Hi - I searched for wah info. The lp-101 has not been exceptional as a wah pedal for me. Though some of us have tried, it’s difficult to let the idea go. It comes close to a wah, and seems to have the kind of ability to do so.
I don’t know if the guitar won’t react so well due, in part, to the five volt expression pedals, or whether I’d be better off changing two expressions, such as the amount and sweep at the same time.
I thought I had something going using the 251 through the sample and hold circuit but haven’t replicated it.
If not stuck one this as a problem as I am, I’m wondering if there’s some info to impart on what can make the envelope grab the pitch more successfully. A lot of theory goes over my head, such as changing the circuitry. If the pedal is just wrong for wah sounds, that would be helpful too.
The 101 will never sound exactly like a wah, because wahs are bandpass filters and the 101 is a lowpass filter. The sound is similar, but no matter how you tweak it, it will never be exactly the same. So to avoid frustration, accept that the 101 is going to have its own sound, and use it where that’s the sound you want. But keep a wah handy too.
Thank you. Sounds like a plan. So it kind of behaves like it wants to be a wah, but doesn’t or won’t. Forgiving the anomaly, but I am so glad that it is no longer a contention.
Probably not much to go from this description, but would these parameters make a difference, never minding that the volume was too loud to be useful? - The impression, at one point, to me, was that the signal was going into a wah sound if say - the attack was extra long and the 101 caught part of the signal during the loudest increment at the rise of the voice I was using (pulse or string)? Taking into consideration the S/H has a lower pass filter built in.
Sorry if that makes no sense. I had to ask, after so long a misconception.
Thanks
The reason the 101 LPF behaves like a wah (with the right settings) is due to filter resonance.
When the Resonance control is set fairly high, the LPF emphasizes the frequencies around the Cutoff point, just like a bandpass filter does. This is why the LPF provides a wah-like effect. But the lower frequencies of your source signal are still present, so the overall effect will be different from a true BPF.
(Technical details: The Moog filter design provides a form of automatic gain compensation [AGC], which means that as the resonance increases, the overall output level decreases by a corresponding amount, keeping the gain constant. This means that the lower frequencies are reduced as the resonance increases, which actually helps the wah effect. Since the lower frequencies are still present, however, an LPF will never give the same results as a BPF, regardless of the Resonance setting.)
I’m not quite sure if I fully understand your question, but here are two things that I think address part of what you’re asking:
If you are trying to do an auto-wah (envelope-follower) kind of sound withe the 101, then you get better results if the drive is high enough to make sure the input level light is usually orange and sometimes red. That gives the envelope-follower more of a sweep to work with. As you noted, that makes the signal quite loud, so it helps to have something after your 101 that can be used to adjust the output level.
The S/H on the CP-251 isn’t a filter in the usual sense. I guess theoretically you could call it a kind of a filter since it takes an input signal and reduces it to a simpler form. But it isn’t a filter in any sense that would make it relevant to creating a wah sound.
Here’s a soundclip of fuzz-bass through the MF-101 being controlled by the sample-and-hold from the CP-251 - first doing the rhythmic thing, then the smoothed-out version controlling the filter:
It’s very technical - if you listen there’s a pause before the smoothed-out s&h comes in - I bent down and switched the plug from “out 1” to “out 2”! (I forget which is which)
The beginning part was much longer in the studio, but the engineer I was working with didn’t realize that he needs to hit record as soon as we start playing - when the inspiration hits, we start playing, no time to stop and start over!
Thank you for the explanations, and the example to hear how the 101 LPF is capable of sounding. I’ve received much good info here in general, for better ways to find uses for the MFs.