Re: Can any one recommend a good volume/expression/wha pedal

[Jeff Duke <jmar@bellsouth.net>]

Kim Flint wrote:

> At 8:42 AM -0800 1/15/00, Jeff Duke wrote:
> >I love the Morley optical pot. aspect, however on my Morley wah/vol I 
>was
> >disappointed that the volume part is audio taper not linear taper, some
> >might find
> >this a good thing but I cannot do the same type swells that I could w/ 
>my
> >older
> >Morley wah/vol non optical linear taper pot. True about the volume
> >decrease in the
> >older one though.
> >
> >The difference is that linear taper is a steady increase in volume over
> >the range
> >of the pedal while the audio taper stacks up incrementally. I am sorry 
>I can't
> >explain the differences better. Anyone else?
> >
>
> you have that backwards.
>
> Audio (or log) taper gives a steady increase in volume throughout the
> range. This reasonably matches the way your ears respond to volume. 
>(i.e.,
> doubling the signal amplitude does *not* sound twice as loud to your 
>ears.
> it takes an exponential amplitude increase to sound like a linear volume
> increase to you.)
>
> Linear pots tend to sound like all the volume change happens right in the
> beginning of the range, then you hardly hear any change through the rest 
>of
> the range of the pot. They do not sound like a steady volume increase,
> which is why the other sort was invented.
>
> So volume pots are usually audio/log, expression pedal and such are 
>usually
> linear.
>
> kim
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Kim Flint                   | Looper's Delight
> kflint@annihilist.com       | http://www.annihilist.com/loop/loop.html
> http://www.annihilist.com/  |

Well I had to turn to my book Electronic Projects for Musicians by Craig 
Anderton
but here is his definition ;

"One other charactoristic of pots, taper, might cause confusion. The taper 
of a pot
is another word for the rate at which the resistance changes. The most 
common is
linear" "turning it halfway gives half the resistance" "a quarter gives a 
quarter,"
"two-thirds gives two-thirds,and so on."
"A log taper pot, however increases resistance logarithmically" "This 
means that
turning up the pot halfway covers only about 10% of the total resistance;
two-thirds covers about 40%" "as you get past this point, each degree of 
rotation
covers a progressively greater amount of resistance"

I am paraphrasing but I believe that this is what my point was in my lame
description. I prefer linear for my vol. pedal so I now use an Ernie Ball 
which is
linear.

jd