Matt,
Thank you for the video. I hear what you are talking about.
The volume not cutting out all the way tells me that you have a lot of gain after the volume pedal. On the VPM-1 the volume is guaranteed to get reduced to something like -70dB or so (I can’t remember the exact specs). So the signal is never completely gone, but just reduced by a whole lot. This is the way all volume pedals work, even the EB Jr, but in the case of passive pedals the volume is reduced much more, because it gets really, really close to ground level…so it would take tons of gain to make it audible again. With active volume pedals, depending on the volume reduction technology, the volume can only be reduced a finite amount. So in this case, the reduced signal is getting boosted back up again by the following pedals and amps in the chain. We mention in the manual to only use as much gain on or after the pedal as necessary. Unfortunately, because of the gain structure of this pedal, it’s not an exact drop-in replacement for the passive EB pedals…some signal chain gain adjustments may need to be made for it to operate optimally. It’s one of the limitations of the particular technology, I’m sorry about that.
After hearing it, I think the distortion sound is caused by what I was speculating in my previous post. This happens on the very first of the 256 volume level steps. This happens on all VPM-1s but most of the time it’s inaudible because the gain structure is lower. I think a possible mod to help it be less audible is to add a small value capacitor across the LEDs of the optocouplers. I’ll try to look into this when I get a free moment. But I’m sorry for the annoyance and trouble with these issues.
-Brach