Exponent 500 Manual

The speaker output has a minimum load of 4 Ω.
Never use the speaker output with an instrument cable.
e500 can be operated without a cabinet.

Use the 7-pin MIDI connector only with the Darkglass MIDI footswitch.
Use the 5-pin MIDI connector with other MIDI equipment.

Connect your instrument with an instrument cable to the main ¼” input jack on the front panel.

Connect to one or more of the following:
• Mixing desk or audio interface with the XLR output.
* If you are experiencing ground noise in your DI signal, try changing the ground lift toggle position.
• Headphones to the headphone output.
• Outboard gear to the FX loop.
• Speaker output to a cabinet using the speakON Combo jack.
• 4 Ω minimum load.
• A speakON or a ¼” speaker cable can be used.
• Never use an instrument cable.

By default, the speaker output is muted when headphones are connected. This can be disabled in the Darkglass Suite.

There are seven potentiometers on the front face of e500.
Set input gain with the INPUT pot.
Set master volume with the MASTER pot.
The XLR output is unaffected by the MASTER volume.

The remaining five pots are Exponent 500’s Quick-Pots.
Changes to the Quick-Pots are automatically saved.

The current position of each Quick-Pot is always shown on its surrounding LEDs.

Pressing the preset button changes through presets 1 to 5 and a bypass signal. The current preset is shown with a single LED next to the preset number. When e500 is bypassed, all preset LEDs show a dim white color.

Long-press the preset button to start Bluetooth pairing.
All preset LEDs will breathe white while pairing is active.

Pressing the mute button toggles mute on the physical outputs. When e500 is muted, all preset LEDs will illuminate with a dim red color.

FX send and USB audio outputs are unaffected by the mute control.

The chromatic tuner is always active in both bypass and mute and tunes to any note between A0 to A#5.

The note being tuned is shown on the matching Quick-Pot letter: tuning A shows on Quick-Pot A, tuning B shows on Quick-Pot B, and so on.

• Tuning F is shown on Quick-Pots A and B.
• Tuning G is shown on Quick-Pots D and E.

Sharp notes are displayed on the preset LEDs, when the dim preset LEDs turn fully bright.

Long-press the preset button to start Bluetooth pairing. The preset LEDs will breathe white while pairing.

Open the Darkglass Suite and press Pair. After a short moment, you should be connected and the Pedal Board will be visible.

The Pedal Board is the main overview of your signal chain where you can construct your presets.

One preset is shown at a time. Each of the five presets can be accessed using the five dots at the bottom of the screen.

Tip: Pressing an active preset’s dot will switch to e500’s bypass channel!

The signal chain is processed from top to bottom. Effects at the top of the signal chain are processed first, and their output is fed into the next effect, and so on. Physical outputs are shown as smaller blocks, representing the FX loop, speaker output, XLR, and headphones.

Let’s create a preset! To speed things up in this example, we’ve already added a Vintage Microtubes and a Flamingo Flanger to the signal chain.

To add an effect to the signal chain, press the + button at the bottom of the signal chain to browse the list of effects.

Open the list of effects by pressing + at the bottom of the signal chain.

Every effect available is listed here. Scroll through the list to find EQs, compressors, distortions, modulations, and utilities.

Selecting an effect from the list of effects opens the Effect Explorer. This shows a preview of the effect, a short description, and a CPU load value if this effect is added to the signal chain.

Note that an effect must be added to the signal chain before it has an audible effect and can be tweaked!

Tip: Swipe left and right in the Effect Explorer to preview effects in the list!

Press the Load button to add the effect to the signal chain.

In this example, the Hall Reverb is being added to the signal chain.

By default, effects added to the signal chain are placed at the top of the signal chain.

Move effects and the outputs/FX loop by dragging and dropping each block.

In this example, the Hall Reverb is moved after the XLR output. This means that the processed instrument signal sent to the XLR output has only been processed with the Vintage Microtubes and Flamingo Flanger.

The same signal is then processed with the Hall Reverb, and sent to the FX loop, speaker output, and headphones output.

Use the Mixer to set the levels of each of the outputs and FX send/return. Mixer settings are unique to each preset.

Tap on any effect in the signal chain to bring up the Effect View.

In the Effect View, you can interact with the effects in your current signal chain. Changes made in the Suite will be updated in real-time on Exponent 500.

Swipe up and down in the Effect View to view and edit each effect in your signal chain.

The current effect’s CPU load is shown along with the total CPU load of the current preset.

Press the Reset button to reset the effect’s settings back to default.

Tip: Press the effect name at the bottom of the Effect View to swap effects in place!

Note that updating effects with the Quick-Pots and changing presets with the preset button does not automatically refresh in the Suite. Pull-to-refresh the signal chain or change presets with the Suite to pull the latest changes from Exponent 500.

Press the Binding button to access the Quick-Pot Bindings.

Press the Binding button to access the Quick-Pot Binding view.

Here, you can select five controls from your signal chain to bind to the front panel of Exponent 500.

Swipe up and down to select an effect from your signal chain.

Tap on a control to open the binding menu. In the binding menu, you can select which Quick-Pot the control is mapped to.

In this example, the Vintage Microtubes drive is bound to Quick-Pot E.

Tip: Tap on bound Quick-Pots to jump to that effect in the Binding view!

To unbind a Quick-Pot, tap on the bound control. Select Unbind from the Binding menu.

Press the MIDI Footswitch button to access Darkglass MIDI Footswitch Effect Binding view. Here you can bind effect bypasses to the five footswitches of the Darkglass MIDI Footswitch for the selected preset. See the Darkglass MIDI Footswitch manual for full instructions on how to set up and sync the MIDI footswitch to control the Exponent 500.

Each preset has a unique color assigned to it.

Long-press on the preset dot at the bottom of the screen to open the color selection.

Color changes are automatically applied and saved to Exponent 500.

The color will be visible on the front panel preset LEDs when the preset is active.

Presets and changes made directly on Exponent 500 are automatically saved to Exponent 500’s internal memory.

While Exponent 500 has five preset channels, you can store as many presets as you like in the Darkglass Suite. These presets can then be applied to one of Exponent 500’s preset channels or shared with a preset sharing code.

From the pedal board, press the Store button to store the preset in the Presets view. Give the preset a name and author and press Store.

The signal chain configuration, effect settings, output and FX loop routing, Quick-Pot bindings, preset color, and mixer settings are stored in the preset.

From the Presets view, tap on a stored preset to open the Preset Preview. This allows you to preview the preset’s signal chain, Quick-Pot bindings and mixer settings . The preset name and author can also be modified.

Presets can be shared with others. Press the Copy button to generate a preset sharing code. This code is automatically copied to your clipboard.

Tip: Preset sharing codes also work as offline backups!

Press the Load preset button to load the preset to a preset channel of your choice. When loading presets, Exponent 500 will automatically change to the correct preset channel.

Import presets via preset sharing codes using the Import button in the Presets view.

When the preset sharing code is on your clipboard, press Paste preset code to enter the code. The name and author of the preset is shown after pasting.

Press Import to open the Preset Preview. You can preview the preset’s name and author, signal chain, Quick-Pot bindings , and mixer settings.

Store the preset in your preset list by pressing the Store button .

The preset is now stored in your list of presets.

Quick effect actions
Quickly bypass an effect by swiping left on the effect and pressing the Bypass button. This is equivalent to bypassing the effect in the Effect View.

Delete effects from the signal chain with the delete button.

Quick preset actions
Swipe left on stored presets in the Presets view to quickly load presets or delete them from the preset list.

Factory presets cannot be deleted.

The MIDI switch type determines how Quick-Pots bound as switches respond.

Per-value: CC value increment sets the next switch position.

Full-range: the entire CC value range (0 to 127) is directly translated to the switch position.

USB MIDI IN behaves identically to MIDI received via the back panel connector.

Quick-Pot and master volume changes are sent via USB MIDI OUT as CC messages, and match the configured MIDI mapping.

SysEx messages from any MIDI input are also passed to USB MIDI OUT.

Exponent 500’s MIDI configuration can be fully customized in the Darkglass Suite. The default MIDI configuration is the following:

Footswitch CC messages are used by the Darkglass MIDI Footswitch to control the effect bypasses that have been bound to footswitches.

The processed signal input is the signal at the very end of the signal chain.

The virtual input can be used for reamping from your DAW. Audio passed to this channel is mixed with the instrument input.

Give your Exponent 500 a custom name by editing the Name field. e500 must be powered off and on for the name change to take effect.

By default, the speaker output is muted when headphones are connected. When headphones are disconnected, the speaker output is unmuted.

This behavior can be disabled with the Mute speaker when using headphones option. When disabled, headphone connection has no effect on the speaker output.

If this setting is disabled and headphones are connected, the speaker will immediately unmute.