Hi,
Bassist here,
Lately ive got an issue with controllig volume from my expr pedal connected to the morningstar mc8.
The volume does not go up or down smoothly, but in audible steps.
I have recalibrated the pedal and tried a different one, same result.
Anyone woth experience of the matter?
Anywhere in GP to smooth out midi controlled volume?
Frode
How looks the global MIDI monitor when you use your pedal?
It seams slightly irregular, not much happening towards the heel.
And it says “(coarse)”
Dont know if this is important…
On the morningstar after calibrating it says 2% on heel down, 100% on toe down
I have an MC8 with two Boss EV-30s. I haven’t experienced that issue.
What midi message do you have it sending from the MC8?
Expression on cc 7 range 0-127. I’ve tried high and low sensitivity.
It has been totally fine.
I remember it doing this also before i got the MC8, while using the nectar pacer. Then i weng into settings of the pacer and could select type of exp pedal. Its a nektar pedal, so i selected that and it was perfect.
Ive been looking around inside the morningstar software dor a similar setting, unsure what to look for. Strange that it was fine and then not, i havent changed anything about it.
Was a bit stressed yesterday when writing this post, i was in a long day of two very different and important gigs, so sitting here now i realise i have yet to test the other imultiport inputs on the mc8 if they are the same.
But, coming from being a bassist and not using exp pedals that much, im unsure, coukd this be a faulty pot in my pedal? I like using reverbs and delays for ambient swells in creative ways (one of yesterdays gigs was a concert in a fantasric concert hall with a famous saxophonist who replaced Michael Brecker in Steps Ahead) but with the volume behaving like that, the swells are a garbled mess, leaving me essentially with a volume pedal only useful as a mute switch…
I’ll try a different cc as well as switching ports on todays rehersal and concert. I do have another exp pefsl and it behaves the same, so ive kind of concluded its not the pedal, however they are both cheap(ish) pedals, so i guess they coukd randomly fail in the sane way at the same time, but bad odds…?
I cannot imagine it is something else than the proper adequation between the exp pedal and the MC8. There are lot of explanation about this in the MC8 manual and I also found a video:
Solved:
I tried a few things before leaving for dress rehersal.
1 made sure the mc8 was not in looper mode, i don’t think it can be in looper mode on startup, but had the nagging doubt.
2 tried the various sensitivity settings, no joy.
3 tried the other ports, same result
4 finally polarity switch on the back of the pedal. Was set to 2, switched to 1, recalibrate.
The strange thing is i had the same issue with the m audio exp pedal, will have to check if it also has a polarity switch.
I made all these changes before testing in gp, what i noticed was that without gp running, the readout of the expr ped in the display of the mc8 was irregular. This is why I kept trying various fixes before opening gp. Ie, the readout said 0 in heel pos, then it had a rather erratic travel and when releasing the pedal anyway in mid travel, the numbers kept changing up and down in the display.
However when opening gp the numbers on the display were normal, meaning stable and not jumping up and down.
Bass plugged in and volume is once again smooth.
I am suspecting the polarity switch, which is the complete newbie rookie amateur thing to overlook, and i’m kind of blushing to admit this here.
One thing to learn from this is how difficult it can be to troubleshoot stuff during rehersals or soundcheck.
I’ve had a couple of issues on previous soundchecks regarding balancing levels to foh and other things, i could not solve them on the spot, you know, collegues “patiently” waiting while my shoulders travel higher and higher. Then at home i solve the issue after 1 minute…
Moral for me is permanently patched cables on the soundcard, front access to properly labelled xlr plugs on a patchbay(no more remembering specific trs to male/female xlr…) and now always doublecheck polarity of pedals…
Thanks for the input, have a great weekend!
I have a rackspace that uses a synth to send out white pink noise at 0dB to all my audio outputs (eight of them).
When FOH is ready, I just turn that on, tell FOH to adjust input attenuation and faders appropriately and I’m done with sound check!
Which synth is able to do that?
If you have the free Melda pack, then you have this with MNoiseGenerator.
I use the Legend, but many synths (free and paid) have white/colored noise generators in them.
The only thing you need to be careful about is ramping up to 0dB slowly, warning the FOH. If they have turned on stage monitors and then you blast out white noise at 0dB, it could be REALLY LOUD
(yes, that has happened to me 
)