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Pitch Wham - what am I doing wrong?


jackwagner
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I have a preset that uses the Pitch Wham. It doesn't behave the way that I expect or the way that I've seen it used in some videos. The issue is that I can hear the original pitch, even when I set the Mix to 100%.

In trouble shooting, I started with an empty preset and added only the Pitch Wham block. I connect my bass to the Guitar In and connect a cable from the 1/4" Out L/Mono connector to a combo amp. I have a Helix Rack and Control, but for this test, I disconnected the Control. On the Pitch Wham block, I set Position to 100, Heel Pitch to 1, Toe Pitch to 1, Mix to 100. When I play a note, I can hear the original pitch and the shifted pitch.

Firmware version 2.30.

 

Any ideas?

 

--jack

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Baffled me, too. Thought it was the Helix. Went out and got a PitchFork. Same! Everybody kept telling me I was hearing (even FEELING) the sound of the naked guitar. Finally, I ran it through closed-back headphones, volume UP. Sure enough, when I couldn't hear the actual string, I realized they were right! On stage, with stage volume levels, probably wouldn't have been able to hear it, but at home studio levels it made using a pitch shifter simply annoying. Even with the headphones, at reasonable levels, I can FEEL the original tone vibrating in the guitar's body!

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I noticed the same thing.  Only had it a short time, so I figured it was some adjustment I would have to learn about and would get to later.  Is taking the original note away possibly not do-able?  That seems kind of weird.  Most of any of the other units I've used were the opposite - the default was that the original tone was gone @ 100% mix, and you had to add it in on purpose.  It does seem to track well, though, so there's that too.

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I have a preset that uses the Pitch Wham. It doesn't behave the way that I expect or the way that I've seen it used in some videos. The issue is that I can hear the original pitch, even when I set the Mix to 100%.

In trouble shooting, I started with an empty preset and added only the Pitch Wham block. I connect my bass to the Guitar In and connect a cable from the 1/4" Out L/Mono connector to a combo amp. I have a Helix Rack and Control, but for this test, I disconnected the Control. On the Pitch Wham block, I set Position to 100, Heel Pitch to 1, Toe Pitch to 1, Mix to 100. When I play a note, I can hear the original pitch and the shifted pitch.

Firmware version 2.30.

 

Any ideas?

 

--jack

Can you post a pic of your screen showing how your preset is laid out? With the pitch wham set to 100%, you won't have any dry signal going through that block. Could you have some dry signal going through on path B?

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What you're all describing is the alleged "ghost note" phenomenon familiar to those of us who play a Variax and use the alt tunings...and the diagnoses above are very likely correct. At low volumes, it's a whole lot easier to hear one's instrument acoustically than most people realize. The acoustic sound is easily ignored...at least until the pitch that's coming out of the speaker and the one ringing from the instrument itself are no longer the same. Dissonance is terrible, and chaos ensues 😉...the closer the interval, the worse it gets.

 

Crank it up, problem solved.

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Can you post a pic of your screen showing how your preset is laid out? With the pitch wham set to 100%, you won't have any dry signal going through that block. Could you have some dry signal going through on path B?

I will do that next time I'm working on it. Pry in a few days.

 

 

Ghost note. Hmm. I first noticed it and band rehearsal, where I could hear the original note in the PA. All of my troubleshooting was done at bedroom volume tho. I will try again keeping that in mind.

 

Thanks for all the feedback,

 

--jack

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Can you post a pic of your screen showing how your preset is laid out? With the pitch wham set to 100%, you won't have any dry signal going through that block. Could you have some dry signal going through on path B?

 

Here's a pic of the preset I used to test the Pitch Wham. I started with an empty preset and added just the Pitch Wham.

post-1635249-0-60376900-1516124357_thumb.jpg

--jack

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Baffled me, too. Thought it was the Helix. Went out and got a PitchFork. Same! Everybody kept telling me I was hearing (even FEELING) the sound of the naked guitar. Finally, I ran it through closed-back headphones, volume UP. Sure enough, when I couldn't hear the actual string, I realized they were right! On stage, with stage volume levels, probably wouldn't have been able to hear it, but at home studio levels it made using a pitch shifter simply annoying. Even with the headphones, at reasonable levels, I can FEEL the original tone vibrating in the guitar's body!

 

What you're all describing is the alleged "ghost note" phenomenon familiar to those of us who play a Variax and use the alt tunings...and the diagnoses above are very likely correct. At low volumes, it's a whole lot easier to hear one's instrument acoustically than most people realize. The acoustic sound is easily ignored...at least until the pitch that's coming out of the speaker and the one ringing from the instrument itself are no longer the same. Dissonance is terrible, and chaos ensues ...the closer the interval, the worse it gets.

 

Crank it up, problem solved.

 

What it is....

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