A trick with the world’s best envelope filter: the Enigma. (Note: I suppose this would work with the Riddle too on your guitar)

The Enigma is a very powerful filter that can reach into extreme frequencies. If you own one it is critical you have a good limiter at the end of your chain. This lets you really explore those extremes and make some very cool sounds. The EHX Platform can act as a hard limiter to control volume spikes. The Keeley Bassist (bass) and Keeley GC-2 (guitar) I can also highly recommend for the job.

Now that you’re protected from startling volume spikes, try this awesome trick. Use the Enigma to “duck” a really over the top effect. Ducking is making something fade into the background as you play your instrument. In this example, we have a chorus pedal with a very fast ‘underwater’ tempo. As I play my bass VI (6-string bass, tuned as a guitar one octave down), listen in this sound/song sample as the swishy chorus ducks out.

To make this work, put the Enigma and the chorus in a blend/loop parallel to your dry signal. The EHX Switchblade Pro will do this nicely. Make sure the volume of the dry signal is slightly louder than the volume of the wet/loop signal. I put a very clean digital delay with 650ms of delay time at the end of the chain before the limiter so that my dry AND wet signal passes through together.

This little demo idea was recorded directly into my EHX 45000 with no compression.

https://soundcloud.com/kyonshies/wallet-chain-demo

This works because the Enigma is filtering the signal in the loop to nearly inaudible lows. It makes everything in the loop after it “disappear” into smooth low end.