Expression pedal for clav wah recommendation?

[Mighty Ferguson]

I have an organ style expression pedal that came with my CX-3 years ago, but the throw is much longer than what a guitar wah pedal and it doesn't really work well for clavinet wah. I've seen some volume/expression pedals aimed at guitar players that would work as a keyboard expression pedal, but they're very pricey. Can anyone recommend a good one with a short throw?

[mate stubb]

The Roland EV-5 is short throw. Make sure the polarity works with your board (Kronos?)

[ClavAnother]

I realize that this won't answer your question, but I find that expression pedals and internal wahs on Clav models are not a good as just using a wah. Expression pedals work well for expressing, wah pedals work well for wah. Feel free to ignore me, it just hit close to home because I went through the same thing some time ago.

[CEB]

The Moog EP-3 travel and height reminds me of a Cry Baby type wah. It's $40 and has switchable polarity and uses a TRS jack and replaceable TRS cable. I have 2 EP3s on my keyboard pedalboard because I'm short on board space and they take up less space than the Yamahas. I have had no problems with them and I think they would serve your purpose.

 

The Roland will work fine also. I'm pretty sure you can change polarity settings in the Kronos. But research that before you buy.

 

FWIW I'm with ClavAnother. There is something about the character of a noisey nasally inductor wah that sounds good but that brings a different set of problems. Mainly what to do when not playing clavs. The old wahs color your sound when not in use. You will want some sort of looper or a true bypass wah. With guitar it is not as big a deal because guitar amplification is lo fidelity but some guitar geeks still worry about it. My wahs are true bypass but are Morleys which have very long travel and are not true inductor wahs or my Tech 21 Killer Wail which is out of production and pretty rare. But the true bypass mod is pretty simple and I think you can probably find brands that are producing true bypass inductor wah pedals.

[WesG]

If you want short travel, the M-Audio pedal might do the trick. It has a switch so it can plug into Yamaha or Roland gear. I imagine it will work with Korg, too, I just don't own any.

 

Worst case scenario, you hate it and toss it under the seat in the van as your "holy crap, I forgot my pedal" spare. It's like twenty bucks.

 

Wes

[Mighty Ferguson]

Thanks for the feedback. Point taken on the real wah pedal. I'll have to think about that. I was hoping for something to use with the Kronos live, plus be able to use with Keyscape and the like in the studio. Also I'm loath to add extra cables and complexity to the live rig, as I already have stuff routing out aux outs to a Vent pedal plus a vocoder mic, MIDI Solutions box, etc... it's getting to the point where my rig is more complicated to set up than the PA. But some of the expression pedal options above are priced right, and I could try one and fall back to a real wah pedal if the expression pedal controlling a digital effect isn't cutting it.

[DanL]

My thought is, how often do you use a wah sound? I use one maybe 2x a night, so there is no way I'm bringing a real 1 just to get some little bit of extra authenticity in the sound. The wah sound on my Electro 5 is plenty good enough, and I'm sure the Kronos simulation is also good.

 

I have the Roland EV5 pedal, it's throw is short and it's hard to get accurate changes with it, you have to be slow and careful. I use it for fading in parts on my FA08. I use a Hammond expression pedal on my Electro, I like the longer throw it has.

[Al Coda]

Point taken on the real wah pedal. I'll have to think about that.

 

No, you shouldn´t.

 

Most "real" wah pedals (incl. all their circuitry !) are designed for electric guitars, so their inputs deal best w/ electromagnetic pickup output signals.

That´s what you don´t have on any electronic keyboard instrument, except real Clav, Rhodes, Wurly and Hammond.

 

 

I was hoping for something to use with the Kronos live, plus be able to use with Keyscape and the like in the studio.

 

 

Yes you can ... !

But have in mind not the (expression) pedal makes the sound w/ such solution, the quality of modelling of a vintage wah-wah´s circuitry does and that is what´s often set in stone w/ software code.

 

I call the pedal "MIDI CC pedal",- not "expression", just because "expression" is just only ONE controller type (MIDI CC #11) the pedal can be assigned to.

 

The truth is, what you get is a pot in a pedal type enclosure so you can operate it by foot,- nothing more,- no expression as also no wah.

 

When your electronic keyboard requires a 10K lin pot, buy such a pedal and pick the best quality one.

 

The other side of the coin is the model of the wah as an "insert FX" in your digital keyboard instrument.

If there´s only 1 option, you might not like it.

 

I´m using my Kurzweil PC361 for patches using "WAH".

Surprisingly it doesn´t have a dedicated WAH effect at all.

Instead you compose a chain from a resonant bandpass filter and some other goodies like distortion/overdrive and compressor to make it sound right as also that kind of (half-) modular concept makes it easy to tune (cutoff freq/ resonance amount etc.) that wah sound to the soundsource you´re using in that patch.

There are also keyboard sounds working better w/ a lowpass filter vs bandpass.

 

When you have that freedom, a stock MIDI-CC pedal being connected to your instrument and being assigned correctly does the job pretty well.

 

I´m using two Fatar VP25 which is 100% identical w/ original Kurzweil pedals and my meanwhile about 25 years old Boss EV-5 still works perfect too.

They are all 10K lin specs.

I´m pretty sure the MOOG EP-3 is great too.

 

The BOSS FV-500L seems to be a great alternative since it´s a more robust metal case compared to the plastic pedals.

25K ohms as a stereo volume pedal and 10K ohms when using it´s dedicated "expression" output.

But it´s about twice the price than the MOOG EP-3 p.ex..

 

A.C.

[ClavAnother]

These points have been mentioned:

 

-true bypass

-how often wah is used

-extra cables are a drag

-output signal level

 

 

Ok, so I use an Electro 2 and a Pro-145 live. I use the same vintage pedals that I use in my guitar rig and my rhodes/clav/cp60 etc. Now, I have been hearing about how pedals kill your tone unless they are true bypass for almost ten years now. I don't own a single TB pedal. I have to say that Ive never had any issues using pedals in over three decades of doing so. If my tone is being sucked into the void, I guess it's working as the perfect celestial eq, because my rig sounds very nice. Next, as far as how often you use a wah effect goes, it's not only subjective to the player, but also the show. I might use wah on the organ for a bit several times a night, or not at all. I might use it 95% of the time I play clav, but I might not play clav at all in a show. The fact that I use the effect ever means a wah has to live in the pedal board. Oh, and if you're playing gigs and not using a pedal board, ie, you plug in and unplug individual devices every single time you play, then I'm sorry, but you're doing it wrong. Build a board and custom wiring harness and your set up time is reduced to a couple minutes. Finally with regards to output signal level, my wah gives no shits what I put into it.

 

Happy jamming!

 

 

 

[Mighty Ferguson]

Lots of good points and suggestions in this thread. Thanks again, everyone. The Moog EP-3 looks like a great first whack at this, so one is on the way. And ClavAnother's point about the pedalboard is actually just becoming more relevant to me now. I recently relocated my Vent to the floor after getting a half-moon, and also picked up a Tall and Fat that may end up on the floor too. Time to dig up some pedalboard threads.