I have this expression pedal from a trade many years ago when I owned an M1 for which it worked ok. I just cobbled together some TRS Y cables to reverse it’s polarity for use with my Axiom 61. I adjusted its little bracket underneath for “sitting” position.
Unless I keep my foot “floored” it goes back to 100 (cc11 value). The manual doesn’t really explain the adjustment for the spring but it looks like you can probably set where it backs off to when you let off the pedal.
Second question - does anyone use this pedal for VB3?
I like the feel of it a lot but not sure I like the spring feature.
Thanks,
EDIT - It looks like I should “spring” for a Midi Expression Quattro as recommended by Neil Durant
Sounds like an interesting device that will solve a lot of problems. Personally, I ditched individual pedals a long time ago, and went for a Roland FC300. Not the cheapest, but built like a tank, and after ten years it still looks and works like new. Yer gets what yer pays for
And I can program it exactly as I want for each song.
This is the manual page that tries to explain the spring adjustment. And this is the screw that adjusts the spring tension. Setting it to 0° means that there is no “backing off” anymore - that’s the way I use it.
And yes: I use it with VB3 - works well for me. I actually use different controller curves with it: when I use expression to “liven up” my organ playing, I use a curve that gives me a compressed upper range (so I can move my foot with the rhythm without being all over the place volume-wise; when I want to fade my organ smoothly, I use a more linear CC curve.
You always have fantastic answers! I read that portion of the manual but didn’t suss out that 0(degree) would result the pedal remaining down all the way.
I didn’t like how heavy the Y cables were (felt like if I kept using them I would need to provide strain relief) so I did as you mentioned in another post and created a short female to male TRS with the T/R wires reversed.
I really like how this pedal works with VB3. Turning the screw to 0 took most of the pressure out of the pedal when pressing from horizontal to forward 10 degrees more. It still returns to 100 but the amount of pressure needed to move to 127 is easy to maintain.
Hmm, something must still be wrong with your pedal. When set up in “sitting” position, it should be at 127 when the pedal is horizontal. Please check that you put the pedal into the “sitting” position correctly. There are two things to make sure of:
the “lip” of the pedal (1) needs to go inside the second slot (2) on the bottom (for “standing” it needs to be in the first one (4))
The “block” end of the pedal (5) needs to sit on top of the frame in the bottom (3) part - for “standing” it sits inside the frame.
The screw can then be used to push it up towards horizontal so you have some spring-loaded boost, but I keep the screw at 0° - no need to push for the pedal to stay at 127.
In my experience, shifting correctly from standing to sitting mode requires completely removing the hook screw and the clamp and re-seating the pedal correctly. Simply loosening the hook screw as the manual says doesn’t work for me.
BTW: as you see, I’ve cut the original cable and put an XLR connector close to the pedal. This way, I can simply configure different cables to connect this to my keyboards in the correct polarity without having to fiddle with Y-cables or funky adaptors that lose contact at critical points in the performance (been there…).
I’ve connected the FC7 to the Keith McMillen 12 Step foot controller that features a dedicated input for expression pedals. It works, the problem is that, as always also when connected directly to some keyboards, the FC7 gives a non linear response. It works slow in the low ranges, and it abruptely increases at the end of its range, therefore the volume (I’ve assigned it to control the plugin’s gain) jumps rapidly up, very badly. I’m trying to adjust this issue with the curves in Cantabile, but it’s not helping that much. Does anyone have an effective solution to this problem? Thank you.
