WAYLORD
Live parameter editing over USB MIDI, and a browser-side preset library. Requires Chrome or Edge (Web MIDI isn't supported in Safari/Firefox). Connect the Stompbox over USB first.
What this is and how to plug it in
WAYLORD is a sampler and synthesiser. This page is for the Stompbox build — the pedal-format board with 5-pin DIN MIDI, quarter-inch jacks and a footswitch. (The Daisy Pod version has 3.5mm connectors throughout and a different page.) It plays two instruments at once — a Left and a Right slot — layered or split across the keyboard, and it holds ten patches, each one a complete setup of both slots plus its own effects. The samples live on the SD card; the patches live in the instrument's own memory.
Plugging it in
| MIDI in | 5-pin DIN. Your keyboard goes here, with an ordinary MIDI cable — no adaptor. This is a separate path from USB and works on its own, with no computer. |
| MIDI thru | 5-pin DIN. A copy of whatever arrives at MIDI in, for chaining another instrument after this one. It is a thru, not an out — the Stompbox does not generate MIDI on it. |
| Power | 9V DC barrel jack. This is the main supply — USB does not have to be connected to play. Check the polarity against your supply before plugging anything in. |
| USB | Micro USB, on the Daisy Seed inside. MIDI to and from a computer, and how this page talks to the instrument. It will also power the board on its own, but a computer's USB adds noise — use the DC jack for a quiet signal. |
| Audio out | Two quarter-inch jacks, Left and Right, line level. Ordinary instrument cables. No breakout needed. |
| Audio in | Two quarter-inch jacks, Left and Right, line level. Optional. Runs a guitar or anything else through the same effects — see Input level below. |
| Headphones | 3.5mm stereo, its own amplifier. It shares the Volume knob with the quarter-inch outputs, so turning down for headphones turns down the outputs too. |
| Footswitch | True bypass, in hardware. A relay wires the inputs straight through to the outputs, around the Daisy entirely — so bypass works whatever the firmware is doing, and the instrument is silent through it. The small LED beside it is lit when the effect is in circuit. This is a different thing from the encoder's effects bypass, which is digital and only bypasses the effects block. |
| SD card | microSD. Every sampled instrument. It still boots and plays its oscillators without one, but the sampled sounds will be silent. |
Cables that work
| Power | A 9V DC supply on the barrel jack. Confirm the polarity your unit expects before you plug in a pedal-board supply. |
| Audio | Ordinary quarter-inch instrument cables, one per jack. Two for a stereo output, two more if you are running something in. |
| MIDI | Any ordinary 5-pin DIN MIDI cable, straight into the socket. |
| USB | A micro USB cable, to reach this page from a computer. |
The controls
| Knob 1 / Knob 2 | Chorus amount and delay amount. Whichever moved last wins — the knob takes over from this page, and this page takes it back. |
| Volume knob | The analogue output level, after everything else, feeding the quarter-inch outputs and the headphones together. It is a passive control and also rolls off a little top end as it comes down. |
| Encoder turn | The digital master volume, inside the instrument — a separate thing from the Volume knob above, and the one this page follows. Turn it slowly to trim, quickly to cover the range. |
| Encoder tap | Bypass the effects in and out, and back again. The LEDs flash to say which. |
| Encoder held | Half a second returns you to patch 1 from wherever you are. |
| Button 1 / Button 2 | Previous / next patch, wrapping round 1–10. Hold one for half a second to jump two; press both together for five. |
| Mod wheel | Brightness on both slots, and the rotary speaker's speed: down stops it, middle slow, up fast. |
| The two LEDs | Each slot's instrument has a colour (left LED = Left slot), brightening on every MIDI message so you can see notes arriving. They turn purple while the card is being read, and green when it succeeded. On this board the LED wiring is rotated and pure red cannot be produced, so anything the firmware means as red comes out purple — if a load fails, count the blinks rather than reading the colour. |
What to expect
| Changing patches | The buttons on the instrument are faster than the buttons on this page. Use them when you are playing. |
| Sampled patches | Take longer to arrive than the oscillator ones, because their samples are being read off the card. That wait is the card, not a fault. |
| Loading a bank | About 30 seconds from this page, because all ten patches and their samples go across. Be patient and let it finish. |
| While anything is loading | Don't play. Notes sent while a patch or bank is arriving — from here, the plugin or the app — can land in the middle of it. |
| Editing | This page is the one to edit with. The plugin can edit too, but the browser is the better editor. |
Using this page
Press Connect above and pick the Pod. Anything you change here is live immediately but not kept until you press Save all patches to device — so you can try things and simply reload the patch if you don't like them. Needs Chrome or Edge; Safari and Firefox don't do Web MIDI.
Patch
Patch — 10 slots on the device
Switching tabs loads that patch onto the device immediately and keeps whatever you changed on the one you're leaving — hop between all 10, edit and listen to each, then press Save all patches to device once at the end. Nothing reaches flash before that.
Sound
Left / Right engines
With Split on, keys below the split point play the Left engine only and keys from it up play the Right one — two instruments under one keyboard. Off, both engines play everything, as they always have. Each slot's Transpose shifts what that side plays, up to two octaves either way; a note already sounding keeps the side and the pitch it started on. Saved with the patch.
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Right
Drag across a keyboard to set that engine's range — it becomes exactly the span you dragged over, and a single click makes it one key. Whole keyboard puts it back. Notes outside it do not reach that engine at all, so it stays silent for them — the other engine still plays as its own range says. Both ends are inclusive, and a one-key range is allowed. This is applied to the key that arrives, before that slot's Transpose, so it is a keyboard zone rather than a pitch limit. Saved per patch.
Each slot has its own pulse width (only audible when that slot is set to Pulse) and Timbre offset (64 = no offset; the mod wheel still moves both slots together, this just biases one slightly brighter/darker than the other). Pan defaults hard-left/hard-right — bring either toward the middle to blend it across both ears.
Filter routing & tracking — how the two sides connect, saved per patch
Each side has its own filter, in its column above: pick Chrome 2-pole there and its cutoff, resonance, LP/HP, drive and FM sit with it. The two controls here are the ones that aren't per side.
Patch routing — how the two sides' filters are wired to each other. Independent: each side through its own. Series: both oscillators into A, then into B — four poles, and the two resonances stack. Parallel: both into both. Variable mix: mixed into both, each keeping its own level, which is what makes a notch when one side is low-pass and the other high-pass. Ring modulation multiplies the two sides instead of summing them, then runs the result through filter A. It is the sum and difference of the two, so it only makes a sound when BOTH sides are playing, and detuning them or playing different notes is where it gets interesting. Filter FM routes the B side's output into the A filter's cutoff.
Hard sync between the two sides is deliberately not offered: sync resets one oscillator's phase when another wraps, and these are two independent polyphonic engines whose voices are allocated separately, so there is no single phase on either side to sync to. The Chrome VCO does have sync between its own A and B oscillators.
Hard sync between the two sides is deliberately not offered: sync resets one oscillator's phase when another wraps, and these are two independent polyphonic engines whose voices are allocated separately, so there is no single phase on either side to sync to. The Chrome VCO does have sync between its own A and B oscillators.
Mod wheel — how far the wheel moves each of these, saved per patch. Centre is none; either side of centre sets how much, and which way, so the wheel can close a filter as readily as open it. A parameter sits exactly where its own control is set until a depth here says otherwise.
The wheel used to reach four of these on its own and at a fixed amount — Timbre on every engine, the filter cutoff by a full three octaves, a Chrome VCO's pulse width, and the Six-O-Bee/Two-Rev shape — with no way to say how much. That is gone, so a patch that has not been set up here ignores the wheel entirely. The two Waylinator engines are the exception and are deliberately untouched: the wheel still drives their cutoff and filter-envelope depth directly, which is a large part of how they sound.
The wheel used to reach four of these on its own and at a fixed amount — Timbre on every engine, the filter cutoff by a full three octaves, a Chrome VCO's pulse width, and the Six-O-Bee/Two-Rev shape — with no way to say how much. That is gone, so a patch that has not been set up here ignores the wheel entirely. The two Waylinator engines are the exception and are deliberately untouched: the wheel still drives their cutoff and filter-envelope depth directly, which is a large part of how they sound.
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Built-in cutoff — only Sine/Saw/Square/Pulse and CDG Rotator have a filter of their own; this sets where it starts, and the mod wheel moves it live. Every other engine ignores it, which is why it looks like it does nothing on most sounds — reach for the per-side filter instead. Those engines used to add a fixed pluck to every note from a hardcoded filter envelope you couldn't reach or switch off; that's gone. For a filter envelope you can actually set, switch the side's Filter to Chrome 2-pole.
Keyboard & velocity tracking — every engine, on top of its own built-in tracking.
Engine editors
4-Op PM operators — saved per patch
The reface-style operator page for the 4-Op PM engine — one for each side, so Left and Right can be two different FM sounds at once. Turn on Manual edit and that side's selected preset is copied there to start from; changing preset while it's on loads that preset instead. Off, the presets play as they are. Each operator's own envelope only applies while the slot's ADSR box is off. A side only shows while that slot is set to 4-Op PM.
Left
Right
Modelled Rhodes — per patch, per slot
Every control here moves a physical quantity, not an effect. Pickup distance and offset move the magnet relative to the tine, so they change the harmonics, the bark and the attack together — dead centre the fundamental cancels, which is a real pickup effect. Hammer sets the contact time, which is what makes a soft note round and a hard one bell-like. Bark is how far the tine swings, so it reaches the nonlinearity through displacement rather than by adding distortion. The mod matrix routes velocity or note number onto any of them, including places no screwdriver could reach — the pickup gap closing as you play harder is not physical, and that is the point.
Drawbar organ & rotary — saved per patch
The registration for the Drawbar Organ engine — one for each side, so Left and Right can be two different organs at once — and the rotary speaker that sits at the very end of the chain (it works on everything, not just the organ, and is shared). Percussion is single-trigger like the real thing: it only fires again once you've let go of every key. A side only shows while that slot is set to Drawbar Organ.
Touch off is the real instrument: a key is a switch. On, velocity sets each note's level, shaped by the Drawbar Organ's velocity curve below. Perc volume scales the percussion on top of Soft/Normal; 100 is where it always sat. Vibrato is the scanner: V1–V3 are progressively deeper vibrato, C1–C3 the same mixed with the dry organ for the chorus.
Rotary speaker — horn and drum turn at different speeds and take a moment to spin up or coast down. The mod wheel switches it live: down = Stop, middle = Slow, up = Fast. Whichever you touched last wins — the wheel, or the Speed button below. Wet at 0 is bypass, and speed changes are inaudible there.
Slow speed and Fast speed multiply whatever the chosen cabinet turns at, rather than setting an absolute rate — so each model keeps its own character and x1.00 is the cabinet untouched. Ramp scales how fast the motors get there; spin-up and coast-down move together, because a Leslie coasts down slower than it winds up and that lag is most of the effect. All three are saved per patch.
Slow speed and Fast speed multiply whatever the chosen cabinet turns at, rather than setting an absolute rate — so each model keeps its own character and x1.00 is the cabinet untouched. Ramp scales how fast the motors get there; spin-up and coast-down move together, because a Leslie coasts down slower than it winds up and that lag is most of the effect. All three are saved per patch.
x1.00
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Envelope, filter & modulation
Global ADSR — saved per patch
Reaches Sine/Saw/Square/Pulse, CDG Rotator, Waylo Xfade2's square half, and the sample voices (Vintage Vibe, Waylo Tele, Sustain Steel and the SD instruments) — on those, Attack sets the fade-in length and Release the fade-out, with Decay/Sustain unused since the recording provides its own decay. Not mda/FM/Guitar, which have their own envelopes. Attack also sets how quickly a sample speaks: at the factory default (2) every sampled note fades in over ~31ms.
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nothing copied
Copy envelopes takes this patch's amp ADSR and both sides' filter ADSR (including the envelope amount) and keeps them in this browser. Paste puts them on whatever patch you are looking at, so you can lift the shape off a patch you like and drop it on a different oscillator or filter without reading the numbers off and retyping them. It survives switching patches and reloading the page; it is stored here, not on the Pod.
Global Tremolo — saved per patch
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Applied to the final mix, after the EQ. Tremolo pulses both channels together; Pan-tremolo sweeps left-right instead.
Effects
Velocity & effects — saved per patch (master volume: global)
Master tone — after everything, just before the output. This is a TONE control, not an anti-aliasing filter: it cannot undo aliasing, because a folded component is already sitting at an audible frequency by the time it gets here and nothing downstream can separate it from real signal. What it does fix is the ordinary thing that gets mistaken for aliasing — real harmonics passing a gentle filter. Measured on the Waylo Six-O-Bee with its cutoff at 1929 Hz playing middle C, the 10th to 18th harmonics sit between −38 and −53 dB a few hundred Hz apart, which is exactly what “fizzy” describes. Roll-off is an 8th-order Butterworth, 48 dB/octave, flat below the corner. 20 kHz is there so you can confirm for yourself that it does almost nothing. Top cut is a gentler alternative: a high shelf from about 4 kHz, which thins the fizz without putting a blanket over the instrument the way a brickwall at 5 kHz does.
out of the path entirely, settings kept — for A/B by ear
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The Pod's output level, after every effect — the one setting that stays global, the same in every patch. 0dB is where it always sat; up to +10.8dB, which can clip on loud patches.
How hard MIDI velocity drives level, across every engine. 1.00 is raw velocity (how it behaved before); higher pushes soft hits further down so playing dynamics count for more.
Key sliders, measured from middle C: + brighter going up, − brighter going down (and darker going up). Key → Filter moves filter cutoff on the synths and a brightness tilt on the sampled instruments; Key → FM moves FM modulation depth and feedback (DX10, 4-Op, FM Rhds, Xfade2) and pulse width. Vel → Tone moves both: + harder is brighter, − harder is darker.
Vel → Filter is the filter side on its own: it moves filter cutoff on the synths and the brightness tilt on the sampled instruments, on top of Vel → Tone.
Vel → FM is the same but for the FM engines only (DX10, 4-Op PM, FM Rhds, Xfade2 — and pulse width on Pulse), on top of Vel → Tone.
Vel → Feedback moves operator feedback, which only the 4-Op PM engine has: + harder bites harder, and it's capped where feedback turns to noise. Vel boost multiplies velocity up to ×4: soft playing gets louder and brighter, and hard playing goes past full level, so it can clip on purpose.
Saved per patch. Classic is the old Waylinator synth's chorus and delay, exactly: knob 1 is the chorus's dry/wet, depth and rate together, knob 2 the three fixed delay taps (0.75s centre, left and right, their own feedback). The sliders below only set the WAYLORD ones.
Chorus — knob 1 sweeps up to the wet level.
Delay — knob 2 sweeps up to the wet and feedback levels.
Amp — a guitar amplifier: pickup EQ, a cocked wah, supply sag, an oversampled valve-ish clipping stage and a speaker cabinet. First in the chain, so the modulation and delay below sit after it, the way a real rig is wired. Works on anything — the sampled guitars, the FM engines, the organ, or the Pod's audio input. Mix at 0 is bypass, and costs nothing. The ↳ sliders say how far the mod wheel, velocity or note number moves the control above them: centre is none, right adds as the source rises, left subtracts. Velocity runs from nothing at a soft touch to full at 127; note number is centred on middle C, so the bottom of the keyboard pulls one way and the top the other. Velocity and note follow the last note played — the amp sits after the mix, so that is the only thing they can mean. The mod wheel sliders say how far the wheel moves the control above: centre is none, right pushes up as the wheel rises, left pulls down — so the wheel can clean a sound up as well as dirty it. Wah freq moves by up to two octaves either way.
one amp instead of two — saves about 6% CPU of the amp's 16%, measured on the device. A real guitar amp is mono; this does collapse a stereo source.
the instruments stop following the mod wheel and sit at the Timbre below — the wheel then drives the amp alone
Phaser — four allpass stages swept smoothly. Classic uses every slider below; Phase 90 models the MXR pedal (script logo), so only Wet and Rate (its Speed knob) apply. Wet at 0 is bypass.
Reverb — last in the chain. Plate: Dattorro's plate. Hall: an 8-line feedback delay network, long and smooth (Decay: about 0.8s to 8s). Room: Freeverb, shorter and denser. Wet at 0 is bypass.
Harmonic tremolo — REMOVED — fades between the bands either side of the crossover in antiphase, so the wobble moves through the spectrum rather than just the level. Taken out of the firmware to free space. These four sliders are disabled but still saved and still travel with a patch, so no old bank is misread — CC 16–19 still mean what they meant.
Ring mod — mda RingMod: the mix is multiplied by a sine. Wet at 0 is bypass.
3-Band EQ, per instrument — saved per patch
Left
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Right
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both EQs out of the path entirely — no processing (saved per patch)
One EQ on each instrument, like a mixer channel: it follows the instrument wherever it's panned, and a slot's double goes through its EQ too. Low/Mid/High are gain (centre = unity, which switches that EQ off entirely). Mid sweep moves where the low/mid/high split sits (100Hz–5kHz).