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Iron Ether Appreciation Society

#1,381
I always think of one of the knobs as the 'top end' of the sweep and the other as the 'lower reach' of the sweep. And it seems to act that way whether you've got the expression pedal (which manually sweeps) or are just using it as an envelope. Would be nice to have a speed or attack control though.
 
#1,382
movinngruvin said:
My thought was that if sensitivity is at noon you can still get a full sweep to maximum frequency (dry tone) it just takes a bit more effort than if sensitivity is at 4 or 5 o’clock. But if you don’t want a full sweep, yet you want to trigger the filter with the same dynamics as say 3 o’clock you have to have the expression pedal to do so. Wait a minute, now as I type this I realize why I even thought of it. I’m currently using an active bass without a tone control. All someone has to do is use a bass with a tone control or add a bare bones LPF in front to reduce the max frequency the pedal will open up to. Taylor, please forget I even typed the request. This is why you are the builder and I am not! Case closed.

I still have to experiment more with the XD and expression pedal. @emanual has given me a few ideas to try out.

Okay, thanks for the reply, it helped my understanding. I hope you aren’t getting arthritis building all of the DubT’s, ;)
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The tone of the bass doesn’t affect the sweep of the filter, but certainly with a darker bass you won’t hear that prominent peak in the highs as intensely as it opens. I think what you are asking for is an “Envelope Depth” or “Envelope Amount” control as some other filters have.
 
#1,383
BurningSkies said:
I always think of one of the knobs as the 'top end' of the sweep and the other as the 'lower reach' of the sweep. And it seems to act that way whether you've got the expression pedal (which manually sweeps) or are just using it as an envelope. Would be nice to have a speed or attack control though.
Click to expand...
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe the Exp pot has any effect on the Envelope sweep
 
#1,384
sunbeast said:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe the Exp pot has any effect on the Envelope sweep
Click to expand...

Right, all it does is attenuate the control signal coming from the expression jack. The Exp knob is not connected to the envelope follower section.

movinngruvin said:
My thought was that if sensitivity is at noon you can still get a full sweep to maximum frequency (dry tone) it just takes a bit more effort than if sensitivity is at 4 or 5 o’clock. But if you don’t want a full sweep, yet you want to trigger the filter with the same dynamics as say 3 o’clock you have to have the expression pedal to do so. Wait a minute, now as I type this I realize why I even thought of it. I’m currently using an active bass without a tone control. All someone has to do is use a bass with a tone control or add a bare bones LPF in front to reduce the max frequency the pedal will open up to.
Click to expand...

sunbeast said:
The tone of the bass doesn’t affect the sweep of the filter, but certainly with a darker bass you won’t hear that prominent peak in the highs as intensely as it opens. I think what you are asking for is an “Envelope Depth” or “Envelope Amount” control as some other filters have.
Click to expand...

So, more specifically, the Sensitivity knob controls the gain of the audio signal that goes into the envelope follower section. The XD came out before I started putting block diagrams in the manuals, but maybe I should draw one up to clear all these things up. There's no standard for control naming schemes in pedals, but for the most part what I've called Sensitivity is exactly the same as what another builder might call Envelope Depth in another envelope filter pedal. In theory, you could be controlling the gain of the audio before the envelope follower, or the gain of the control signal that the envelope follower spits out, but in most cases this will have exactly the same effect. You definitely wouldn't want to have both, because it wouldn't add anything and would just make it that much harder to find the setting you want.

I use the term Envelope Depth in the FMeron because that pedal's envelope works differently than the XD - on the FMeron, the envelope's start and stop points are set by the FM and Env Depth knobs, and the envelope will sweep through this precise range regardless of whether you play a loud or quiet note. A lot of thought and prototyping went into that decision and I can talk more about it later if anybody's interested, but I gotta get back to boxing up your Dubterraneas!

Sometimes the tone of the signal does actually affect the way the envelope responds. For example, if you whack the string hard against the frets, the attack portion of your note tends to have more high frequency energy, which decays quickly, leaving mostly fundamental and low harmonics that sustain longer. If you turn the tone knob down on your bass, that attack portion will be turned down and the envelope follower will not open up as much.

In your specific example, @movinngruvin, I think you could achieve what you're looking for by just turning up the Frequency knob. It has the same effect as sweeping the expression pedal up.
 
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#1,385
Taylor Livingston said:
Right, all it does is attenuate the control signal coming from the expression jack. The Exp knob is not connected to the envelope follower section.





So, more specifically, the Sensitivity knob controls the gain of the audio signal that goes into the envelope follower section. The XD came out before I started putting block diagrams in the manuals, but maybe I should draw one up to clear all these things up. There's no standard for control naming schemes in pedals, but for the most part what I've called Sensitivity is exactly the same as what another builder might call Envelope Depth in another envelope filter pedal. In theory, you could be controlling the gain of the audio before the envelope follower, or the gain of the control signal that the envelope follower spits out, but in most cases this will have exactly the same effect. You definitely wouldn't want to have both, because it wouldn't add anything and would just make it that much harder to find the setting you want.

I use the term Envelope Depth in the FMeron because that pedal's envelope works differently than the XD - on the FMeron, the envelope's start and stop points are set by the FM and Env Depth knobs, and the envelope will sweep through this precise range regardless of whether you play a loud or quiet note. A lot of thought and prototyping went into that decision and I can talk more about it later if anybody's interested, but I gotta get back to boxing up your Dubterraneas!

Sometimes the tone of the signal does actually affect the way the envelope responds. For example, if you whack the string hard against the frets, the attack portion of your note tends to have more high frequency energy, which decays quickly, leaving mostly fundamental and low harmonics that sustain longer. If you turn the tone knob down on your bass, that attack portion will be turned down and the envelope follower will not open up as much.

In your specific example, @movinngruvin, I think you could achieve what you're looking for by just turning up the Frequency knob. It has the same effect as sweeping the expression pedal up.
Click to expand...
My only direct experience with this kind of “Depth” control is on a WMD Protostar, that has both a Threshold control and an “Envelope Amount” control. The Threshold controlling the input into the Envelope and the Envelope Amount controlling the width of the sweep (Though it was quite interactive). At least to my ears this was how it seemed to function. I liked it quite a bit, though for general low-pass I still preferred my XD!

And I agree that tone can affect the Envelope in a dynamic output sense, but the sweep isn’t limited inherently by lack of highs (you just won’t hear it sweep up there as clearly if there aren’t a lot of highs in your signal to be boosted by the filter, the reason we pump fuzz pedals through them!)
 
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#1,386
You're right, it does seem from the manual that they've got control of both the gain before and after the envelope follower. I shouldn't get into questioning another maker's design choices, and WMD is cool.

And you're very right about tone and the filter sweep. I know some folks have probably used the XD with a P bass with old flatwounds and then wondered, why doesn't it sound all bzzzeeeerrrrrooowww like in the video?
 
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#1,391
aguacateojos said:
I also ordered ASAP, maybe within the first hour or two? Hopefully we're all getting it shipped out today or tomorrow and just receiving staggered notifications.
Click to expand...

Knowing that it's a one man shop, I'm not at all surprised that it's taking a while I think the pre-order interest was probably a bit of a surprise.
 
#1,395
Ie board.jpg


IE heavy board....
 
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#1,397
BurningSkies said:
I'm surprised I'm so far back in the queue given I ordered it within moments of Taylor's postings on the first pre-order day.
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There were about as many pre-orders in the first day as I normally build in 3 months. Thanks for your patience so far, everybody! Just to manage expectations, it could still take that full 3 months for them all to ship.
 
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#1,398
Taylor Livingston said:
There were about as many pre-orders in the first day as I normally build in 3 months. Thanks for your patience so far, everybody! Just to manage expectations, it could still take that full 3 months for them all to ship.
Click to expand...

This translates into: You're gonna have the sweetest build and the best finish EVARRRRRRR.

Don't try to convince me I'm wrong.
 
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#1,399
Okay campers, I had some initial success with this XD V2 but now I'm kinda back to where I started with the XD a few years ago. I tried running a few effects into it and kinda just got the same muddy sounds, I tried running it with just my bass and can get some nice response with the expression pedal but without it plugged in I mainly get a muddy tone - I'm even finding places where my clean volume is off but the filtered sound is literally just the clean sound I would hear with the pedal off. Just as an experiment I pulled up the Zach Rizer demo and looked at how he had the pedal set, listened to his examples and I tried to emulate it. No luck, still just a big mud wall. I've been using my P with flats, which has a pretty hot output, and am about to swap it for an Ibanez SRMS805 to see if that bass gets better responses. I also tried running it from both the power supply on my Cioks and a simple 1Spot which made no difference.

Any thoughts on what I'm doing wrong with it? Currently reading through the detailed post from @movinngruvin to see what I might not be understanding about the pedal.
 

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