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Watch Your Step
Electro-Harmonix, among the most innovative of pedal designers, has been pushing forward with their Next Step expression pedals that feature a beveled bottom and no moving parts to eliminate the natural wear and tear that accrues in wah pedals and ultimately results in their breaking down.
By the powers of modern technology EHX has made that concern a thing of the past as has been demonstrated with their first two Next Step pedals, the Crying Tone and the Talking Pedal, and is carried on in the next three pedals of the same line, each with a pretty self explanatory name. Introducing the Expression, Pan, and Volume pedals.
The Expression Pedal
The Expression pedal fills in the blank where expression pedals are needed to assist with pedals that aren’t expression pedals by nature. The Talking Machine, for example isn’t an expression pedal but it has an expression input, and that’s where this pedal comes in.
The Expression simply uses one output jack to link to the accompanied pedal and using the range dial you can control how broad the sweep effect range from heel to toe. The reverse button simple swaps the direction of the pedal’s output and the calibrate button is used to assign to the pedal what its natural resting position is. Also included is a 1/4” TRS cable and a 9 volt battery, presumably EHX’s own brand.
The Expression pedal will cost $88.20 and is slated to ship on September 29th.
The Pan Pedal
So you’re sitting there, strumming a few chords out of your little Roland Cube and you realize you want a stereo sound. So you go out and get a Peavey 5150 to balance it out and dammit wouldn’t you know it. Now you want more versatility with panning.
It’s a good thing we keep EHX around for this sort of thing because that’s what their Pan pedal takes care of. Featuring dual stereo input it rests in your hands all the power you need to decide to pan. For further creative control you can split one input into two outputs or commingle two inputs into one output. Plus Pan (no, not the one with the labyrinth) can be used as a mono or stereo volume pedal. The calibrate button serves the same purpose as the others in that it determines the natural resting point of the pedal.
The Pan pedal can be yours for the asking price $87 and is already available.
The Volume Pedal
So there you are. You’ve got your Talking Machine set up for manual control with the Expression pedal going out to stereo between your practice amp and your gig ready cab with the Pan. What do you need now? A way to make it even louder.
Thankfully we have the Volume pedal to turn to. It controls the volume for those generous swells so you can make people think you’re going to keep it quiet then blast them in with a volume so loud even the decibels’ ears start to ring. That’ll teach them to think you know what people mean when they say “indoor voices”. It uses a Bypass Volume control with a buffered bypass output to a regular output and a direct output and this far into this article I think you know what the calibrate button does.
The Volume pedal will have a price of about $88.20 and will be available October 5th.
wpDiscuz
I wonder…if I used the pan pedal to pan between 2 amps (1 for straight guitar, the other for my Leslie) would I get ground loop buzz? If so, how would I eliminate it?