PItch Glide Coolness:

(Paul Angle)

I spend an abnormal amount of time tweaking on this unit and I run across some cool ways to use it as a result of many decades of being a tone junkie.

My amp tweaks will kill you in how accurate they get to the real deal. Pending of course what you pipe the unit into.

I work quite a bit on my new POD system rig. I wanted a break from dropping $200 on tubes all the time so I look to the POD to give me a lot of cool amps to use.

So far the results are pretty good and my presets are not the typical "noise fests" that some choke off with a gate and call it a "sounds like".

Mine sound like not only the real amp, but a tweaked in optimized amp, and when I come up with effects in my chain, they have to work really well and be quiet.

I hope to share some of my completed patch presets as I finish developing them. They are not to sound "like someone" but a means to sound like yourself and sound damn good.

Always been a fan of the Whammy pedal but not for the usual weeeooooo effect everyone does to death.

The Harmonizer modes on the original Whammy are really cool. Basically it is the same tech as the Whammy side of the pedal just allows hard set at intervals. You can do that yourself on the Pitch Glide Model in the HD. I have long loved the sub octave pedal and the cool result of placing one before gains. Some real nice Jeff Beck type fusion tones can be obtained. And my fav of all time using a 4th or 5th interval UP into some gain, very cool. Yet the HD unit offers some new twists on an old fav, so read on...

Some things I have found with these settings in the HD is that putting the PITCH GLIDE effect after your gains sounds the best.

Not so true of the real pedal but the internals of the HD allow for some unique tones. Try it yourself on the easy movable HD effect chain and decide where you like it.(I use external gain and OD so mine are a result of some high end external pedals I integrate into the unit.)

Tracking is supurb on the HD and I think perhaps better than the std Whammy.

(The Whammy pedal is not a polyphonic device -which tracks and uses chords and multiple notes- it is designed to track and divide or agument a single tone and it likes a clean signal to do that. The tracking glitch burble one hears on the Whammy or a basic sub octave pedal is not a musical artifact, so a dufus playing chords into these units is not producing a good tone but a burble glitch of tracking error. That being said the Whammy and in particualrly more so the HD Pitch Glide will hold simple harmonic chord structures of say two notes in major 5th or octaves. But in general do not try to play whole chords, it is just not able to track them.)

Advantages of the Pitch Glide -Harmonizer- effect over a traditional harmonizer effect:

-no set key

-no set scale

no limiting your free style ad libs

The effect after gains is really cool and so very fusion in nature.

Settings for the Pitch Glide -Harmonizer effect:

a.) Set a Pitch Glide to a +4.0 UP. Mix is at half. Do not assign it to an expression pedal. Just kick the effect on when wanted via programmed footswitch. I find the best position is after gains which in my case is after my effects loop. Just kills.

b.) Set the Pitch Glide for a -12.0 DWN setting. Mix at half. Very good tracking and true note sub octave. Again after gains.

c.) You can also set +4.0, +5.0 (4th or a 5th) UP or DWN as well as an Octave +12.0 UP.

d.) do not worry about a pedal to control it that is not what you want, replaces a sub octave, or harmonizer pedal with more freedom of playing and great tracking.

e.) If you really like the effect and want to get program adventurous, set an expression pedal to your 2 fav settings on toe up and down. Like a 4th UP toe down or a 5th UP toe up. Any combination is possible.

Issues:

a.) you cannot always get the editor software to get an exact 4.0 or 5.0 settings. Sometime you can get the POD unit itself to get a 4.0 or 5.0 then send it back to the editor and save it.

Sometimes the POD itself goes from 3.9-4.1 for some reason. The slight off makes for slightly off tuning, I find if this is the case, 3.9 is preferred over 4.1. and so on. The major octave intervals of 12.0 seem to have no problem.

Crank this cool Pitch Glide Harmonizer after an OD or gains and you will love the cool BEck like tones it inspires. Tracking is much better than the sub octave or harmonizer effect and can actuall hold some simple chord intervals without glitching.

Hope you enjoy my latest effect insight. Hope to present more as I get more uses to this unit. I will try to upload some presets of great amp tweaks when I get them nailed down.