yowhatsshakin wrote:Thanks for picking up the slack today Ken. After all, it is Open Mic this week.
I must have missed the memo about open mic week!
louis cyfer wrote:of sound are you looking for with the envelope filter? it's kind of a broad category.
I've been experimenting to see what's out there. I'm open to just about anything. I mainly use mine with bass, but I do sometimes run through one to funkify a guitar rhythm.
Sprinter 92 wrote:I've never tried an envelope filter and I don't know what it does. What does it d
I'm far from an expert on envelope filters, but they do really interest me. The idea is basically that the signal from the instrument opens a filter like you would find on a wah-wah pedal, and that the amount of response from the filter depends on how hot the signal is and how hard you hit the front end. Heavy picking (or aggressive right hand technique on a bass) will cause more of an effect than softer playing. The filter itself can sweep up or down - essentially an auto-wah - or remain at one center frequency, depending on the design of the pedal. I currently have four analog pedals that are variants on envelope filters:
1. The Boss AW-2 Auto Wah is a pretty limited pedal IMO, but contains a low-frequency oscillator (LFO) to sweep the filter. It can be OK sometimes on guitar, but I did not find any use for it on bass. All of the usual Boss limitations apply.
2. The DOD FX25B is a neat little pedal. I liked it so much that I bought a second. It works surprising well for the price, IMO. I've used it around the house and in jam sessions on both bass and guitar. It may be a touch on the thin side for bass, but then again it runs about a quarter of the price of a higher-end unit on the used market.
3. The Moogerfooger MF-101 Lowpass Filter isn't designed to be an envelope filter per se, but it contains an envelope module and a filter module and works like a fixed-frequency envelope filter. You can connect an external LFO (such as from another Moogerfooger) to make the center frequency move up and down, like rocking a wah-wah pedal. You can push the resonance knob up to the verge of self-oscillation or hook it to a Moogerfooger Ring Modulator to add all kinds of weird decay patterns to the sound. It's hard to get anywhere close to a realistic description without using sound clips. As a bonus you can use the lowpass filter as a lowpass filter, to remove unwanted high frequencies (for example, filtering string noise or using it as a PTB-style treble cut). I imagine it could also act somewhat like the OMG switch on an early L-1000.
4. The EBS BassIQ Triple Envelope Filter is my newest toy, and I'm only starting to scratch the surface with it. It gives three different filter sweep directions, and pulls out all kinds of vowel sounds over the notes. I've tried it with the Lynx and the L2KE so far. It sounds great with the Lynx, but the hot signal from the L2KE pickups takes it to another level.
I would love to hear any thoughts or experiences with other pedals of this general type.
Ken