I’m completely new to MIDI and following the recommendations here I purchased the Behringer FCB1010.
Trouble is the only thing I’ve been able to get to work with the DuoX is the expression pedals.
I’m a bit clueless as to how to assign the footswitches to simple operations like turning an effect on and off on my pedalboard.
I’ve ordered the UNO EPROM upgrade chip as it seems to fit my needs a little better with it’s pedalboard mode etc.
For now however, and so I can learn about basic MIDI functions, could anyone give me a helping hand as to how I should set up the FCB1010 to work with the DuoX?
Is it possible to assign midi control change message on fcb1010(midi cc)? As I check the manual of fcb1010 it seems to be possible to send the cc message.
If it is right, then you can assign the parameter of mod duo x plugins as midi.
Hey Krysalan, as far as I know, the footswitches on the FCB1010 send MIDI CC (correct me if I’m wrong).
Assigning switches on the MOD plugins to them should be fairly easy. Perhaps yous should take a look in our Wiki, more precisely here.
Let us know if you got it up and running.
I think my issue lies with not knowing what CC to send from the FCB, currently the footswitches just change the patches on the FCB.
I’ve downloaded the editor for the FCB but it’s still not clear to me what to program the FCB to do to communicate with the DuoX.
The DuoX recognises the Expression pedals just fine but not the footswitches, which I put down to me not having programmed them ?
Thanks guys, all the replies are really appreciated
The footswitches should be programmed to send CC messages. It doesn’t matter what values you send, but you should make them unique per footswitch. Example switch 1 = CC1, switch 2 = CC2, etc.
When you set up MIDI learn on your device, it waits for a CC message and whatever it receives is what gets assigned to that parameter. That’s why the numbers you choose can be arbitrary.
Ah, thats awesome. My first step to getting a grip of things. Makes total sense and easy to organise/ visualise on the FCB programming app I downloaded.
Got the UNO chip for the FCB and I’m in business - pretty good editor for the FCB from UNO.
I found that in Stompbox mode for instance, a CC value of less than 64 turns an effect off and over 64 turns it on. I’m going to delve deeper obviously bu thanks to you guys and UNO I’m on my way
Heyho,
I am finally trying to use my mod duo a bit more seriously and obtained my an FCB1010 to control it.
This is actually also my first serious introduction to programming a midi device what I thought should be quite easy with midi learn on MOD DUO.
As I already read, it seems to be possible now to assign presets and even pedalboards to midi commands- awesome!!!.
However, For now I was just trying to assign an on/off functionality of a plug in to one of the footswitches. My naive approach: press “save” under assign midi and then press the footswitch on the fcb1010. That did not work.
Okay now I am a bit lost. I know the difference of CC and PCM and in in my mind it seemed to be logical that CC is there for changing parameters and PC for turning things (plugins) on/of - using CC for turning things on/off was a bit counter intuitive for me but I’m also understanding the principle how a value of 64+ can activate and 64- for CC can deactivate something.
But I would not have a glue how to achieve this with the MOD DUO yet as the MIDI options in the assignment menu seems not to allow something like that.
Do I actually need to fiddle around with the midi utilities in the board creator to achieve plugin control? Do I actually need to connect MIDI in and Out on a bedalboard to have my amp chained in the midi OUT of MOD DUO ?
Sorry for those maybe stupid questions.
I will get an MIDI-USB adapter to be able to program my FCB via mountain utility software tomorrow.
I would be really thankful, if I could get some help for my first steps into the ultimate MIDI driven world …ähhhm MOD DUO control.
It’s actually more common that you use CC messages to turn things on or off and Program Change to some other more global settings.
No and no. What MIDI messages are you sending from the FCB1010? Program Change or Control Change? You should be using Control Change if you want to use it to switch on/off effects. Program Change are meant to switch between pedalboards or snapshots.
Thanks a lot to your reply! I got a bit further…
I was definitely lacking some background knowledge.
Actually I had to understand first how to program the fcb1010 with the firmware 2.5 to send out cc messages. If someone else is coming across this topic and too lazy to read the manual those links were really helpful:
Now this works just fine as I expected. Then I thought “oh hey cool! Now lets use the Expression pedals on fcb1010 to control e.g. gain in the mod duo!” Unfortunately that does not seem to be that easy. I think I have to use the “Midi to CV” plugin and play around with that?
Snapshot changes and pedalboard changes will come next but as I understood they are set up in the system config?
Okay, what I said was wrong again. MIDI can be directly mapped to continious variables. However, the expression pedals from the fcb1010 needed propper calibration before.
You got it all even the answers for your questions.
I don’t own an FCB1010, but something that I heard/read a few times is that the expression pedals may be a bit weird with their calibration.
The FCB 1010 is surprisingly sturdy and really road worthy. But many users know that one needs to calibrate them very frequently, if it’s to be used in many different venues.
This is due to the fact that they do not rotate a potentiometer – like most pedals – but instead they have an acrylic plate that goes from transparent (so to speak) to full opaque, and that is interpreted by an optical device which then outputs the value. Therefore, if it’s too humid, too dry, too bright, too dark, if it’s daytime or nighttime (for open air gigs), if the current fluctuates too much, all of these will affect the light crossing that plate and readings will differ.
It is also known that as the FCB units age, this plate might get somewhat opaque due to dirt and it gets hard to reach the 0 value. (Users in coastal areas tend to have problems earlier on.)
That being said, they’re great units (I own a Uno-powered one) and can provide many years of good services. When the plates become too dirty, it is not hard to disassemble and clean them – though one has to be careful not to remove the paint of the dark area.
I’ve got my DuoX lately, and using FCB1010 was quite tricky. Stock FCB1010 has quite a limitation on sending CC messages. All I wanted - was to turn pedals on and off by pushing a FCB1010 footswitch. From the Mod Duo perspective - what is required is to send CC value 0 to disable something, and CC 127 to enable it (or to be exact, looks like you need to send value in range of 0-64 to disable or 65-127 to enable, not sure but it looks so)
However, FCB1010 has only two things to do with CCs:
Assign one CC with a fixed single value to the footswitch:
In this case you will need two footswitches to enable-disable virtual effect pedal in Duo, one to send value 0 and second to send value 127.
Using only one footswitch leads to enabling effect pedal forever and further taps do nothing.
Huge waste of the footswitches, not an option.
Assign two CCs (in the case - the same CC’s) with different values to the footswitch.
At first glance it looks like a solution to the problem - you assign the same CC with 127 and 0 values to the two settings fields, and FCB sends 127 on the first footswitch press and sends 0 on the second.
But actually there is a caveat - FCB keeps track only of the latest footswitch pressed. If you are willing to use only one footswitch on the FCB, you are fine.
But if you will press any other footswitch, it forgets that you already sent 127 on the previous footswitch, and next time if you press the first footswitch - it will send 127 again, and you will have to tap it twice to get 0. ( and it even does not feel consistent - you always need to remember which latest footswich had been tapped to understand what your tap will do)
Basically, if you will tap FS1, FS2, FS1 ,FS2, etc – you will allways get value 127 sent. You will be able to get effect pedal disabled only after tapping pedal twice.
This behavior became so irritating, that people sell custom UNO and EurekaPROM firmware chips that provides other behavior. I even tought that I will throw away all internal electronics to replace it with STM or Arduino chip, but looks like it is possible to solve it inside DuoX, in a quite ugly way.
My solution to this issue is to program FCB1010 to send notes instead, and do conversion to the CC insde of the Duo. FCB1010 at least does send note-on and note-off events, so it is something.
I doubt that [Edepopede] have not solved FCB issues since October, but maybe my examples could be useful for other stock FCB1010 owners that are struggling with this ancient relict as I was.
Here is a pedalboard (with beta plugin for MIDI monitoring) that shows how to get latching, momentary and inverted momentary CC signals out of the note-sending FCB using currently available MIDI plugins. It converts ranges of notes to ranges of CC’s, so with a tuned ranges it probably also can be used for keyboard of some sort as input, like, nanokey or something.
Thanks for sharing your solution! It is pretty cool
Yesterday I received my UNO2 chip, which should unleash the fcb1010 for quite some Midi applications, including stompboxmode. I just realized that I really need an external controler to really make more use of the capeabilities of the MOD Duo, which was worth to me to spend the extra 60 bucks for the chip. I will share some of my experiences here when I get to program it but there is at least one post that was quite promising for me. However, its in german language.
I have an FCB1010 with Uno-v1 chip that I haven’t really used ever.
Any suggestions on how to best use it with the MOD environment?
I managed to get the Uno editor working in wine, but I honestly find programming it so confusing.
Hey Dreamer, the FCB1010 is just like every other foot controller. It’s just a bunch of dumb buttons waiting to be told their purpose. Uno chip gives you stomp style toggle which the original never had.
What do you want it to do?
Maybe have patches on the bottom row and snapshots on the top?
Let me know, I’d be happy to guide or program. Don’t own one now but used one for years
…ähhhm MOD DUO control.
even the answers for your questions.