Relative Knobs - can we disable them?

Pedals
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1

I love my Ghosts and Ribbons, but I’m having some difficulties with the Relative Knobs function, specifically on Ghosts. Let’s say I want to set the root on Ghosts to C but I’ve been messing with Position. I page back to the black settings and turn the knob to straight up, which is where C is. Except I don’t get C because the relative knobs are interpolating between the current knob position and wherever it last was. So I have to turn the knob all the way to one end or the other to regain normal control and then turn it to C. The same thing happens when dealing with touch settings on, say, Terrazzo or the Shepard Shifter. With Terrazzo I turn the upper knob to about 11 o’clock and wonder why I’m not hearing short percolating grains - it’s because I have to go ‘find’ the current position so I can regain control of the knob. The same goes for reverb settings, chords, pretty much everything,

I get the value of relative knobs in a live setting - it’s nice to not have sudden jumps in the sound when that might be disruptive - but it comes at the expense of the expected tweakability I am used to on every other pedal I own. Since I’m mainly a studio guy I don’t realize the benefit, just have to do extra hunting around, or turn knobs full min/max to regain control.

It would be great to have the option to disable this feature. Go ahead and let the settings jump as soon as the knob is moved. I bet a lot of users would be happy to have this option.

2

We could add an option to disable the relative-knob behavior, but are hesitant to do that because it can create some pretty abrupt parameter jumps. On devices like Ghosts or Sparks, certain parameters can produce a sudden and dramatic jump in level, so we’re especially cautious about anything that could result in an unexpectedly loud signal.

That said, you shouldn’t normally need to turn a knob all the way to minimum or maximum to regain control. If a knob is out of alignment with the current parameter value, giving it a smaller wiggle should cause it to catch up with the stored value, after which it will track normally again.

3

Alternatively, you can use a MIDI controller to get absolute control of any setting if you want WYSIWYG control.

1 Like
4

Add a MIDI controller that gives you a visual so you can the whole picture. For example, I use a Faderfox EC4. The screen is small, but it does the job and the bank of 16x16 push-endless encoders per Setup makes it so you can’t run out of controls. It eliminates this issue while giving both tactile and visual control. Best of luck!