Effects Pedals + Midi, Is it possible? |
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May 26 2007, 02:16 PM
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So I have been thinking about Multi Effects vs Multiple single effects for a while.
While I can agree that assembling a best of breed pedal board out of individual stomp boxes is a worthwhile thing to do sonically, and while I could even put up the the headaches around wiring, power, extra space etc, one thing I would find hard to sacrifice would be the huge convenience of storage of patches and making vast changes in sound with a single switch. So I figured that other people would have thought about this, and the obvious thing to do would be to midi-enable all of the individual effects so that all of their parameters can be set by MIDI commands, Then, add a smart Midi pedal that is capable of giving those commands, and storing a sequence of commands for different pedals as a patch - voila! Best of both worlds ... Now I haven't researched this deeply, but has anyone ever heard of such a thing? I'm not aware that midi support is common, or even exists for stomp boxes ... -------------------- Check out my Instructor profile
Live long and prosper ... My Stuff: Electric Guitars : Ibanez Jem7v, Line6 Variax 700, Fender Plus Strat with 57/62 Pickups, Line6 Variax 705 Bass Acoustic Guitars : Taylor 816ce, Martin D-15, Line6 Variax Acoustic 300 Nylon Effects : Line6 Helix, Keeley Modded Boss DS1, Keeley Modded Boss BD2, Keeley 4 knob compressor, Keeley OxBlood Amps : Epiphone Valve Jnr & Head, Cockburn A.C.1, Cockburn A.C.2, Blackstar Club 50 Head & 4x12 Cab |
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May 27 2007, 12:15 AM
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Well, didn't answer my question (except to confirm my suspicions that these things don''t exist), but damn that was a fascinating post
-------------------- Check out my Instructor profile
Live long and prosper ... My Stuff: Electric Guitars : Ibanez Jem7v, Line6 Variax 700, Fender Plus Strat with 57/62 Pickups, Line6 Variax 705 Bass Acoustic Guitars : Taylor 816ce, Martin D-15, Line6 Variax Acoustic 300 Nylon Effects : Line6 Helix, Keeley Modded Boss DS1, Keeley Modded Boss BD2, Keeley 4 knob compressor, Keeley OxBlood Amps : Epiphone Valve Jnr & Head, Cockburn A.C.1, Cockburn A.C.2, Blackstar Club 50 Head & 4x12 Cab |
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May 27 2007, 05:04 AM
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this is kinda off topic, but kaneda, do you by any chance have a picture of this hyperblack guitar? id love to see it with all the stuff you crammed into it...
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May 27 2007, 10:40 AM
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Do I get this right?:
You want to expand the buttons/patches on your Pod with extra (midi) pedals? E. This post has been edited by ezravdb: May 27 2007, 01:55 PM -------------------- The coolest new community: Lockerz Wanna join Lockerz? Send me a PM with your mailadress. |
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May 27 2007, 02:12 PM
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QUOTE (Kaneda @ May 26 2007, 10:20 PM)  Sorry, I pretty much forgot the main thing I wanted to say, which was that it can't be too hard to take any stomp box, and replace (or supplement) the knob circuit with a MIDI controlled circuit. But, yes, I know... It's DIY  From what I remember from the "electronics geek"'s explanations, just about any knob on any piece of electronics in the world controls a variable resistor which takes care of how much voltage is sent to... whatever bit of the thingamabob takes care of the knob's aspect of the effect. All you'd need to do then, is to replace that resistor with another variable resistor, where it isn't a knob that controls the resistance, but a voltage input. Then you add a midi interface/controller circuit to the stompbox, which is programmed to send out a variable voltage based on what MIDI data is sent to it. It's quite simple.  Except I couldn't do it  MIDI controller circuits can be made dirt cheap. For the MIDI-OUT of the HyperBlack, we used an open source thing called MIDIBox, which you can find by googling it. It has software to control both MIDI-IN and MIDI-OUT (so, with the right electronics geek around, you could make the knobs send the state via MIDI back to your sequencer). It takes a few chips from the 70s-80s, hence dirt cheap And yet it has about 0 latency.I'm sure somewhere on that site, someone is discussing how to modify analog equipment to use MIDI. And somewhere in your neighbourhood, there's sure to be a guy (or girl) into electronics, who'd love to try making one. Again, could be worlds of fun to try. And infinitely cool to make it work. And if you got it to work, you could set up a whole business around selling original Fuzz Faces, Boss boxes, Z.Vexes etc. with MIDI control  Its a cool idea - I was into electronics as a kid so I could handle that aspect of it, question is would I have enough time for such an undertaking? Probably not, with all my practicing and lesson writing  Plus I have a day job that drives me crazy. Wait, maybe starting the midi mod business could be a way out of it @Ezra - no, I was just toying with the idea of putting together a stomp box setup as an alternative to the Pod (not that I dislike the pod, it rocks, I''m just a total geek!) -------------------- Check out my Instructor profile
Live long and prosper ... My Stuff: Electric Guitars : Ibanez Jem7v, Line6 Variax 700, Fender Plus Strat with 57/62 Pickups, Line6 Variax 705 Bass Acoustic Guitars : Taylor 816ce, Martin D-15, Line6 Variax Acoustic 300 Nylon Effects : Line6 Helix, Keeley Modded Boss DS1, Keeley Modded Boss BD2, Keeley 4 knob compressor, Keeley OxBlood Amps : Epiphone Valve Jnr & Head, Cockburn A.C.1, Cockburn A.C.2, Blackstar Club 50 Head & 4x12 Cab |
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May 28 2007, 02:12 AM
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QUOTE (lespaulrocker @ May 27 2007, 06:04 AM) this is kinda off topic, but kaneda, do you by any chance have a picture of this hyperblack guitar? id love to see it with all the stuff you crammed into it... Here ya go:  That was taken right after we finished it - to remember how nice it looked (It has earned a lot more personality (dents, stains etc) since then, but I don't have any good recent photos )The knobs/buttons at the top of the body are mainly for switching bypasses of the effects, and for turning off the MIDI and the Wah plate; the large knob is pickup switching (5-way between acoustic saddle pickups, the Motherbucker and the P-90), then there's the usual (on Gibson and Yamaha) two buttons for volume and two for tone. The six buttons at the bottom are assigned to various settings of the Fuzz Factory and the Sustainer. The copper plate is the Wah plate - does the wah-stuff based on how close your hand is to it, like a theremin. The two greyish plates are the MIDI touch-sensitive thingies that spawned this tangent from Andrew's post in the first place. And then from top down, the Sustainer driver, the SD P-90 Hot, the Motherbucker Double and the acoustic saddle/pickup thingy. The text for the volume/tone buttons is just there for "harmony" in the design - there's other buttons for which it would be more useful, but would be too crowded if we had text on all the buttons - our guitarist knows them better than the names of the strings by now For comparison, here's a closeup of the body of the "inspiration" - the Black Manson: http://www.liquid-fire.co.uk/musegear/musegear/blackbody.jpg The advantage we had in using the Yamaha SG as a basis was that it (like the Gibson SG) has a fairly large amount of unused body space - so plenty of room for the knobs Sorry for hijacking your thread, Andrew 
This post has been edited by Kaneda: May 28 2007, 01:54 PM |
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May 28 2007, 06:22 AM
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QUOTE (Andrew Cockburn @ May 26 2007, 02:16 PM) So I have been thinking about Multi Effects vs Multiple single effects for a while. While I can agree that assembling a best of breed pedal board out of individual stomp boxes is a worthwhile thing to do sonically, and while I could even put up the the headaches around wiring, power, extra space etc, one thing I would find hard to sacrifice would be the huge convenience of storage of patches and making vast changes in sound with a single switch. So I figured that other people would have thought about this, and the obvious thing to do would be to midi-enable all of the individual effects so that all of their parameters can be set by MIDI commands, Then, add a smart Midi pedal that is capable of giving those commands, and storing a sequence of commands for different pedals as a patch - voila! Best of both worlds ... Now I haven't researched this deeply, but has anyone ever heard of such a thing? I'm not aware that midi support is common, or even exists for stomp boxes ... Not sure about the midi pedal capable of giving those commands, but what I did find was a nice Boss box BCB60 that can easily hold six pedal with all your wiring nice and compact. I like the fact that I can easily pop the cover back on when I'm done so my little on doesn't go tinkering with all my settings. http://www.samedaymusic.com/product--BOSBCB60 |
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May 28 2007, 02:10 PM
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QUOTE (Rock @ May 28 2007, 01:22 AM) Not sure about the midi pedal capable of giving those commands, but what I did find was a nice Boss box BCB60 that can easily hold six pedal with all your wiring nice and compact. I like the fact that I can easily pop the cover back on when I'm done so my little on doesn't go tinkering with all my settings. http://www.samedaymusic.com/product--BOSBCB60 Ah, that looks cool - thanks for the link! -------------------- Check out my Instructor profile
Live long and prosper ... My Stuff: Electric Guitars : Ibanez Jem7v, Line6 Variax 700, Fender Plus Strat with 57/62 Pickups, Line6 Variax 705 Bass Acoustic Guitars : Taylor 816ce, Martin D-15, Line6 Variax Acoustic 300 Nylon Effects : Line6 Helix, Keeley Modded Boss DS1, Keeley Modded Boss BD2, Keeley 4 knob compressor, Keeley OxBlood Amps : Epiphone Valve Jnr & Head, Cockburn A.C.1, Cockburn A.C.2, Blackstar Club 50 Head & 4x12 Cab |
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May 28 2007, 02:24 PM
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If you do decide to try and midify a stompbox, here's some info - I assume. The site is down for exceeding bandwidth, so probably won't be up until the 1st. Found the link in Google cache, but the page itself doesn't seem to be there
http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?i...ing_analog_gear |
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May 28 2007, 04:51 PM
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QUOTE (Kaneda @ May 28 2007, 09:24 AM) If you do decide to try and midify a stompbox, here's some info - I assume. The site is down for exceeding bandwidth, so probably won't be up until the 1st. Found the link in Google cache, but the page itself doesn't seem to be there http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?i...ing_analog_gear Thanks - hopefully it will come back sometime
-------------------- Check out my Instructor profile
Live long and prosper ... My Stuff: Electric Guitars : Ibanez Jem7v, Line6 Variax 700, Fender Plus Strat with 57/62 Pickups, Line6 Variax 705 Bass Acoustic Guitars : Taylor 816ce, Martin D-15, Line6 Variax Acoustic 300 Nylon Effects : Line6 Helix, Keeley Modded Boss DS1, Keeley Modded Boss BD2, Keeley 4 knob compressor, Keeley OxBlood Amps : Epiphone Valve Jnr & Head, Cockburn A.C.1, Cockburn A.C.2, Blackstar Club 50 Head & 4x12 Cab |
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May 29 2007, 04:05 PM
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QUOTE (Meho98 @ May 29 2007, 10:17 AM) Does it make a big difference on singe pedals or a multi-unit like Zoom 505 II? Or is it a preference thing? VERY, VERY, Very nice job on the custom by the way. Thanx for the pics – it’s cool as hell! That's part of what I want to find out - I have a Pod XT and am very happy with it, but I'd like to see if I can get a better sound out of stomp boxes. -------------------- Check out my Instructor profile
Live long and prosper ... My Stuff: Electric Guitars : Ibanez Jem7v, Line6 Variax 700, Fender Plus Strat with 57/62 Pickups, Line6 Variax 705 Bass Acoustic Guitars : Taylor 816ce, Martin D-15, Line6 Variax Acoustic 300 Nylon Effects : Line6 Helix, Keeley Modded Boss DS1, Keeley Modded Boss BD2, Keeley 4 knob compressor, Keeley OxBlood Amps : Epiphone Valve Jnr & Head, Cockburn A.C.1, Cockburn A.C.2, Blackstar Club 50 Head & 4x12 Cab |
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