ZVEX EFFECTS

After two years of experimentation with all kinds of radio-frequency controlled pedal designs, I have finally completed something! This pedal uses a novel circuit to transmit a small radio signal (thousands of times weaker than a cell phone) out of a spiral copper antenna that detects the presence of your foot, and turns up and down your guitar volume smoothly and instantly. Although you put your foot on the antenna pad to control your volume, it is different from a volume pedal in many ways...

1) You can do tremolo effects in perfect time with the band, by tapping your foot on the pedal. If you can tap your foot in time, that is. Try that with a volume pedal.	2) You can make perfect volume swells, the kind that experts do with their pinky on strats or modified telecasters, but you can do exceptionally pretty ones using this pedal. And there's no "jumpy" spots or scratchy noises like you get from a pot. The volume simply rises up out of nowhere, and the tone of your guitar is completely natural and clear, from dead silent to full volume!	3) There is no quality change at lower volumes. When you use a regular volume pedal you probably notice a "deadness" or "dullness" to the tone, because there is unavoidable loading on your signal. The Probe uses an open-sounding preamplifier circuit to preserve your guitar signal. The device that controls the volume uses a method completely different from a pot.
4) The Volume Probe has a tuner output that lets you tune your guitar in silence, and when you bypass the pedal, the tuner is completely removed from the circuit, giving you absolute true bypass. When the pedal is engaged, the amp output is the only one that is changed by the volume probe, while the tuner out stays constant. You may use the tuner out as an extra audio out if you want. It will turn off when the pedal is bypassed.	5) I don't personally know anything about pedal steel guitar, but someone I showed the Volume Probe to immediately suggested that it would work well for this type of instrument. I guess I had better get some down to Nashville...	6) There is an adjustment on the Volume Probe that allows you to set the sensitivity from "sock" to "shoe". You turn it toward shoe for thicker soles and toward sock for thinner soled shoes or socks or even bare feet. Set the knob where it works best for you and your shoe. When using the pedal with bare feet, you may want to flip the spiral antenna over and use the rubber pad on the back side to reduce sensitivity and give you a smoother control. You may use your hand, nose, forehead, or any free appendage to control your Volume Probe. I will make no further comment about that, except that you can use it distortion-free in the studio with a console signal of -10 dBm or smaller to control the volume of tracks you have already recorded, during the mixing or re-recording process. Just plug it into the patch bay.

Power:

The input jack contains the switch that turns on the battery, so remember to unplug for longer battery life. Battery life, by the way, is a big deal to me, and the battery in this unit should last just as long as in a Fuzz Factory, because it draws almost exactly the same amount of current. In fact, it works well with a dying battery too, and automatically reduces power consumption as the battery ages to help make it last longer. The maximum output volume will drop a very small amount as the battery gets old but the sensitivity will remain high... you may not even notice! When changing the battery, be careful to replace it exactly as it was originally installed, with the battery clip leads going neatly behind the switch, keeping it clear of the output jack.

For best results:

One way to adjust the volume probe is: plug it in turn it on, put your foot on the coil at a comfortable pressure, then reach down and turn the knob until the sound of your guitar just disappears through the amp. You can tweak the adjustment knob with your toe (that's why it's on the edge of the pedal) until it's just perfect, if that first approach didn't get it right.

When you set up your probe, clear all cords and wires away from the spiral antenna and the wire leading to the big uhf connector. Don't let anything but your shoe/foot/hand/forehead/appendage touch the antenna or connector to the pedal, or the sensitivity will be reduced. You should be touching your strings while using this pedal for the greatest possible volume range. This will ground your body so that the pedal can detect your foot more easily. If you are letting all of your strings ring, touch your stop tailpiece, input cord sleeve, or your machineheads or strings at the headstock.

If you practice on a concrete floor, and notice that you have little control over the probe no matter where you adjust the knob, or if you find that the volume drops significantly when you turn the unit on, then you'll have to put the Volume Probe on a piece of carpet or a rug or a piece of plywood to insulate it from the conductive floor. Sometimes concrete has a lot of water and/or metal in it and the probe mistakes it for your foot! Likewise, if you have a metal floor (don't practice on a metal floor... do you want to die?) the probe won't work without some kind of insulation between it and the floor. But on most stages, wood floors, carpeted floors, and on pedalboards, you should find that the Probe is very sensitive.

If you damage your antenna by say, running over it with a lawnmower, you can easily replace it with experimental antennas soldered into the same plug, or (i'd recommend this) you should order a new antenna from your dealer. Remove the battery cover so you can hold the UHF jack from the back side. The antenna unscrews using the knurled grip. There's some little teeth that keep the antenna from rotating around to some funny angle, which you set right by pushing in the antenna plug first while holding the UHF jack from the inside, then screw on the knurled piece. When it's tight, the UHF plug is firm and the knurled part is almost touching the grommet. Voila!