Helix and Variax String Pitch Changes - B-Bender experiment

[phil_m]

I made this little clip last night as a "proof of concept" more than anything. I'd wanted to try this for a while, and I don't know why I waited so long to do it. I assigned the pitch of the B-string on my JTV69 to be controlled by an expression pedal to emulate a B-Bender (min offset set 0, max set to +2 semitones). It works OK as long you make the transitions relatively fast. It isn't going to give a slow pitch bend. It actually doesn't really bend between the pitches - it just alternates between the two pitches.

 

I should give a caveat that I'm not really a B-Bender type player, so I'm just messing around here. Could be a cool effect in the right situation, though.

 

https://soundcloud.com/phil-miller-20/jtv-helix-b-bender-demo

[Rocco_Crocco]

Wow that's pretty ingenious, Phil. Sounds great.

[phil_m]

Well, I can't claim credit for the idea. Eric, aka Digital Igloo, mentioned it a few times over on TGP, and possibly here.

[Bangha]

Hey Phil!

 

May I ask how you assigned the pitch shifter to 1 string only?

 

Thanks

[phil_m]

Hey Phil!

 

May I ask how you assigned the pitch shifter to 1 string only?

 

Thanks

 

This wasn't done using a pitch shift effect. This was done by assigning the pitch of the B-string in the Variax in the input block to be controlled by an expression pedal. The pitch of the individual strings can be treated like any other controllable parameter, so you can have it controlled by an expression pedal, a footswitch or with a snapshot change.

[anothermohammad]

i made a b bender since seeing this i can't nigure she tout so good but you need a variax 

BrentMaHussain.hlx

[somebodyelse]

Shame I couldn't access the clip, nevertheless, the idea sounds really cool. I actually own a B Bender Tele, so the title caught my attention.

Don't really know much about the Variax, but seems like a fascinating bit of kit.