Pedalboard Breakdown

Charles Thompson built an impressive pedalboard MIDI controller which you can see in this picture:

He describes the functionality of his pedalboard in a little more detail in this post.

My pedalboard MIDI controller is a tad less sophisticated. I present to you the MIDI Mouse:

It’s job function was to control this pedal:

And yesterday it decided to die. Just after I added this MIDI controlled pedal to my pedalboard:

I love the Timeline and the Mobius however they are really obnoxious pedals for preset switching. The pedals provide two presets per bank and I have to do some pretty fancy tap dancing to go back and forth between preset banks.The MIDI Mouse provided a simple, easy to use controller to switch presets one at a time, or to speed switch by pressing down on the “Active/Search” button. Generally I would arrange my presets to line up with the setlist and I would switch presets as the songs changed.

All that is now gone. I will be gigging this week-end without the ability to easily change presets. I will be keeping the delays and modulation effects very simple for this week-end.

I decided to pick up a more refined MIDI controller from Disaster Area Amps: the DMC 3 pictured below.

It offers similar functionality to the MIDI Mouse however the device has been programmed specifically for the Timeline and Mobius pedals and supports a number of extended features including the loop capabilities of the Timeline.