Repurposing a Fractal FC101 as a midi pedalboard?

JMP220478

Anyone done this ? 

I’m on a quest to midi up my live EVH 5150III  based rig but ideally don’t want to buy anymore gear - I’ve downloaded the dedicated FC Edit editor but still scratching my head as to what’s possible with FC as an midi board outside of the AXE FX world .

Trying to control channel switching / delay / verb / eq n possibly a remote loop switcher 

any constructive feedback and advice appreciated 

drwiddly

The MFC101 is a very full featured midi controller and very easy to program using the mfc edit app. The board has to be set to midi (rather than one of the Axe fx options) when you’re using it. You’ll need to find the midi #pc and #cc numbers for the functions you want to control and set them up in the app. Once you have all the controllers you need set up, you then need to send the sysex file the app creates from the app to the board.

Make sure you save the sysex file on your pc. You can have separate sysex files for any midi or Axe fx set up. The board only stores one sysex set up at a time

The back pages of equipment manuals often have a midi table showing #pc and #cc numbers for different functions, if they’re fixed. On some pieces of gear you can allocate the numbers yourself.

JMP220478

@drwiddly - many thanks - are there specific limits to no of pc / cc sent ie can I send multiple changes per switch ( via appropriate  midi channel ) ?

drwiddly

@JMP220478 - Apologies for the delay in replying mate, life’s been a bit hectic lately and it slipped my mind. 

To give you any meaningful advice, I’d need to know what gear you’re trying to control with midi and what it can do. Is the EVH5150 III midi capable? If not, you’ll need a channel switcher like the Voodoo Labs or an RJM. Delay and reverb shouldn’t be a problem depending on the equipment.

I don’t have my gear in front of me atm but I think you can set the board up with either 10 #pc switches and 5 #cc switches or vice versa, so you could have 10 presets set up however you want with 5  switches in each preset to send #cc commands. There will be a slight gap when switching between presets but no gap when sending #cc’s.

JMP220478

@drwiddly - cheers for reply 

I’ve recently picked up an EM Custom midi interface for my EVH head - so can now mimic original Footswitch via cc ie channel change n add fx loop in n out independently - or with pc messages have complete control of channels +/- loop in same pc message if that makes sense . 

So for simplicity sake I stick with pc for amp - per switch on MFC101, can  I send more than one message pc or cc . Ideally changing separate delay verb & another unit as well as amp ? 

Roland

drwiddly said:

I don’t have my gear in front of me atm but I think you can set the board up with either 10 #pc switches and 5 #cc switches or vice versa, so you could have 10 presets set up however you want with 5  switches in each preset to send #cc commands.

The mk1 and mk2 are different. On a mk1 I ended up physically moving the rows of buttons inside the 101 to get what I wanted.

JMP220478

Roland said:

drwiddly said:

I don’t have my gear in front of me atm but I think you can set the board up with either 10 #pc switches and 5 #cc switches or vice versa, so you could have 10 presets set up however you want with 5  switches in each preset to send #cc commands.

The mk1 and mk2 are different. On a mk1 I ended up physically moving the rows of buttons inside the 101 to get what I wanted.

@Roland - Did you use your MFC as a midi controller or as a dedicated axe fx controller ?

Roland

Both. One midi channel for controlling the AxeFX II, and another channel which went via the AxeFX to the lighting controller