though is the same here they don't respond evenly across the strings because you can't set the filter center frequency to follow the pitch of the note - so either lower notes don't get much effect because the filter set too high or the reverse. I do have one filter that has a pitch following effect but unfortunately that's static once it recognized the pitch, I want the pitch to be followed to set the center frequency that applies for the filter sweep, but I don't think I've seen anyone implement that yet.

 

[stubbsonic]

Thanks, bholder. Yea, that's definitely not gonna work for me as an env filter. But I can see how the filter could improve the arco sim, because it can perhaps counteract the natural changes in overtones from a regular pluck. I.e., as the pluck starts bright and darkens with decay, the filter can open up, kind of faking the more steady state of a bow.

 

[stubbsonic]

I ended up with some rewards points for a music gear retailer, and I think I'm going to kick down for a Swello next month.

I made a space for it on my pedal board, but when I checked the Swello specs, it says 9.6 volts. I'd rather not have to deal with a wall-wart, and would prefer to power it from my board's high-quality isolated power supply. Seems like the general consensus is that's ok, but I'm just wondering if anyone here has an opinion on the matter.

 

[Phagor]

Oops, I ran mine at 9v without even checking! It's been fine. Cioks DC7. I really like the Swello, I can get great fretless, cello or sax like tones with it.

 

[stubbsonic]

Thanks. That’s the same power supply that i have.

 

[stubbsonic]

Yea, the documentation actually specifies 9V, so we're both OK. They include a 9.6 V adapter, but that's not actually what they are spec'ing as the requirement. It requires 100mA. With the DC7, we've got plenty of headroom there.

 

[sunbeast]

I ended up with some rewards points for a music gear retailer, and I think I'm going to kick down for a Swello next month.

I made a space for it on my pedal board, but when I checked the Swello specs, it says 9.6 volts. I'd rather not have to deal with a wall-wart, and would prefer to power it from my board's high-quality isolated power supply. Seems like the general consensus is that's ok, but I'm just wondering if anyone here has an opinion on the matter.

9.6 is the spec of a fresh 9V alkaline battery, so the power supplies provided with EHX pedals and some other companies have always also spec'd at 9.6 (this is one reason rechargeable batteries don't work as expected in place of 9V in many cases, as rechargeable "9V" batteries often start closer to 8V). It should work totally fine with whatever the 9V from a high-quality supply is actually putting out!