I’m looking for a quick way to make the effects blocks in a chosen preset 100% wet and 0% of my dry signal (i.e., kill-dry) as part of a wet/dry/wet rig. Each effect block can be set to 100%, but that would take too much time, and it would take too long to create presets with this turned on for all effects blocks. Is there a way to switch this on/off quickly?
Does everyone understand why I would ask for this?
Not really. You can’t just make a scene with the required 100% wet blocks?
(1) It’s for a Wet/Dry/Wet configuration. It’s a stereo configuration made popular starting from in the 80’s due to rack units that would only give a wet signal. It’s still very popular. This is where a center amplifier or PA speaker gets the dry guitar signal without effects (100% of the signal without effects = analog dry-through), then there are two amplifiers or PA speakers on either side of that in stereo that get 100% of the effects signal with the dry analog guitar signal removed by the pedal(kill dry = 100% wet, 0% dry). It’s used for various reasons; many people who are using it for overdrives use it to thicken their overdriven tone as can be seen in this pretty good explainer video.
I’ll spare the technical details of how I’m using it, but it put it simply, I have a setup I’m using to go from dry in one song, to wet/dry/wet for one song, then back to dry, via MIDI. I’m using a Duophony and a MIDI controller to accomplish this. The Duophony can go from a serial X to Y signal, to parallel where the signal splits into an X loop and Y loop where the X has all-wet pedals and the X has all-drypedals. Pedals like the Eventide H90 have a kill-dry mode.
The Quad Cortex can do analog dry-through by going into its relay bypass mode. It can do kill-dry by setting each block to 100% wet. It’s capable of doing all of these, but it doesn’t make it easy for me to switch this on for an entire preset where every block goes to either mode, via MIDI.
It’s too much to re-create all the presets with dry, then all the presets with wet, and then to keep them all in sync so that any creative changes in one are reflected in the other. It would be expedient if Neural DSP made a kill-dry mode to do this for any preset.
(2) Another area where I see people using a kill-dry mode is with ambient guitar. Lots of ambient pedalboards use a 100% wet signal on their delays or reverbs and certain other effects.
Here is a link for reference.
Does that give better context??
I may be missing something, but could you maybe route the dry signal to one output and the wet to another output and switch on/off the outputs with scenes or stomps?
Or maybe use one row for 100% dry, another for 100% wet and then a mixer block which you can set to 100% wet / 100% dry by switching scenes?
But I’m not familiar with the setups, so I might be totally wrong.
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Im using the cortex in tandem with the h90 (they were meant for each other). My routing looks like this. *note-focus on lane 2&3
I get a lesser version of what you’re describing by using parallel routing. The cali76 TX gives me 2 ouputs, “input 1” and “input 2” into the cortex. Input 1 serves as my foundational tone → output 1/2(cortex), input 2 gets routed mono to stereo out (out 3/4) to the h90 input, processed then back to the cortex via stereo in (ret 1/2), i add more “whatever” to taste then sum back to out1/2, hence dry/wet. Not 100% same but tonally id argue it is. Put a volume pedal before or after your wet, and you can control your fx signal. Its the best ive been able to get tonally. The dry kill (h90) seems to work better sometimes with some programs and worse with others.
This setup is mildly messy working 2 units but a midi device would solve that, but i dont have one. I wish cortex had midi blocks for cc messages that could be triggered in stomp mode. then a block would represent programs for the h90. I digress. Its a good time to play and have “these problems.”
Out1/2 is stereo main out (PA/studio). Quiet stage
Thanks for the advice, I’m glad you’ve found utility in this approach, but doesn’t the routing limit the Quad Cortex since then you can’t use the send/returns for other purposes? Also, I wouldn’t want to use another pedal just for its kill-dry features just so that I can get at 100% wet signal after the Quad Cortex. If I change my pedal order with my pedal switcher (PBC 6X), or audition a pedal before or after the Quad Cortex, then I lose that capability. I have a bit of a busier signal chain. So this approach wouldn’t work for me at all, unfortunately. I totally agree with you about the MIDI blocks for CC messages in stomp mode.
Thanks for the suggestion, but I think it would turn into an organizational headache because it violates the DRY principle. I would want to use the same presets in a non wet/dry/wet setup. So then I would end up having multiple copies of the same presets, a preset then copies of those presets with settings in a wet/dry/wet config. Then, if I have to change a preset, I have to keep track of that change across the copies. That can lead to discontinuity. I also have capabilities for different stereo configurations (such as wet/dry, wet/dry-dry/wet, etc.), increasing the complexity. I think it would be simple if I could just switch on/off between 100% wet and 100% dry for a given preset, really.
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You can’t do it that way. It’s too tedious as I would need to create a copy of each preset, one for normal and one for wet/dry/wet, and remember to keep the changes in sync. I would instead need to be able to switch ‘kill dry’ or 100% wet on for all effects in a given preset I’ve created, all at once, without destroying the carefully tailored individual settings in that preset. This would let me go into and out of Wet/Dry/Wet for any preset I make.