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How to assign General volume ( the big weel on front of Helix) to a pedal


l6guitarman
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It’s not possible to control that knob with MIDI. You can assign the Level parameter in the Output Block in your presets to be controlled by a MIDI CC. That’s probably the closest thing to having a way to control the overall volume.

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You can simply max out the big volume knob, and put a stereo volume pedal in your chain at the very end.  That way you can change how loud you are.  I think this is what you need.  You can set the exp pedal to persist globally from one preset to another, as opposed to it being set to a pre-saved value in each preset (under settings / expression pedals -> set the EXP control to Global)

 

That's what I would do.  If I were playing an acoustic show for example and want to be able to quickly turn myself down, I'd use the volume pedal at the end of everything.  

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The majority of midi devices are setup with MIDI CC#7 (and/or sometimes CC#11) assigned to the master volume. 

I'm a little surprised that wasn't set up on the Helix... even as an option to turn on in the global settings. 

 

There is nothing I can find in ideascale... so I suspect in 7 years there has been ZERO interest for it :) 

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On 1/28/2022 at 3:47 PM, phil_m said:

It’s not possible to control that knob with MIDI. You can assign the Level parameter in the Output Block in your presets to be controlled by a MIDI CC. That’s probably the closest thing to having a way to control the overall volume.

Ok. Many Thanks to all for the support. I will try the suggested configuration

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On 1/29/2022 at 4:03 PM, codamedia said:

The majority of midi devices are setup with MIDI CC#7 (and/or sometimes CC#11) assigned to the master volume. 

I'm a little surprised that wasn't set up on the Helix... even as an option to turn on in the global settings. 

 

There is nothing I can find in ideascale... so I suspect in 7 years there has been ZERO interest for it :) 

Maybe but, to attenuate the volume at the beginning of the chain, I can very well use the guitar potentiometer. Thanks for the help.

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1 hour ago, l6guitarman said:

Maybe but, to attenuate the volume at the beginning of the chain, I can very well use the guitar potentiometer. Thanks for the help.

I’ve always wondered why people put a VOL block at the beginning of the signal chain. Like you I think it’s unnecessary,  but maybe I’m missing something. Anyone care to explain it to me? Seriously - this is not a setup for me to argue against it. I’d like to understand how it may be better than using the guitar’s Vol knob.

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1 hour ago, silverhead said:

I’ve always wondered why people put a VOL block at the beginning of the signal chain. Like you I think it’s unnecessary,  but maybe I’m missing something. Anyone care to explain it to me? Seriously - this is not a setup for me to argue against it. I’d like to understand how it may be better than using the guitar’s Vol knob.

I for one always use the volume knob on the guitar to clean up my sound a la Brian May, Eric Clapton, etc.  So I can see how putting VOL block in the beginning of the chain can be useful to have all the gradations of clean-to-dirty sounds. 

 

So, sometimes, somebody who is on stage singing and playing and may not have enough time to reach down to the volume knob on the guitar -- that's when a volume pedal could be useful. 

 

I do something different: I have a fixed volume block in the beginning of the chain to cut my input signal in some of my snapshots.... something I would otherwise achieve with the volume knob.  Some of the songs where the clean / dirty change is very fast is where I use the volume cut trick.  The end-result is exactly the same, just that I can immediately go from clean to dirty with a button press.

 

I always achieve my clean tones by cutting the input signal rather than turning off the distortion block.  Well, unless I have a snapshot with an acoustic sim --- the distortion block needs to be completely turned off for it to work properly. 

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1 hour ago, silverhead said:

I’ve always wondered why people put a VOL block at the beginning of the signal chain. Like you I think it’s unnecessary,  but maybe I’m missing something. Anyone care to explain it to me? Seriously - this is not a setup for me to argue against it. I’d like to understand how it may be better than using the guitar’s Vol knob.

 

It's not that it's any better or worse, it just depends on what you want to accomplish, and how you like to get there. Depending on what you're doing, an expression pedal will sometimes be easier to manipulate than constantly going to the volume knob with your pinky... on some guitars the volume knob isn't in such a great spot for volume swells, or controlling noise between phrases. etc. I use a volume pedal for the latter all the time when recording leads, especially with any guitar that has single coils. Anytime I pause between phrases, I roll off with the pedal to shut the noise up, and back to 100% again as soon a I start the next phrase. It largely eliminates the need for a noise gate and all the unpleasant tone/sustain killing that goes along with their use. It takes some practice, but after a while it's second nature, and you won't think about it at all. Boils down to how you like to do things, and what you find easier. If your volume knob is "set it and forget it", and you never touch it again until you're packing it in for the night, then you probably won't find a volume pedal of much use. Different strokes...

 

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12 hours ago, l6guitarman said:

Maybe but, to attenuate the volume at the beginning of the chain, I can very well use the guitar potentiometer. Thanks for the help.

 

I'm confused.... the goal posts just got moved.

 

You asked about controlling the global volume (eg: like the big volume knob) with a midi CC Value so I replied to that. 

If this post was actually about changing "input volume with a guitar pot" I would have responded very differently :) 

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