Fender volume / tone pedal

Stuckfast

Just bought one of these, I've never come across the idea before but I think it's genius. It's a passive volume pedal but you can also rotate your foot left to make the sound darker, or right to make it brighter. Is this a really common thing that I've somehow overlooked all these years, or is it just one of those ideas that never really caught on?

ICBM

Not common, but DeArmond did one in the late 1950s.

boogieman

I had a Zoom multiFX that did something like that, Zoom called it the Z pedal I think? Frankly it was a pain in the arse and would shift to the side and do ridiculous pitch shifting and other weird stuff when all I wanted was a wah or volume control. Think I ended up locking it into the straight heel and toe position eventually. 

Branshen

I remember these. I don't think they caught on. I reckon your guitar tone knob would be sufficient, unless you want to do a gradual tone sweep live?

Voxman

boogieman said:

I had a Zoom multiFX that did something like that, Zoom called it the Z pedal I think? Frankly it was a pain in the arse and would shift to the side and do ridiculous pitch shifting and other weird stuff when all I wanted was a wah or volume control. Think I ended up locking it into the straight heel and toe position eventually. 

I have the Zoom G5 that has the Z pedal - it can be programmed to do a load of different things and I really like it as it makes the pedal immensely more versatile.  You can set the Z pedal to raise or lower combinations of tone, volume, reverb, delay. modulation, pedal, or amp gain etc etc as well as pitch shift & other weird stuff if you have a yearning. You can also use use it as a standard expression pedal, wah, or volume ie where there's no side to side variance.  But it's great because say you wanted both volume and wah - with a single standard foot pedal you have to choose. With the Z pedal you can set the up-down to wah, activated by a kickdown, and change the volume by going left/right either with the wah on or off.   Ditto if you wanted up-down for volume and side to side for tone (or vice-a-versa) you can do that too.