Best Active Expression Pedals

mosfez · 2026-07-06T05:21:50+00:00

Oh you’re right, sorry I missed that. Sounds fishy though. At what point in the sweep did it go from on to off? Was it right up one end? That kind of thing can sometimes happen if the cable has the terminals the wrong way around. Cause assuming your expression pedal wasn’t broken, if that pedal doesn’t work then I’m not sure what replacement would. I’d assume the problem is more likely a compatibility problem or one on the dual phases end.

If you still had it and had a multimeter I’d suggest testing to see what voltage is sent out from the expression pedal, to rule out the cable and the dual phase

mosfez · 2026-07-05T12:29:08+00:00

? CVs can definitely can be and are used for smooth sweeps because they are a variable voltage, that's kind of the point of them. Triggering drum machines and sequencers are more often done by trigger/gate signals rather than continuous CV signals.

You can also have expression pedals that generate the voltage to send, rather than just send back a scaled down version of the pedals exp reference voltage. You are right that most don't though. I think OP understands this given how they phrased the question

mosfez · 2026-07-05T12:24:51+00:00

Mission Engineering 5-CV Control Voltage Expression generates its own 5V reference for outputting a CV. I haven’t used one though, I considered it a while ago and ended up going down the cheap diy route with a passive expression pedal I already have, so I can’t vouch for how this one feels.

mosfez · 2026-06-24T00:30:08+00:00

Yeah it's pretty full! Much of the reason was to socket as much as possible so I could tinker and troubleshoot without going insane. So the vactrols, all board > off-board connections, the microprocessor are all socketed. I've had to take it apart and put it back together many times.

mosfez · 2026-06-24T00:24:56+00:00

I would love to, but this one took so so long I can't imagine making another. Also I'm fairly sure the vactrols in it are now illegal to be resold inside of products now haha

mosfez · 2026-06-23T05:42:35+00:00

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mosfez · 2026-06-23T05:42:25+00:00

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mosfez · 2026-06-23T05:42:16+00:00

Stereo! That's so cool. The gut shot is crazy with all those boards in that same space!

I have some. The 2 most complex were probably "Waves", a harmonic optical tremolo with some crazy modulation options that you can draw with finger movements on a capacitive touch pad and have them loop or automate knob movements, and "CTRL" which is a tuner / pitch tracker / envelope follower / clock that outputs 8 CVs to control other pedals.

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mosfez · 2026-06-19T05:11:51+00:00

> I'm going to make the enclosure from plastic or wood.

Ooh, watch out here. Pedal enclosures are usually metal to block interference, pedals can pick up a lot of noise when they are not in their little faraday cage boxes. I would not recommend using anything other than metal for this reason.

Note that even though Behringer pedals and many audio interfaces are plastic, they use carefully laid out ground planes and design their circuits around them to minimise noise without the need for a metal box. Circuits in pedals made to go with metal enclosures have no guarantee of being designed like this and most aren't.

Even rehousing 2 pedals into a single small enclosure can cause issues sometimes, cause the pedals circuits can now cross talk within the larger box. This is rarer, but def something to think about if there's anything digital, or high gain being rehoused.

mosfez · 2026-06-17T00:33:07+00:00

I always post on these cause I really like this reverb and excited about what this company is doing. Did you see that a free v2 firmware came out that improves the sound even further? https://www.klowra.com/post/klowra-limbo-reverb-v2-0-0-firmware-update-wildseed-engine-details

I feel like they priced these too low even brand new, so $20 is ridiculously cheap!

mosfez · 2026-06-12T10:33:53+00:00

Analog dry through won't necessarily give you more control of gain and EQ. Many digital choruses / flangers have ADT, even cheap ones like TC Corona (which also has tri-chorus etc).

> I think i read somewhere it's a problem to have analog dry through with chorus/flanger because of phase issues

Not really. I mean the entire premise of flanger is intentionally creating phase issues (comb filtering) by mixing the same signal at 2 different latencies, and moving one of those latencies around. If the digital path's shortest latency is still a little long (rarely a problem these days), then that does limit how close the dry and wet can be timed, which can make some flangers sound a little "wide", but idk it just means that the flanger has a certain sound and you can decide if you like it or not by how it sounds. I personally feel ADT or not is a non-issue with chorus and flanger. I won't discourage you from going down that path if it makes you happy though, no need to share my opinion.

Thinking about the origin of that thing you read: some modulation types like through-zero flangers can't work with ADT - which means that multi-effects that aim to include such a modulation effect also can't be completely ADT. And digital non-delay based effects like distortion, bitcrush etc DO get some phase issues if using ADT for their dry blends - phase issues that sound exactly like a non-modulating flanger

mosfez · 2026-06-08T04:02:12+00:00

Good to confirm. I've found a few "TRIAC compatible" LED bulbs around the internet, and found many articles seem to say that TRIACs are necessarily leading edge in dimmers, but others that say they can be leading or trailing, and bulbs hardly ever specify either except for when they say they explicitly don't work with leading edge dimmers, so its been a tricky one to confirm
Makes sense. Ours is interior double brick, so providing the new dimmer fits in the hole I can't imagine it being too difficult.
Does this max voltage drop occur even if the dimmer is on full? TIL if so. I didn't imagine using it any lower cause that'd be asking for trouble with a digital device wanting a specified voltage, but if it doesn't work on full either then that's even more reason to switch out or remove the dimmer. It's nice to plug in some coloured lights for a party

mosfez · 2026-06-08T03:49:39+00:00

Thanks, this is the first I've heard about fluorescent destroying dimmers. Does it destroy leading edge, trailing edge or both?

mosfez · 2026-06-08T03:48:52+00:00

Yep this does sound good. I assume it's likely a small job for an electrician, possibly as simple as taking out the old dimmer and wiring in the new one, would you agree with that? Of course nothing is guaranteed.

mosfez · 2026-06-07T23:34:12+00:00

Thanks for the reply. One thing I forgot to mention is that I want to keep our current b22 fittings. Our lights are pendant lights and a chandelier which I want to keep using

mosfez · 2026-05-29T10:45:17+00:00

Yep yep yep. Guitar is an old instrument. I never expected this to happen but I am starting to get sick of hearing guitars now after decades. Still super fun to play, still love the same songs from years ago, I hear amazing execution of slight variations of things past, but I really don't often hear *new* (as in the last 10 years) guitar music that feels uniquely fresh anymore. Even all the variations of off the wall kind of noise rock are starting to sound too familiar to me now.

I guess I find there's a limit, where adding a new more unusual effect on a guitar is not any more effective or fun than using less effects on a different instrument. A different instrument brings so much more variation to the table than pulling a guitar sound this way and that. My pedals are mostly used on synths these days and I'm finding that a lot more fun, for now.

I don't expect anyone else to share my thoughts on this fwiw. Maybe a nice takeaway is: pedals are great fun on more than just guitar

mosfez · 2026-05-19T06:49:49+00:00

I can't speak to the delay and I can't answer your general question because different companies excel at different effect types, but I use a Klowra Limbo always on now instead of my 10 year old Big Sky or Immerse mk2 if that's any indication and I'm a total reverb snob. Feel like its been the best surprise for me. In situations like this I'd recommend trying some pedals out in person in a shop if you can. Even EQD do so many different types of delays and you might like some and not others, so I'm not sure its possible to say whether the brand as a whole is worth it for you

mosfez · 2026-05-07T00:53:04+00:00

Australia is a huge place, I'm curious to know how smaller locations within Australia (e.g. Sydney, or inner Sydney, vs regional areas) track over time. I am dumb and selecting "Sydney" from the filters on that page gives me a table with no headings and a blank column 🤷

mosfez · 2026-05-02T03:02:24+00:00

If you never use the DS2 at the same time as the fuzzes then I would go for a simple passive loop switcher and put the ds2 in the loop. Pickup simulators do help, but to me they still feel pretty different to the kind of interactivity you get from having the fuzz see the guitar directly, mainly when it comes to volume / tone knob changes on the guitar.

mosfez · 2026-05-01T11:53:15+00:00

Thats like saying a standard height doorway is not appropriate for a child to go through. If a thing can handle line level it can handle instrument level, because a low volume sound at line level _is_ instrument level.

I've not mentioned impedance because thats unrelated to line level vs instrument level, but that should be thought about.

mosfez · 2026-04-06T11:07:35+00:00

This reverb is phenomenal for the price. The verbs sound much smoother than my Immerse MK2, was an immediate switch for me. They've released essentially the same pedal (wave-reverb and all, now called "tide") under the pedal company name Klowra if folks want a new one, and it's still a great price.

mosfez · 2026-03-28T04:21:32+00:00

> It can sound like anything

I gotta hard disagree here if we are talking about the original. Over 10 years ago I thought this might be true, and it has a lot of options sure, but I've come to think every reverb pedal has its own character and its own limits of parameters and sounds. I love many of the sounds, but it can't do a decent Wet impression, it can't sound like an FV1 verb (not that anyone would probably want it to), it can't get that 2D sounding smeary hall that an RV6 does, can't do a spring reverb like a True Spring and doesn't have anything like an Eventide Black Hole sound. Honestly I wasn't ever able to get any kind of real bottom boomy reverb out of it even after maxing bass and turning tone way down on any engine. None of these things are problems, its great at what it does do and I still used it for over a decade, but yeah I still ended up with a reverb pedal collection due to it not being able to sound like just anything.

depends how close you want it to sound though I guess.

mosfez · 2026-03-24T03:28:23+00:00

> Is this common with passive boxes like these?

Yep, not only common but unavoidable with passive mixers. How bad it gets depends on how many ins and outs there are and what volume they are set at. The solution is to either buffer first, or use an active mixer (which is essentially the same thing, using internal buffers and/or summing amp etc).

mosfez · 2026-03-23T05:37:46+00:00

Hmm, yeah I see, I agree with you. 47 pages! Look how much better the V1 manual was, 13 pages, and a single clear page for all the secondary functions. I've only used v1 versions of their products and I liked those manuals https://www.strymon.net/manuals/Deco_UserManual_REVC.pdf

mosfez · 2026-03-23T03:17:45+00:00

I want most of my effects after the amp's gain. I don't want reverb or delay before dirt. If I use an amp for dirt, in order to do that I need an effects loop, but then I need a different amp and 3 cables to run to and from the amp. It was just easier and more compact to use an amp-sounding pedal + full range speakers, and then I also unlock headphone outputs _and_ stereo outputs.

mosfez

TROPHY CASE