I’m interested to know how the dead zone is put into the Voyager’s pitch bend wheel…After playing a vintage Mini (UNspring-loaded, center-detent pitch wheel) I’ve found the Voyager’s PB less than effective for hand-played vibrato (especially when I want to use the ModWheel buss for things other than vibrato!) … I figured out that I could reverse the little piece of metal that hits against the two spring elements and have an un-sprung wheel, but there seems to be a decent size deadzone unless I set the pitch bend range to +/- 1 semitone, which of course, eliminates the possibility of a quick octave switch via PB wheel…bottom line, would it be possible to lessen/eliminate the dead zone to allow subtle pitchbending vibrato?
(While we’re talking about PB range, anyway, in the SoundTower MMV 3.4 version of the editor (on a PC), if you select a PB range, it sets the Bend Up to ZERO and only sets the Bend Down to what you select…)
Hi psound74,
the dead zone of the pitch bend center position is very important to stop endless MIDI data streams or zipper noises. Why don’t you use the Mod Wheel for that (use Pot Mapping e.g.)?
Have fun,
Rudi
With Rudi’s after touch modification, you could also use the aftertouch for some nice vibrato by routing aftertouch to the pitch. If you got an older Voyager version without an aftertouch hardware fix, this is not fun at all.
To get rid of the self centering of the Voyagers pitch wheel is an easy job. Just get rid of the metal spring.
Some Minimoogs got a dead center too. And most people here tell us, they need even a wider dead center and a more precise zero self centering.
Resistor R4 on the wheels PCB controls the size of this deadband, if I am not mistaken. Normal value is 100K Ohms, and if you increase this value to 1M then you will decrease the size of the deadband. Rudi is right that this can lead to constantly-streaming MIDI data (which can degrade performance), as well as tuning problems… so, maybe it’s not a good idea to change it.
Deadband is implemented with a pair of paralleled diodes at the center tap of the pitch wheel pot. You could just short 'em out but trust me you won’t like it.