We’re very excited to announce that TimeLine has received Premier Guitar’s coveted Premier Gear award!
We’re also extremely proud that it has received 5 out of 5 stars in their recent gear review. Here’s what they say:
“At this point, most guitarists familiar with Strymon are accustomed to having the company knock their socks off. In the last couple of years, this Southern California-based group of hardcore pedal geeks has garnered raves in these pages for their Blue Sky Reverberator and El Capistan tape-delay emulator. The company’s latest weapon for sonic tweaking, the TimeLine delay, is every bit as impressive. And if you’re a studio hound—home, pro, or otherwise—the TimeLine is worth your undivided attention.”
Our good friends over at Huge Racks Inc are giving away an Ola Chorus & Vibrato pedal. If you’re not a member of their forum, why don’t you sign up and introduce yourself! To enter the giveaway, all you need to do is head on over to their website and sign up. Huge Racks recommends that you practice some chorus hungry licks just to make sure you’re ready should you win the giveaway. Good idea!
Contest has ended. Congratulations to Scott Whigham of Dallas, TX. Stay tuned for other giveaways!
In this third edition of our tech corner series, I’ll explain a simple and easy way to use a volume pedal as an expression pedal. This cool little trick was shared with us by our good friend Chad. This article will be the last on expression pedals specifically, although there are many other interesting diy projects we can do in the future with the EXP input on Strymon gear.
If you’ve got a volume pedal hanging around that doesn’t get much use or better yet one already on your board, you can use it as an expression pedal with one special cable. It’s called a TRS (tip/ring/sleeve) insert cable and the purpose of this cable is normally to break out a TRS insert jack (commonly found in mixers) to the separate send and return signals. Luckily we can take advantage of this wiring to convert our volume pedal into a standard 1/4″ TRS equipped expression pedal.
One example of this type of insert cable is the Hosa STP-201 seen below.
Once you have a TRS insert cable, simply plug the TRS plug into your exp input, the “ring” plug into the volume pedal input, and the “tip” plug into the volume pedal output. That’s all there is to it! Now you can use volume pedals like the popular Ernie Ball VP Jr or the new Dunlop DVP-1 as expression pedals for your Strymon gear and most other gear featuring expression pedal control. What is actually going on here is that we’re taking advantage of the design of a passive volume pedal and re-wiring it as an expression pedal with this cable. Note that your volume pedal needs to be passive, not active and the impedance (value of the resistance) in the volume pedal’s potentiometer isn’t critical. One thing that may be a little bit different about using the volume pedal as an expression is that if the volume pedal uses an audio taper potentiometer you won’t get a linear sweep of expression pedal values from toe to heel. In other words, much of the action will happen at one extreme of the pedal.
As you can see, the expression pedal schematic from Tech Corner #1
is functionally identical to using a volume pedal with a TRS insert cable.
Here is a video walk-through:
Hopefully this has been a useful trick to get you rocking that expression pedal.
Nate Walcott is an arranger, composer, keyboard player, and trumpet player. He is a member of the band Bright Eyes, and also plays in Conor Oberst’s Mystic Valley Band.
Nate recently sent us a few photos of his live setup. He is utilizing a blueSky reverberator in his Hammond pedal board, and an El Capistan and Ola Chorus & Vibrato in his Rhodes pedal board. He will also be adding a Lex to his setup over the coming weeks.
In addition to his time with Bright Eyes, Nate has also toured with Lullaby for the Working Class, the Autumn Defense, Rilo Kiley, and the Glenn Miller Orchestra. In the studio, he has contributed arrangements to artists such as Maria Taylor, Pete Yorn, Cursive, The Faint, Rilo Kiley, Rachael Yamagata, and The Concretes.
Here’s a video of Bright Eyes performing Jejune Stars live at Lollapalooza, August 5th, 2011:
We’re very excited to announce that TimeLine has received Premier Guitar’s coveted Premier Gear award!
Click below to read the entire review.
Our good friends over at Huge Racks Inc are giving away an 
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