Volume pot useable range

Fama

Fama

Well-known member
How do you set your pedal volume pots? Does anyone use the first ~third of the rotation? I think generally it's a preference that unity should be around middle (so 12 o'clock), but I find myself pretty much always using either unity, a bit more, or a lot more, depending on the pedal and use case in general. This means most of the pot range is not used.

Some pedals have unity around 9 o'clock or so, which means more of the range is useable, but those pedals usually go VERY loud too from my experience. So it's maybe less of a design choice? Not sure.

Does that bother anyone else, even a little bit? Does anyone use pedals set to much under unity? I know Mad Professor has an "Underdrive" pedal which is meant for when you run a distorted sound on an amp and want a pedal that drops the signal so you can get a clean tone.

Is this a stupid thing to focus on? (don't answer that)
 
Depends on the taper of the volume pot really. They all behave differently, for instance a linear (B) taper pot will have more perceived volume earlier in the sweep, but if the resistance value is the same the max volume will be the same regardless of taper.
 
It depends on what the pedal is, but I assume you're mainly referring to dirt pedals. I think it's fairly common practise to set dirt pedals just slightly higher than unity. It's probably entirely a psycho-something effect but it invariably sounds better this way. I've heard that overdrives are "supposed" to overdrive your amp, but I don't know anyone who uses the level to push their amp into overdrive. Once upon a time, sure, but these days no.
 
HamishR said:
It depends on what the pedal is, but I assume you're mainly referring to dirt pedals. I think it's fairly common practise to set dirt pedals just slightly higher than unity. It's probably entirely a psycho-something effect but it invariably sounds better this way. I've heard that overdrives are "supposed" to overdrive your amp, but I don't know anyone who uses the level to push their amp into overdrive. Once upon a time, sure, but these days no.
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I do! But then I run pedals into a modeler so I don't have to worry about annoying the wife or neighbors with volume.

FWIW running a bit over unity probably sounds better because it acts like a small boost at the same time, so you're mixing the amp's overdrive with the pedal's distortion.

Although since I run the modeled amps right on the edge of breakup, if I use the level too much compared to gain, the pedals tend to sound pretty samey since they rely on the amp's overdrive so much.

Edit: I guess I should probably just condense my question to "Does anyone actually run their pedals below unity?".
 
Fama said:
How do you set your pedal volume pots? Does anyone use the first ~third of the rotation? I think generally it's a preference that unity should be around middle (so 12 o'clock), but I find myself pretty much always using either unity, a bit more, or a lot more, depending on the pedal and use case in general. This means most of the pot range is not used.
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On my most recent EQ pedals I've been making unity at noon, full left is -10dB, full right is +6dB. The primary idea is to be able to give unity gain at the output, regardless of EQ boosts or cuts. My implementation also gives a buffered output, so always low impedance regardless of knob position, and no appreciable effect on tone.
 
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