GazPots said:
Im looking to get a G Force for my roadking and am looking how i can hook it up to control all the channels. Would combining say a G Force anda FCB1010 work (im sure i read somewhere on here that you can control 4 with those two together)?
Any help you can give me would be excellent.
Cheers. (sorry for the hijack)
Gaz
To answer your question, the GForce, like any good piece of gear, has MIDI in/out/thru in the back. Which is easy to program using the Behringer FCB1010. All you have to do is assign the MIDI program change numbers to the pedals, expression, etc.
So the GForce cannot be actually used to switch anything since its a rack mount. It actually needs a MIDI footswitch. Hence the FCB1010.
Anywhooo... as far as connecting the GForce and the FCB...
You need at least 2 MIDI cables to take advantage of every function in both units, but essentially you just need the "OUT" of the Behringer into the "IN" of the GForce. The FCB1010 also receives SysEx dumps, which means you can store all your presets on the GForce inside the Behringer. Recall any special settings, programs, banks, patches, you name it. Every function available from the editing menus, any filters, active EQ's, bla bla bla can be saved via SysEx dumps. To do SysEx dumps, you need the "OUT" of the GForce, into the "IN" of the Behringer. By the way, SysEx stands for "system exclusive."
The "thru" port is for daisy chaining. The MIDI rule is 3 devices in the chain. Any more than that and good luck if it works. Latency becomes a problem.
Daisy chaining goes like this: Device ID, MIDI channel. That's it. With a MIDI through box you can have 3 devices per "out" port. So if you have an 8 channel box, you can have up to 24 devices communicating with each other. Then you can daisy chain MIDI boxes, assign ID's to those and multiply everything by 16. It's ridiculous how many devices you can control with one master. Everything in MIDI goes by 16. 16 outs max per MIDI box, times the 3 devices you can have in every "OUT" and well I guess you can then have 16 MIDI boxes. Lets see, 16 X 3 = 48. 48 X 16=
768 If you have the need to connect that many units, you're insane.
Oh and of course you need audio inputs for each. Cuz remeber, the fist rule about MIDI: MIDI is NOT audio.
Ok so back to channel switching...
Well see the problem with the G system is that it only has four relays. For any amp in the world, that's more than enough. Of course MESA is crazy.
If you want to use it for the road king, you can actually use it for channel switching, since you have 4 relays, and 4 channels. Here's the problem, there is more external switching you need. Which means your FX loop and your SOLO function is not accessible, lets not even go on the second FX loop! haha... that's insane! Even on the triple rec, you have to give something up. Either the FX loop, which is kinda necessary with the G System, and the SOLO function which I myself just can't give up. You would then have to assign a switch in the G system for bypass or mute, to compensate for the lack of FX loop switching. Which MESA put on their pedals so you won't have to do this very thing. But we love to keep going in circles don't we?!? lol.
Technically, you can use any 3rd party pedal that does amp switching to control the amps. Since there is soooo many functions to be controlled on MESA amps, especially the Road King, you kinda loose out by using external switching. But now you have 2 giant pedals to control a very simple thing, you have half your controls on one pedal, and the other half on the other pedal.
To be honest with you, external channel switching is just a ***** unless you have a good reason to have it. AKA, you're Mark Tremonti and you have a guy in the back switching it for you. (and setting everything up too...) Haha, my friend worked in TransCon studios with him, and actually had to do this! lol. He uses a Triple Rec, a Bogner Uberschall and a Bad Cat for distortion blend. A JCM1000 and some other crap for clean tones.
Here's the thing abut channel switching, its just like light switches. You just have to tell your pedal what your amp thinks its "on" and what your amp thinks its "off." It's different for every amp and pedal, so I can't even begin to tell you which are the relays you need to set. Even if I did it with the G system and a Road King I wouldn't be able to tell you because I would do it just like every other engineer out there.
I'd try all the relays until I find the ones that work. Besides, I get paid by the hour.
But you are right, the FCB1010 would be great to GForce. After all, MIDI is MIDI. It's like the language all modern pieces of gear speak. So with your GForce, you don't have to use f-in DigiTech, notone pedals. Btw, if you use Digitech with your MESA, you should be crucified.
Get some nice Lexicon MX500, TC electronic DTwo, a GForce of course an Empirical Labs Distressor, (analog compressor) and you have a guitar rig from hell. You can control all their functions with the FCB1010. Except for the Distressor, duh. Oh, and even... you have 4 heads? 4 cabs? You can wire the reverb in QUAD. How fun would THAT be! lol. I haven't seen that done. I should try it.
I highly recommend, really, honestly, just using the MESA BigFoot for channel switching unless you need to sync up the amp to a MIDI sequence. (or have a guitar tech) Then you won't have to do anything, just play.
Oh and when you do that, there is no room for error. So watch the beer consumption before your show.
Cheers,
~Ben~