Ctrl/Exp pedal

[Normhart]

I just thought I’d relay a curious experience I had recently involving the expression or swell pedal. I had an old Zoom FP02 laying around unused and decided to use it on my new Stage 3. Right after plugging it in, I noticed a very noticeable degradation of sound quality -particularly in the pianos. The piano sound was thin boxy and muffled. It was nothing like the piano I heard through my headphones when I first got it out of the box to test normal operation. As I found out more about the Stage, I noticed that it had specific pedals it expected in the configuration section of the pedals -Roland, Yamaha Korg and Fatar. The setting was on the Roland. After unplugging the Zoom pedal, everything was fine and back to normal. I’d since sent away for a Yamaha FC7 - a product I’m very well acquainted with as I have 5 of these and use it as my first choice. I wanted to give a heads up to new users that might run into this same situation and mysteriously encounter bad sound.

[Hlaalu]

The setting was on the Roland.

Did you try changing this and see if anything happened?

[FZiegler]

Hi Normhart,

thanks for that info. Sounds interesting, but that is not a very clear description.

Where did you plug it? Was it used as control pedal? Then it might have affected program settings, so that you got alternative sounds (cf. "morphing" in the manual). Or did you plug it into the organ swell jack and had the pedal menu set to "volume"? Then it should definitely not have that sort of effect on the sound.

You use three words: control, expression and swell. You don't speek of volume pedal. In the Nord terminology, there is no such thing as an expression pedal: Everything in this category is done via morphs controlled by the Ctrl pedal or the modwheel (or aftertouch). What you might have intended to do is simple volume control - there are two ways to do that on a Stage 3: a) switch the organ swell pedal function to "volume"; then you will loose the subtle sound changes on the organ engine that happen with swell; or b) set a program with volume morphed on CP - then you would need two expression pedals, one for swell and the other for the control pedal function.

[Spider]

Yes, it's not clear what happened. First of all, the control pedal should do absolutely nothing to the piano sounds, unless the program you're using has a Morph programmed to modify the sound. But a piano sound should already sound "piano-like" by itself, so any change would probably make it very "unpiano-like". Check the morph settings and see what's happening.

Also, did you plug it in-out with the instrument on? The Stage recognizes the type of pedal on startup, it will not adapt to different pedals being plugged after the instrument has started, and plugging in a new pedal may do some weird things. I'm not familiar with the Stage 3, but my Stage 2 has global settings for the control pedal that let you adjust not only the type (Roland, Yamaha etc) but also range and offset, so you should be able to make any pedal work on a perfect 0-100% travel.

Apart from that, I don't think anything's wrong with your Nord:just check the pedal global settings, the morph settings of your specific program, and don't plug pedals in/out with the instrument already turned on.

[Normhart]

The setting was on the Roland.

Did you try changing this and see if anything happened?

No but my next step was to take one of my FC7 pedals and just try that. However, all four of them are physically linked and I got to lazy to have to separate one! Figured I’ll just wait until the one I had on order came in.

[Normhart]

Hi Normhart,

thanks for that info. Sounds interesting, but that is not a very clear description.

Where did you plug it? Was it used as control pedal? Then it might have affected program settings, so that you got alternative sounds (cf. "morphing" in the manual). Or did you plug it into the organ swell jack and had the pedal menu set to "volume"? Then it should definitely not have that sort of effect on the sound.

You use three words: control, expression and swell. You don't speek of volume pedal. In the Nord terminology, there is no such thing as an expression pedal: Everything in this category is done via morphs controlled by the Ctrl pedal or the modwheel (or aftertouch). What you might have intended to do is simple volume control - there are two ways to do that on a Stage 3: a) switch the organ swell pedal function to "volume"; then you will loose the subtle sound changes on the organ engine that happen with swell; or b) set a program with volume morphed on CP - then you would need two expression pedals, one for swell and the other for the control pedal function.

I had it plugged into the organ swell jack and set to volume. Sorry for the confusion. I will try the FC7 pedal but I realize that ultimately I will need the two pedals. My initial purpose was just simply a convenient way to control overall master volume. Thanks for clarifying the Nord reference. Clearly, I will need to invest more time in getting familiar with the instrument. Luckily there are folks like yourself and this forum to help that along. Thanks!

[Normhart]

Yes, it's not clear what happened. First of all, the control pedal should do absolutely nothing to the piano sounds, unless the program you're using has a Morph programmed to modify the sound. But a piano sound should already sound "piano-like" by itself, so any change would probably make it very "unpiano-like". Check the morph settings and see what's happening.

Also, did you plug it in-out with the instrument on? The Stage recognizes the type of pedal on startup, it will not adapt to different pedals being plugged after the instrument has started, and plugging in a new pedal may do some weird things. I'm not familiar with the Stage 3, but my Stage 2 has global settings for the control pedal that let you adjust not only the type (Roland, Yamaha etc) but also range and offset, so you should be able to make any pedal work on a perfect 0-100% travel.

Apart from that, I don't think anything's wrong with your Nord:just check the pedal global settings, the morph settings of your specific program, and don't plug pedals in/out with the instrument already turned on.

No, the pedal was plugged in before power on. I think most of my issues may very well be due to just my initial unfamiliarity with it and that should gradually resolve over time. But thanks for the assurance of the Nord being defective - more an issue of ‘pilot error’ in this case.