NE3 pitch-bend! Well, sort of...

[simonbeck]

Well, I did it. In the quest for Mellotron pitch-bends from my NE3 73, I put down £40 and bought a Behringer US600 Ultra Shifter Harmonist pitch-bend pedal. It arrived today, and I can confirm that it works pretty well. Not much glitching apart from at the very top of the keyboard, you can set the bend amount from -12 to +12 semitones, and the speed can be set to give a realistic "motor slowing down" effect. But the pedal can do various other tricks too - static detune for non-wobbly chorus or honky-tonk effects, parallel intervals including octaves, and "harmonize" mode which ties the intervals to a particular key. This is the first pedal I've bought in over ten years, and it's great. Highly recommended.

[Mr_-G-]

Thanks for the review and great to hear that it works well. I have been looking for one of those for some time and connect it to the "ribbon controller" posted here some time ago.

[simonbeck]

I recommend that if you want to use reverb, you use an external processor after the pedal, otherwise the reverb will get pitch-bent along with the actual notes, which would sound unnatural.

[JiminWales]

That's something I need to tackle myself sometime, and good to know the cheap Behri' is capable.
Does puzzle me that Nord, with such an innovative approach to synths, don't do the same for the emulated/sampled instruments. I think that if the original 'tron (or many other old keyboards) had offered a pitch bend on the panel back in the day, nobody would have said no or refused to use it. I remember turning the screwdriver tuning control in my old Logan String Melody into a panel control , and being glad of it.
We're still waiting for the Hammond to get a motor switch-off effect.

[simonbeck]

When I was using a Roland VK-7, I thought I'd try the motor-off effect at a rehearsal, so I brought along a spare footswitch. At the end of an organ solo, I hit the switch. The band (an 11-piece reggae band with a horn section) stopped dead and everyone stared at me with an expression of "Don't you EVER do THAT again!".

I never tried it again.

[azwel]

cant you also just use a digitech whammy

[simonbeck]

I could if I had one! Hahaha!

[simonbeck]

The Digitech seems to be a little over twice the price of the Behringer, and you need to adjust the pitch smoothly and accurately with the pedal. A Mellotron has a speed control, but it also has an electric motor and a flywheel, so a pitch-bend on a Mellotron is a much more mechanical process than bending a note on a synth or a guitar - the inertia of the physical system gives it a sound of its own, and the Behringer duplicates it quite well, although the speed-up time could be longer relative to the slow-down time.

[De fursaK NE5]

Hello,
Could you make an Mp3 so that we can ear that please ?
Thanks !
Cheers
De fursaK

[simonbeck]

I have now made a "Mellotron pitch controller" to manually change the pitch of the Behringer pedal. It is a rotary pot on a panel with a suitable knob. It will only bend up or down from the correct pitch (depending on the pedal setting) but it seems very natural to use. It connects to the pedal via a short 3.5mm stereo jack lead and a 3.5mm to 6.35mm convertor.