Expression Station Idea

Started by colinfilanigan, September 01, 2016, 12:56:40 PM

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colinfilanigan

Hi y'all,

I have an idea for something that would be really useful to my pedalboard, but if there's someone out there who understands expression/CV better than I do it would be great to confirm whether or not it will actually work before I start building.

The essential idea is this: I want to use a single expression pedal (in this case a Morley M2 Expression pedal) to control multiple (5 in total) effects on my board which feature expression control as on option.

I'd like to accomplish this by building myself a box (likely the size of a Smallbear Bare Box #1) w/ 5 TRS outs, 1 TRS in.
The in would be for the Morley M2, and each of the 5 TRS outs would enable me to "route" the signal from the EXP pedal to 5 different expression jacks on 5 different pedals. For the sake of saving presets, I'd also include a dedicated potentiometer, knob, and footswitch on top of the box for to each of the 5 outs. Hitting the footswitch for each respective out would swap control from expression pedal to the static setting of the knob on top of the box. I'd also include LEDs to help differentiate whether an output is being controlled by the preset knob, or by the expression pedal.

Would this work, or would the signal from the expression pedal become divided and weaker (specifically when trying to control two effects at once via the EXP pedal), making something like the addition of a CV multiplier or power supply necessary in the mix? Am I going to melt the expression pedal if I use it to control 5 effects at once? Or am I wasting my time by not just diving headfirst into putting together a midi expression rig at this point (and if so, can someone please point me in the direction of somewhere I can learn about those)?

Any and all criticism, praise, and/or general knowledge-bombs are appreciated – aside from being able to solder, I really have no idea what I'm doing here...

notnews32

I once had an idea similar to this...consolidating some space and saving some money on multiple expression pedals.. then someone showed by this beauty:
https://missionengineering.com/shop-2/products/expression/multi-use-exp/expressionator/
the Expressionator allows for 3 pedals to be controlled by one expression pedal, and each pedal's expression can be tapered, and saved as a preset. definitely check out the link... for 200 bucks it could be worth it.

Quackzed

i'd think that you could use an opamp buffer after the cv that would (most likely) easily handle all 5 parallel pedals... if you need power for the leds anyway, a buffer is a small add on... m2 into the 'control box' from there into an op amp buffer, then to 5 parallel outs... but keep in mind that each controllable pedal thats being controlled is going to probably affect the other pedals resistances as they are now in parallel... like if you have 2 10k resistors in parallel the resistance is half what it was b4... not sure how the control voltage thing is implemented in each pedal but i'd guess they're all somewhat resistance dependant... might want to try it out with some spliced wires before commiting...
nothing says forever like a solid block of liquid nails!!!