How to use a Volume Pedal
The volume pedal is a pretty amazing piece of gear, and I don’t think most people realize all that they can do with it. It’s usually seen as this simple volume control device-- which is accurate --but it also holds within it magic. In this article, we’re going to unpack some of that magic. Now, the volume pedal gets oversimplified. Yeah, it turns the volume on your guitar up or down, but guitar is all about volume and dynamic, so there are some really fascinating effects you can add by using a volume pedal in unexpected ways.
Volume pedals have been around since the early sixties. The earliest volume pedals came from a company called Vox, who created these devices to plug into organs**, so we can see the evolution of putting your foot on a device to raise and lower volume coming from Hammond organs or Vox-style organs. Then Fender came out with giant, toaster-sized volume pedals, and afterwards, the idea was picked up by companies like DeArmond.
**I’m referring to the musical instrument, not organs in the human body, although that would be pretty metal.
In the seventies, Ernie Ball released the VP, which I would call the perfect volume pedal. It's essentially a pot with a string around it, and as you pull it up and down, you're just turning the knobs. It's almost like turning the knob of your guitars, it’s just at your feet. There are some other styles of this, like the Visual Sound Visual Volume, which is a crazy feat of engineering because it shows the LED status of the pedal, and over-the-top stuff like the Sonuus Voluum, which does volume effects as well.
Some pedals use optical sensors instead of a string and pot system, and the Lehle Mono Volume Pedal uses a magnetic sensor-- basically, when the toe of the pedal is pressed down, it gets closer to a magnet, which affects the circuit. Fancier pedals, like the Ernie Ball Tuner Pedal, include extra features like a guitar tuner.
I could literally talk about pedal history all day, so let’s get to the fun stuff. And by “fun stuff” I mean “magical tricks for your volume pedal.”
Using a Volume Pedal with a Fuzz
First, we're going to do a little trick that I love to do with the BC108 Jimi Hendrix Fuzz Face, which you can buy new, though this would work with any germanium or silicon vintage-style fuzz.
Basically, you turn the fuzz pedal up all the way up and you use your guitar’s volume knob to clean it up. When you do this, some of the best clean sounds in the world are rolling off your volume on your guitar with a fuzz face on and the fuzz maxed out. It's strange. It defies logic, but it's really awesome. It's a great tone. This is also a really handy option if you’re playing a guitar, like the Les Paul, that doesn’t have an easily accessible volume knob on the guitar itself. How cool would it be to have a volume control like that at your foot?
It’s very easy to do: you take a passive volume pedal like the Ernie Ball (“passive” meaning that there's no circuit in this; it's literally just a pot) and you put it in front of the fuzz.
Now, I can already see the mobs with pitchforks and torches coming at me for this. I know that I’ve told you guys roughly ten thousand times to never ever put anything in front of a vintage fuzz. I stand by that. This is a passive pedal, which interacts with the fuzz in a completely different way, which means that it’s safe to put it in front of the fuzz on your pedalboard. You max out the fuzz knob, and then start to back it off using your volume pedal, cleaning it up. The results are some truly magical sweet spots of beautiful, clean tone.
Coincidentally, this method works just as well if you use a drive pedal like the JHS SuperBolt in place of the fuzz. #themoreyouknow
Using a Volume Pedal as an Expression Pedal
You can also use a basic pedal like the passive Mono Ernie Ball Volume Pedal as an expression pedal. Now, a lot of times you buy pedals and they need expression outputs, and you don't have an expression pedal and you don't want to buy one because you're not sure if you’ll use it. This is a great way to explore that sound with the gear you already have.
For instance, you can take an Electro-Harmonix Ocean’s 12, which is a crazy reverb machine, and use splitter cables to connect your volume pedal to it, through the jack that says “expression.”Using the splitter cable, you can connect to both sides of that pot, and suddenly the forgotten, underused volume pedal is your favorite pedal on the board. It's now an expression pedal, and you can use the volume pedal to fade between two sounds/effects - you press the pedal up or down to access one or the other (or a mix of both!)
Using a Volume Pedal in the Amp Effects Loop
Another great option is to place a volume pedal in the effects loop of an amp. Now, your amp has a preamp section that usually has your volume control, bass, mid, treble, etc., and it probably has an output section which drives your speakers and the output of the amp. The effects loop-- the jacks that say “send/return” or “effects in/effects out” --go right in the middle. A lot of people put delays and reverbs in there,but not me. Instead, I like to use the “send/return” and connect the volume pedal to it. This allows you to mediate the volume of those huge, preamp-saturated guitar sounds.
Depending on the gig and the gear you’re using, it can get really loud, but the volume pedal in the effects loops allows you to back it off. It'll keep your level of distortion in place, lower the sound level in the room, and it won't kill you. In the pedal business, we call that a win-win.
Using a Volume Pedal to Do Basic Swells
The last example-- and one of my favorites --is to use a volume pedal to do basic swells. Now, this is popular in a lot of ambient music (like Daniel Lanois on the Sling Blade soundtrack). It started early on in the seventies, when the volume pedal was really put to work on pedal steel guitars, lap steels, and then it kind of evolved into Spanish electric style. It utilizes these ambient washy parts to create a faux pedal steel sound on a Spanish-style electric guitar.
Basically, you take a reverb pedal like the BOSS RV6 or the Universal Audio Starlight Echo Station, both which give you a big reverb/echoey sound. Then I will remove all the attack from my playing, which means that my heel will be down every time I hit a note and I'll quickly swell in. So you won't have any of the attack; instead, you just hear these notes blooming out of nowhere. I try and time it like pick...swell, pick….swell, and the results are pretty fantastic.
Other Volume Pedals
It’s important to remember that there are going to be situations where a fully passive volume pedal is not the best thing for your rig. There are also some great options for Volume Pedals other than passive, which we’ll touch on here:
The Ernie Ball active volume pedals are basically a modified version that has a buffer in it.
BOSS carries stereo volume pedals, like the FV-30L, which are really great if you're using a stereo rig.
There are tiny volume pedals, like the AMT Electronics Little Loud Mouth, which I literally can't fathom using because my feet are so big. I think these were designed for elves.
Preamp boosters, like the Vertex BOOST, can be plugged into an expression pedal and it becomes an active volume pedal with a ton of clean gain.
Now, there are devices that do volume and wah, and I personally hate them all. I know that I’m pretty happy-go-lucky, and I can usually find something to like in the worst pedal, but this is where I’m putting my foot down. Wah/Volume pedals are terrible. Case closed.