Zendrive: Difference between voice and tone?

[nibus]

So I just got my Zendrive today. Plugged it in, it sounds fantastic. I was not anticipating such a great sound, especially with all the hype. Anyway, from what I can tell, the voice control is similar to the tone control but emphasizes less shrill high frequencies. Does anyone know exactly what the difference is? Mine didn't come with instructions.

 

[lifeinsong]

I believe the Tone knob control's the basic EQ(Treble/Bass) and the Voice knob controls the Presence(Bright/Dark).

 

[Angle Loss]

The Tone control is just a treble roll-off after the clipping stage. The Voice controls the freq response in the clipping stage and therefore will affect the feel as well. Both affect high frequencies, but in different areas.

Try setting the Voice first to get the proper feel of your drive (left for smooth/fat, right for glassy+a slight bit more drive) and then adjust the Tone control to set the overall treble content. I had good sounds with one high/one low, both in the middle...but usually like the voice higher than the tone for my rig.

 

[nibus]

The Tone control is just a treble roll-off after the clipping stage. The Voice controls the freq response in the clipping stage and therefore will affect the feel as well. Both affect high frequencies, but in different areas.

Thats exactly what I was looking for, thanks.

 

[Angle Loss]

Glad to have helped!

 

[radcliff]

I love my Zendrive, but those controls can drive me nuts sometimes with all the different possibilities in the settings. It can be hard to dial it just right when switching guitars.

 

[soopajeanmi]

I see the tone control as the treble control and the voice as the mids control on the zen drive. Actually the voice control does much more than controlling the high mids: it really shapes the character of the zendrive. It's really that voice control that sets the zendrive apart from many pedals.

I usually set gain and voice first, then fine tune the level and tone. High voice settings and low tone settings brings a tone that is at the same time nasty and smooth that is very unique to the zendrive

 

[ruger9]

The Tone control is just a treble roll-off after the clipping stage. The Voice controls the freq response in the clipping stage and therefore will affect the feel as well. Both affect high frequencies, but in different areas.

Try setting the Voice first to get the proper feel of your drive (left for smooth/fat, right for glassy+a slight bit more drive) and then adjust the Tone control to set the overall treble content.

This sounds ALOT like the Pedalworx Tejas I used to have.

 

[slopeshoulder]

Voice effects gain as well.

 

[jpagey]

At the risk of being accused of being a Hermida "shill":

#16

04-16-2007, 12:17 PM
rh

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I grabbed this from a similar TGP thread some while back, attributed as I recall by the poster to Alf.

It helped me with the ZD. Hope it helps you.

Quote:
"The Zendrive has been described by some of the testers as a mild overdrive. The approach I took with the Zendrive was to select components that would make a nice clean and clean with a slight edge pedal naturally and then start increasing the gain without getting into Mosferatu territory. The latest revision of the pedal was tested by using a “Partscaster” with very weak pickups that came out of a Fender American Standard strat. They sound good but don’t have a lot of juice. I setup the gain to have enough to make it an overdrive with a slight crunch. Then I tested it with a Fender Nashville Deluxe tele which has stronger pickups. At max Gain it still sounded very good. Finally I used a Hamer Special FM with JB and 59’ pickups and in order to get the clean with edge tones I simply roll off the Gain knob. The result is a nice range of clean to crunch for a wide range of pickups.

The Voice knob has the following functionality: all the way to one side you get more treble and gain (good for setups that are too dark) and on the other end you get less gain but more fat. Once you adjust the Voice knob, you can then use the Tone knob to add or take away some of the treble, basically complementing and correcting in some cases what the Voice knob does. If you set up the Voice to give you some specific tone, you can also use the Gain knob to compensate and add or take away as needed. In reality Gain, Tone and Voice are related and may take a few minutes to get the hang of it."

https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?posts/2377913&postcount=16

 

[zoooombiex]

in a non-technical way, I always treated the voice knob as though it controlled the frequency focus of the gain knob. so with voice to the left, the gain was focused in the lower mids, making the pedal fatter and darker. voicing up higher makes it growl more in the upper mids. and the tone seems like a normal treble roll-off

 

[nibus]

in a non-technical way, I always treated the voice knob as though it controlled the frequency focus of the gain knob. so with voice to the left, the gain was focused in the lower mids, making the pedal fatter and darker. voicing up higher makes it growl more in the upper mids. and the tone seems like a normal treble roll-off

That makes sense - I noticed this effect when I was playing it last night.

 

[bluelew]

I've said in other posts that I really love the character of the distortion/overdrive in both the Zen and Mos- maybe the Mos a little better. What made me sell both pedals was the interaction of the tone and voice controls. Is it me or would these pedals be better off with bass, middle, treble controls?

 

[Andre357]

guys - is the voice control very, very subtle ??

I hear very, very subtle changes in tone when i turn it ( recently aquired one and I'm just wondering if it is what it is if you know what i mean).

It's a great sounding pedal by the way, very interesting sounding and dynamic....doesn't sound like I thought it would , but I really dig it. It's a keeper and worth the hype IMHO.

 

[slopeshoulder]

it also adds gain, or at least the perception of gain.
that's a big part of it.

 

[Wheeler004]

The tone knob seems pretty standard- controls bass/treble content in the signal. The voice knob (to my ears) seems to control the overall response of the pedal- it sweeps from a beefy, chunky drive to a more transparent or sparkly drive. It is very much interactive with the tone knob. I usually keep the tone at noon and the voice around 3 o'clock.

 

[StompBoxBlues]

Do a search on Zendrive (try the search that doesn't search in the body of the threads, but just the subject header) and look for subject headers asking about setting them. I have written several times myself on the method I use to set mine. I have never been able to just "mark" the knob settings, every time I use mine (which is all the time) I set it again, using my ears. I use mine medium gain (usually somewhere around 9-9:30) setting that first to the sweet spot where suddenly there is a change in the gain, then set the other knobs and go a few rounds. Takes me less than a minute in realtime now, but it took time to figure out how I like to set it in the first place.