BigRedX

Just remembered that somewhere I have a USB booster system that allowed me to run USB1 over a 15m cat5 ethernet cable. Just need to fit ethercon connectors to the pedal housing and the patch panel on the rack that holds the Mac. Now all I have to do is price up all the components and see how it stacks up against one of the ready-made systems that have been recommended.

The Last Cry's last ever gig at Carpe Noctum in Leeds on Saturday.

In the early days of USB I used to run MIDI data over a good quality 5m cable. I was hoping that it had only improved since then.

The more I think about this the better it sounds. Since I'll be using 3 foot switches I'll probably be best off putting the Arduino in the same box as them and then just running a single USB cable back to the Mac. It should also be easier for my LED status light - only the play/pause switch needs an indicator as the other two are going to be macro triggers. Will there be any power issues with using a long USB cable, or would I be better using a separate USB power adapter? There's always plenty of sockets stage front when we play.

Thanks!

Thank you! The "button pins" are the numbered pins that point down from the board?

I've just had an email from Line6 saying that I can't plug a simple momentary footswitch into the EXP sockets on the Helix. I'm still tempted to solder some cables onto a TRS jack plug and see what touching various combinations together does. Is anyone here using a Line6 branded external expression pedal with their Helix Floor? If so, what type of jack plug does it use to connect to the Helix TS or TRS? And @fretmeister Thanks!

Thanks. This might be my fall-back position if I can't find something that does exactly what I want out of the box. Since I posted my original question I have been doing further exploration and if I'm going to have an additional footswitch unit on stage I might as well be able to control all the main sequencer functions that I use live from it, so I'm looking for something that can activate three separate functions. How easy will it be to modify this device to accept three footswitch commands and output three different keypresses (or key combinations) one for each switch? Please bear in mind that I am marginally dyslexic and coding can be somewhat problematic because of this, so I would probably need everything spelled out for me.

Thanks. I'm looking at the full spec on the Hotone web site now. I'm not keen on the programming interface being mobile device only, especially since it will spend all of it's life plugged into a real computer, but apart from that (and the none locking PSU socket) it looks like a possibility.

There is a spare footswitch on my Helix - the one labelled "Preset/Stomp" which I never use. However it is "hard-wired" to this function (bizarre for a device that is essentially a computer), so even though I can overlay my stop/pause function on it, it still acts as the Preset/Stomp switch so when I activate the sequencer it also changes the functions of all the other foot switches on the Helix which is not what I want as I loose access to my snapshot switches. I had been investigating the possibility of using one of the external EXP sockets, but I have just had an email from Line6 saying this isn't possible. Still until it is possible to completely customise the function of each individual switch on the Helix, I will need to use a separate footswitch for my sequencer functions.

The difference is partly in design and partly in how the instrument is used. There are essentially three types: 1. 28" scale length, tuned B-B. Pickups in typical guitar bridge and neck positions, usually humbuckers or P90 style fat single coils. This is a baritone guitar. 2. 30" scale length, tuned A-A. Pickups in typical guitar bridge and neck positions, usually humbuckers or P90 style fat single coils. This is also a baritone guitar. 3. 30" scale length, tuned E-E. Three single coil pickups with the centre pickup roughly in P-Bass position in proportion to the shorter scale length. This is a Bass VI (or GuitarBass). Of course as you can see there is some potential overlap between types 2 and 3 as to what could be considered a baritone guitar and what could be a Bass VI, and much of the distinction will be down to how the instrument is played and what sorts of sounds it is capable of. Personally I find that the centre pickup is almost mandatory for getting a decent bass guitar sound out of one of these instruments. Players who favour bass like the Gibson EB0 with a single pickup at the neck may disagree and be perfectly happy with a set of Bass VI strings on a type 2 instrument. One thing that nearly all these instrument have in common though is that they are aimed primarily at guitarists and have guitar neck widths and string spacing at the bridge. Maybe the test for whether a 30" scale instrument is a baritone guitar or a Bass VI would be if you can fit a set of the heavier Bass VI strings (with either a 95 or 100 low E) without having the modify the bridge and/or tailpiece, tune it E-E and still be able to intonate it correctly. And of course then there are instruments that don't fit into any of the above categories like the Shergold Marathon 6-string bass (and the Eastwood copy) which has wider neck and bridge string spacing and a single pickup somewhere between the bridge and centre positions, but still a 30" scale length. With a bit of luck you are slightly less confused now.

It is Mac compatible for operation. It just requires a Windows machine to program it. I'd have though for something as simple as that they'd be able to write the programming app as a web page.

Yes, but like all Line6 Expression pedals It's quite hard to operate. However, I wonder if it is accessed separately via a TSR jack and therefore an appropriately wired footswitch might work. Is that what you were going to suggest? Edit: just had a look at AFAICS the pedal part of an external expression pedal uses a 10kΩ linear pot wired between the T and S connections on a jack plug. That MIGHT mean that the footswitch part goes between the ring and sleeve. May have to make up a lead and experiment... Unless of course you can confirm this via the Facebook group?

I was going to say that's the one, but on further exploration, it appears that you need a Windows computer to actually set the required keystroke. Doh!

Thanks! Interesting, but includes several things I don't like for gigging use - wireless (and Bluetooth wireless at that) and battery powered. There doesn't even appear to be an option to power it from a standard USB mains adaptor. And too large and expensive considering I'll probably only be using one of the switches on it. However I'll bear it in mind as a last resort of nothing more suitable gets suggested.

I was hoping to do this with my Line6 Helix, but so far no method has been suggested that doesn't also interfere with my normal use of this device, so I need to look elsewhere for this functionality. Both of the bands I play in use a MacBook Pro running Logic Pro X to provide audio backing (mainly drums) and MIDI control of various on-stage devices. At the moment I control this from the keyboard of the MacBook. I would like to be able to start and pause Logic playback using a footswitch. I don't need a massive/comprehensive multi-function device, just something that does these two things (on Logic they are both activated by pressing the space bar, once to start, again to pause and again to restart from the paused position). Ideally a single footswitch and even better if it had an LED to show it is running. Connection to the Mac can either be via USB or MIDI DIN cable (MIDI DIN preferred). Anything like this available? The simpler the better.

On the Helix Floor the I believe the Expression Pedal Toe Switch is the "joy-stick" like switch to the right of the display. I would want my foot going anywhere near that and also it's even further up on the device which means that there are more switches I might inadvertently press. Looks like I'm going to have to look elsewhere for this functionality. Pity. One of the things that initially attracted me to the Helix was the fact that it could be used as controller pedal and well as a multi-effects unit. Looks as though the controller functions are more limited then I was lead to believe.

Have you run the mix through a frequency analyser plug-in to see what is happening?

Thanks! I've just had a reply from Line6 saying it's not possible although the work-around they suggested to get my sequencer function on a switch sounds like they may have misunderstood my question and why I want to do these things. I've sent a follow-up question. One possible work-around would be to use an external footswitch and give it the required function, although if you've been following my other recents posts on the effects section, I'm trying to cut down on the amount of pedals I have on stage, however AFAICS there are only sockets for EXP2 and EXP3 which would normally be expression pedals. Will these sockets accept a momentary footswitch? I don't have one yet so I wanted to check before I go an buy one and then find it doesn't work. It looks like you need to register separately for the Ideascale page, and so I'm waiting for a moderator to approve my account.

That's brilliant. Thank you. Ideally I'll get an answer from Line 6 through the support ticket I have opened, which I'll post here and you can forward on to the Facebook group. Edit: and if it's not possible is, can you add it as a feature request via Facebook or is there another method for this?

Unfortunately I don't do Facebook anymore, so we'll have leave it there.

I don't do Facebook anymore so unfortunately not.

I'm still waiting for a response from Line6 on this, but just in case someone on here has already figured out how to do it... FS6 (top row, furthest right) is marked as "Preset/ Stomp Hold To Edit". I have no use for either of these functions and would like to replace them with a command of my own set up using the Command Centre to allow me start and pause the playback of the backing my bands use live. Adding this functionality is not a problem, but the switch still retains it's original function which means that when I start the playback the rest of the switches go into "Stomp" mode and I can't access my snapshots (it's set up with 4 presets along the top row and 4 snapshots on the bottom). Any ideas? Or is this function hardwired onto FS6? Ideally I'd also like to swap the functions of FS6 and FS12 (and also FS1 and FS7) so that functions I use while I'm playing are all on the bottom row of foot switches and I don't have to worry about inadvertently pressing the wrong switch while trying to access a top row switch mid-performance.

So the three MIDI outs all supply the same 16 channels rather than being 3 separate MIDI buses like a multi-bus MIDI interface? Unless you can assign a particular MIDI channel to a particular MIDI output, I would have thought that there is a greater danger of running out of MIDI bandwidth first. Can you set the resolution of the CC data that the LFOs generate? A sine wave LFO could fairly quickly flood the MIDI data stream with CC messages, and that's before we consider pumping MTC/clock data etc.

Because if you look carefully Rich has replaced to "i" in his word with a similar looking character to bypass the swear filter.