"Helix Compliant" exp pedal mod (Morley M2) with before/after pics

[DannyMcO]

Howdy all

 

Have seen a bunch of expression pedal posts; seems odd that it should be such a challenge to get third party, passive expression pedals to work with a multi effect unit in this day and age, but I digress. 

 

Below are some pics of the necessary mods to a Morley M2 in order to get it to play nice with the Helix. 

 

Essentially, you disconnect lead 3 from its correspondingly numbered jumper (someone please correct my terminology here), and connect lead 3 to lead/jumper 1.

 

The warranty-voiding mod is shown along with my sloppy soldering in thosr pics with a small red wire in them. It's possible to secure the wire manually if you're extremely dexterous or have tiny little hands or what have you, but I found it to be a little bit of a tight space to solder in. 

 

Been a fan of Morleys for awhile - they're generally tough and I favor both their shape and height, but your foot may vary. 

 

Cheers - 

 

Dan 

[Tcamponovo]

Mission Pedals also makes a great external expression pedal specially for Helix. Works great with no issues

[ricksteruk]

Nice to see a expression pedal mod!

 

While those Mission pedal look very nice I think they are about at least 50% more expensive than they should be.

 

I'm gonna buy a vox or crybaby wah off ebay for £30 and put a 10k pot in it.  

[DannyMcO]

The Morleys were $50 each via Sweetwater special order, vs $139 each for the Mission pedals. I'd already spent considerable dough on the Helix and the Variax, so saving a little dough while getting better than 2-for-1 pricing made sense for me.

 

Though admittedly the MIssion pedals have a leg up with having the toe switch built in. But I'd been using a Morley Bad Horsie prior, and found that my foot had a preference for the shape and travel of the Morley, so there was also the aesthetic and comfort factors to consider as well.

[DannyMcO]

With a soldering iron warmed up, the mod itself took maybe 5 minutes, and that's mostly for lack of much soldering experience.

[billlorentzen]

Do you get the full throw with that mod? In other words, does the pedal only reach 100% in the full forward position?

[LesSand]

Do you get the full throw with that mod? In other words, does the pedal only reach 100% in the full forward position?

 

I wonder the same. I just received my M2, hooked it up to EXP 3, added a Volume block to my signal chain, assigned controller to position and I'm seeing the parameter go from 0% to 58% and then back to 0%.

[ricksteruk]

I wonder the same. I just received my M2, hooked it up to EXP 3, added a Volume block to my signal chain, assigned controller to position and I'm seeing the parameter go from 0% to 58% and then back to 0%.

 

Did you do his mod to your pedal??

 

If not then yes... it will go 0% at heel down to 50% in the middle and back to 0% at toe down - like all other non L6 , or non modded correctly pedals.

[jaminjimlp]

Here is something I posted before for anyone who wants to mod your EXP of what ever brand.

 

Posted 18 January 2016 - 03:22 AM

From:

http://missionengineering.com/

 Wiring.
Most potentiometers have three connectors; Clockwise, Counter-clockwise, and Wiper. Amazingly, there are multiple different ways these can be wired, all achieving largely the same result, which means yet more variations for expression pedals. The most common expression pedal wiring is to connect the pot to a 1/4″ stereo (TRS) instrument jack as follows:

CW —— Sleeve
Wiper — Tip
CCW —– Ring

An alternative is with the tip and the ring reversed as follows:

CW —— Sleeve
Wiper — Ring
CCW —– Tip

Yet a third way is as follows:

CW —— Sleeve
Wiper — Tip
CCW —– Tip

 

In this last one, the wiper and CCW are bonded together and connected to the tip and the ring is unused. This requires the use of a mono (TS) cable such as a regular guitar cable, in place of the stereo (TRS) cable used in the other two. These three are the most common that we see in expression pedals, but we keep finding more. Sometimes a dual gang potentiometer is wired in parallel to create a single pot with half the resistance. For example you may see a dual 20K Ohm potentiometer bridged into a single 10K. In this case the pedal will function the same as if it were a native 10K Ohm single pot.

.....................................

 

OK so now we know we can do this:

 

The third way is the Line 6 way. (after some google searches I found this out)

 

This also alleviated the backwards operation problem and the 0 - 100 - 0 problem...

 

which means after the conversion you don't need to use TRS cables anymore you can use TS cables. Also now with either the 12k ohm pot in the one and the 10k ohm pot in the other I get full 0% to 100% on the Helix control.

here is what I did to make mine compatible so there would be no need for re configuring. the Potenteiometer on this 1 is 10k

Here is before

here is after... so just moving 1 wire (the green/ring) and put it together with the (red/Tip) and the (black/sleeve) stays the same.

also I jumped out the back on the side pot that is for changing the "throw" of it to disable it and not doing it made it have issues when you adjusted it it would not go back to full throw. (If that makes any scents to you)

My other one

here is after... so just moving 1 wire (the green/ring) and put it together with the (red/Tip) and the (black/sleeve) stays the same.

 

this model had a duel 24k pot and I soldered each connection 1,2 and 3 to 1,2 and 3 (you see it better in the picture above) making it a single 12k pot

 

This can be done with a soldering iron with no extra solder. just heat up the green wire pull it off and put it on with the red and heat it up to connect it. 

 

[LesSand]

Did you do his mod to your pedal??

 

If not then yes... it will go 0% at heel down to 50% in the middle and back to 0% at toe down - like all other non L6 , or non modded correctly pedals.

 

Thanks, will try the mod today!

[LesSand]

Did you do his mod to your pedal??

 

If not then yes... it will go 0% at heel down to 50% in the middle and back to 0% at toe down - like all other non L6 , or non modded correctly pedals.

 

Yeah, the mod worked like a charm for me, am a happy camper!

 

The only small thing is that now is that pedal gets to 100% just about 1 to 2 mm before the end of travel. I can only imagine it's because of the slide resistor tolerance.

 

I'd love the Helix to have the ability to run a calibration and adapt to pedal slight variations. Maybe this needs to go to IdeaScale...

[scenith]

On 6/17/2016 at 9:32 PM, DannyMcO said:

Howdy all

 

Have seen a bunch of expression pedal posts; seems odd that it should be such a challenge to get third party, passive expression pedals to work with a multi effect unit in this day and age, but I digress. 

 

Below are some pics of the necessary mods to a Morley M2 in order to get it to play nice with the Helix. 

 

Essentially, you disconnect lead 3 from its correspondingly numbered jumper (someone please correct my terminology here), and connect lead 3 to lead/jumper 1.

 

The warranty-voiding mod is shown along with my sloppy soldering in thosr pics with a small red wire in them. It's possible to secure the wire manually if you're extremely dexterous or have tiny little hands or what have you, but I found it to be a little bit of a tight space to solder in. 

 

Been a fan of Morleys for awhile - they're generally tough and I favor both their shape and height, but your foot may vary. 

 

Cheers - 

 

Dan 

Hey,

 

I have one of these expression pedals and love it! My only problem is the pot value is 10k. I'm using strymons and it's recommended to use pots from 25K to 500K. I've looked everwhere for a slide that fits but no joys so far. My question is regarding the modification. does this change the value of the pots? and if so to what value?

 

any help would be much appreciated.

 

cheers,

 

NeilO

[DannyMcO]

On 6/19/2016 at 11:02 AM, billlorentzen said:

Do you get the full throw with that mod? In other words, does the pedal only reach 100% in the full forward position?

Sorry for the multiyear delay here. Don't check this too often.

 

Yes, I get the full 0-100 range.

[DannyMcO]

On 5/30/2018 at 3:31 PM, scenith said:

Hey,

 

I have one of these expression pedals and love it! My only problem is the pot value is 10k. I'm using strymons and it's recommended to use pots from 25K to 500K. I've looked everwhere for a slide that fits but no joys so far. My question is regarding the modification. does this change the value of the pots? and if so to what value?

 

any help would be much appreciated.

 

cheers,

 

NeilO

Sorry NeilO - can't help you with this. Only did the mod for the Helix and didn't replace any components. Just changed the one wire's connection points.

[brue58ski]

On 6/18/2016 at 5:14 AM, DannyMcO said:

The Morleys were $50 each via Sweetwater special order, vs $139 each for the Mission pedals. I'd already spent considerable dough on the Helix and the Variax, so saving a little dough while getting better than 2-for-1 pricing made sense for me.

 

Though admittedly the MIssion pedals have a leg up with having the toe switch built in. But I'd been using a Morley Bad Horsie prior, and found that my foot had a preference for the shape and travel of the Morley, so there was also the aesthetic and comfort factors to consider as well.

 

Just an FYI. Although you aren't getting one I thought I'd put this out there since I almost made this mistake. You have said whether you have the rack mount or floor model of the Helix but the Mission pedal with the footswitch for the Helix is only for the rack mount Helix. The footswitch does not work with the floor model Helix. Just thought this should be made clear. Thank  you for posting your work.

[DannyMcO]

If any of you are considering this mod, just as an FYI I wound up eventually upgrading to a pair of Dunlop DVP3's (the DVP4 and DVP1XL are also functionally comparable).

 

The DVP 3 is WAAAAAY FREAKIN' MORE durable - no string to break as it uses a metal band - and if you don't like the Helix tuner you go out from the pedal itself, as well as being able to use it as both an EXP or volume pedal.  

New, they're more than the Morleys by ~$30. But the used market on eBay and Reverb is robust, and they're bulletproof, so you can definitely get one at a good price there. Both of mine were acquired used.

One thing though - on the used side a bunch of folks occasionally get model info wrong on them:

• The DVP1 is chrome and has 3 1/4" jacks (Input, Output, Tuner)
• The DVP1XL and the DVP3 (DVP3 aka "Volume (X)") are both black and have 4 1/4" jacks - Input, Output, Tuner, Expression; I don't think there's any difference other than size (XL being, you guessed it, larger)
• The DVP4 is black and is a 1/2 size mini pedal with only 3 jacks (In, Out, Aux) but it does the same things as the DVP3 via an internal toeswitch. 

A quick global polarity adjustment was all I needed to be humming if I recall. Super easy to do.

 

Happy expression-ing!

[giosuedecarli]

On 2/6/2020 at 12:58 AM, DannyMcO said:

...

A quick global polarity adjustment was all I needed to be humming if I recall. Super easy to do.

 

Hi Danny, can you explain this better?

thanks