Anyone interested in a really pristine expression pedal?

I convinced Keith Hilton to build me a customized HILTON pedal that works as a expression pedal for the KPA. Maybe there are other players here who would like to join in and maybe get the price down a bit?

I am playing his volume pedal for many years now and IMHO it is the smoothest, most lightweight, most precise and yet most dependable volumepedal I ever had. But sadly these pedals don't work as expression pedals with the KPA. (Not even with a Y-cable, because they have buffered input and outputs.) So now I have already spent a lot of money in expression pedals. I tried cheapo plastic pedals and later I tried the praised Boss FV-500-H, and also the Morley PVO Plus now even the Korg XVP-10. And, guess what, they are more or less all the same: nice and sturdy outer shell but none of the different mechanisms to transfer the pedal movement into an impedance is really smooth and convincing and the sluggishness of the pedal joints makes all of them just ok for use as a WahWah but totally inacceptable as a master volume control.

At the moment I am trying to contact the KEMPER support to get some info about what voltages and polarities are needed and then I hope that Keith Hilton can build us a wonderful optical expression pedal.

I don't know yet the price. You see the prices of the other HILTON volume pedals. I personally hope it will be a bit lower because a pedal that is only meant for use as expression pedal does not need those buffer amps. But who knows. At the moment I am waiting since 3 days for an answer from the KEMPER support about some technical voltage details that Keith Hilton needs for the layout.

I'll keep you posted.

Quote from DocLine6forum

Could be interesting to me.

Welcome, Doc!

Quote from Will_Chen

Curious why there would be any voltage requirements at all. Shouldn't the volume pedal be a passive design? Have you tried the Mission Engineering or an Ernie Ball Volume pedal? Despite the cool design, I doubt many are going to bite on a $300 expression pedal...

The voltage is sent out by the KPA. The pedal itself is just a changing resistance (or better voltage divider) to this voltage. But it should fit to the values and especially it has to use the right connections in the TRS jack. Otherwise the maximum voltage would be toe-down and silence heel-down.

You are right, I forgot to mention the Ernie Ball in my list of dissappointments. Ernie Ball pedals are often praised as the best volume pedals although their poti is prone to failiure after the years, it sucks the high-end like any other passive pedal and (interesting for the use as expression pedal) the mechanical moovement of the pedal is as coarse and bumpy as any of the others above mentioned.

When I say I didn't test Mission Engineering (because I have no more faith in cogwheel+pot constructions) this leads us to the price question. By now I have so many desperate test models piling up here, if I throw them all into the eBay I guess I can buy several $300 expression pedals. But, to be clear about that: I am talking about master volume pedals. For a WahWah or other target parameters I also would never spend that much.

If you want you can do the test: take a long ringing chord, maybe with lots of compressor or maybe even a loop. Then put your foot on the volume expression pedal and try to do just an ever so tiny change in the level. Not a fast fade out - no, just a subtle change in the level as if you were drawing a volume curve in Cubase. If the result is ok for you then, lucky you, you don't need to spend threehundred bucks for a pedal. If you hear that the resulting fade is bumpy and uneven (especially at the beginning) then you should start to think about friction in pedals.

Quote from Will_Chen

Despite the cool design, I doubt many are going to bite on a $300 expression pedal...

It will certainly be a minority. Most guitar players slam the volumepedal toedown with the first chord and leave it there for the rest of the song. I don't want to start a business - just want to share my findings with other Kemperers and maybe start a collective order.

The HILTON pedal comes from the strange world of pedal steel guitars where they are using the volume pedal for almost every note they pick. So they have much higher demands on a pedal than rocknrollers. The differences to other pedals are:

• it's resistance is optical. So there is no friction from a cogwheel or lever or wire construction. And the way that the inhibition between the optical bridge is done is much more precise than in Morleys.
  

  
  

• the connection of the pedal to the floor-piece is much more sophisticated than with other pedals. Most of them use a primitive screw and washer and nut type of construction.The Hilton uses a kind of sintered brass bushing in the joints that is self-lubricating and therefor runs incredibly smooth and free of friction. There is also a dedicated construction inside that allows you to adjust very acurately how hard it is to moove the pedal.

Quote from db9091

Q: Doesn't Mission Engineering have a KPA Pedal for sale on Sweetwater?

Yes, the model EP1-KP-GN from Mission Engineering is specially made for the KPA.

Quote from db9091

Is that associated with KPA or totally after market?

I don't think Mission Engineering is associated with KEMPER.

Quote from db9091

Is it any good?

It is a cogwheel+pot construction like all the others. So I don't trust it and I refuse to buy it just to include it into my "collection of dissapointments".

Last Tuesday I was contacting the KEMPER support in order to ask for the right values and pin-assignments at the KPA's Switch/Pedal TRS-jacks for an expression pedal. After keeping me hanging for almost a week without an answer, Burkhard yesterday then deigned to drop me an answer: the KEMPER company is not willing to support the development of "complementary products".

Yes, maybe they are. There must be a reason for such a hostile behavior. Maybe this is how in the strange language of merchants it rings when they want to say:"Oh thanks, Olaf. That's a great Idea. We'll do that!"

So now I had a longer and thourough email exchange with Keith Hilton and now sadly it is clear that the HILTON pedal won't work as an expression pedal because it's circuit only works with AC current and blocks all DC at several stages. This means it would need a complete redesign. No way to just bypass the buffer amps.

Keith Hilton is mainly a wonderful steel guitar player who just came into producing this volume pedal because he was so unhappy with the quality of the existing pedals on the market. Won't be easy to convince him to do the whole layout work again just to satisfy six lonely kemperists here who are the only ones to feel the difference between a sluggish and bumpy pot-based construction and a quality, optical one.

The laws of market economy don't give me much hope that the mysterious KFC will feature a pedal that is more sensitive than the usual crap on sale everywhere.

For you guys this might be sad news, but for me this can really turn into a deal breaker. The possibility to have a nice, sweet-spot tube amp sound available at any volume levels (from thunder to wisper) controlled by a floor volume pedal was the main reason why I switched to the KEMPER amp in the first place. I will now sacrifice the EQ that I have in the MOD slot and put an effects loop there to connect my (analog) HILTON pedal. This is stupid because it adds more audio cables into the signal path and above all because it adds the tracking of another two digital conversion stages. I tried a lot of pedals now and I even tried to solve the problem by practicing more, adapting my motoric to the behaviour of pot pedals - and I definitely can say it won't work for me.

Maybe I should try Pete's method:
[Blocked Image: http://www.audiosemantics.de/FORUMS/Pete_Smashing.jpg]

Ok, so I wait with the Townshend Way of the Sword until April ...