Does this pedal exist?

epictring

I had a musical idea for one of my bands songs today. But I don't know if a pedal even exists that can pull this off live.

The idea is that a clean guitar piece is played which then changes or "fades" into a distortion tone slowly.
I know this can be done in studio, but is there a way to do this live with one guitar?

Ideas?
Thanks.

MikeM

Volume pedal into a tube amp? Volume pedal into a nice overdrive pedal. Panning pedal between a clean and driven loop?

epictring

Excuse me I'm not particularly familiar with volume pedals and what you can exactly do with them ? , I thought its just for controlling the overall volume of the amp.

MikeM wrote Volume pedal into a tube amp? Volume pedal into a nice overdrive pedal. Panning pedal between a clean and driven loop?

How exactly would one go to do this? How would the chain look?

I mean, if it was to be: GUITAR - OVERDRIVE - VOLUME PEDAL - AMP
and I wanted to perform it.. Then the volume pedal would be at 0% to prevent the overdrive and then slowly increase it?

Now I'm confusing myself :/
Excuse my noobness.

AlanRatcliffe

MikeM wrote Volume pedal into a tube amp? Volume pedal into a nice overdrive pedal. Panning pedal between a clean and driven loop?

+3. My thoughts exactly.

MikeM

Wow, what a wise man Alan ?

Volume pedal into overdrive suggests that it is before the overdrive ?

AlanRatcliffe

Quite simply, if a volume is before drive (including amp drive), it will control the amount of drive (like using your guitar's volume to control drive). If it's after the drive, it controls volume.

Using a volume pedal before drive does depend on the drive pedal changing from clean to drive gracefully - some, like fuzz pedals and some heavier distortions do not. In these cases, you would need a panning volume pedal (there is one of the Stereo Ernie Balls that does this) to crossfade between the bypass sound and the output of the pedal and the bypass would have to be buffered to a similar impedance as the pedals output - so, not an easy setup.

AlanRatcliffe

MikeM wrote Wow, what a wise man Alan ?

I came here to say that and saw you already had. Why waffle on? ?

epictring

Ok, nevermind ? that setup doesn't feel worth it.

Thanks.

MikeM

Broski, a volume pedal is a fantastic thing to have. It is not that complicated a setup, and can be quite versatile in a gigging situation.

epictring

What if I use my amp (Fender Super Sonic) distortion and I use the volume pedal through the effects loop? How would that go to work?

MikeM

Lets put it like this, the later you use the volume pedal, the more it controls volume, and the less it controls distortion.

So if you put it before your drive, you can go from clean to distorted. If you put it in the FX loop (Assuming it will actually work, impedence etc) you'd be controlling more of the volume while keeping the signal still quite distorted from your pedals and preamp.

AlanRatcliffe

epictring wrote What if I use my amp (Fender Super Sonic) distortion and I use the volume pedal through the effects loop? How would that go to work?

That would then be post drive, so the pedal would work like a volume control.

But why not simply take your overdrive and fiddle with your guitar's volume control? Then if you like the way your drive reacts, you'll like a volume pedal.

epictring

Aha.. so your guitars volume knob would have a similar effect as a volume pedal.. ?

Sean

Alan Ratcliffe wrote
MikeM wrote Wow, what a wise man Alan ?
I came here to say that and saw you already had. Why waffle on? ?

Seems to me Mike was having some fun at the OP's expense ?

aja

epictring wrote Aha.. so your guitars volume knob would have a similar effect as a volume pedal.. ?

Indeed it does. See these vids of a very special amp, but it shows the effect!

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singemonkey

All the '60s and early '70s rock guitar players used to use their volume knobs to simultaneously control volume and drive. So when the song kicked up a notch, so would the drive. It's a great disappointment to me that this is so seldom done now.

There was a time in the '70s when this must have been considered a 'problem' where people wanted loud clean or soft drive - and hence you get multi channel amps. To me that sucked half the raunch and magic of electric guitar playing out the window.

It took me years before I figured this out ('why the hell does Jimmy Page keep fiddling with his guitar controls?"). And now those big amps are often too loud to drive so you can't do this at low volumes. So yeah. With your volume pedal between your guitar and the amp, you'll get a slight increase in volume, but a huge increase in drive as you push it towards flat - if the amp is cranked enough to produce drive in the first place.

AlanRatcliffe

@Aja - OOh nice vids, thanks. I remember that Kuykendall guy - he won a Guitar Player player's award one year in the '80s. Nice solid player who really knows how to use dynamics and controls to get the best out of a good rig. That clean tone is almost acoustic.

@Singe - Agreed 100%. It's almost a lost art to set the amp at the maximum drive you need and do everything else with the volume knob.