Midi Pedal Encoder

[modsquad]

I recently bought off of ebay a Hammond 13 key organ pedal setup for 99 cents.  The switches are in great shape and the wiring is still intact.  What I plan on doing is getting the Sound Research 13 key pedal midi encoder and wiring the pedals up to it.   I am curious if anyone has experience converting analog pedals to midi.  It looks pretty simple but want to make sure there aren't any gotchas that I need to watch for.

Stan

[Austin73]

Hi Stan,

I've been working on something similar for a couple of weeks so hope this helps.

The original plan was to put a core unit plus din (see ucapps) with the pedal board. Got chatting to a local chap who does this kind of thing and he seemed to think it was a bit too much and maybe I should plan something more simple.

Feeling dejected I asked why - to which he said maybe just get a midi keyboard and attach it to that as its all done and dusted MIDI wise.

He gave me  Evolution MKS 149's unfortunately one doesn't work but the other did but just had keys missing.

Anyway I opened it up and found that it had 2 lots of switches and the diode matrix to operate.

Using a dremmel I drilled samll holes above each diode and attached a wire to it then to the pedal board.

All done and dusted and feeling rather happy with myself - I came down to earth with a bump as it didn't work! arrrrggghhh

Plenty or rubbing of the head and experimenting found that it needed both switches to operate - so wired it up again and hey presto -IT WORKED!

Now i have full midi implementation without massive out lay and no programming involved .

Works a treat and is loads of fun. I also have transpose, pitch bend etc all in so can't be bad.

I did look at the new Evolution USB keyboard (the tiny one) as maybe my next project or maybe even the roll up USB piano might be an option for $20

Anyway hope that helps.

Aus

[modsquad]

I had seen that before.  Take a look at the www.soundresearch.net.  They have a board that solders to the switches on the pedals and encodes the signal.  Then you can plug into any midi module.  That's what I plan on using.  Same concept just allows me to use any syth module I want.

[Austin73]

yeah I looked but its in german.

Anyway looks like you have it sussed but my advice would be make your pedal board and midi brain separate as then you can use different boards with it. My plan is to make each pedal board (i have a few now) with a 15 pin d plug on the end and have those either plug into modified synths or the mks 149 so I canb have even more than 20 notes could even do 61! lol

But good luck and keep me posted

Aus

[modsquad]

I have a question...With the 13 key pedal how versatile/hard is it to switch banks and patches on the synth module.   I have been thinking of making a seperate footswitch on the enclosure for that.   Also because the hammond pedals are analog, what about a simple digital number display for the patch/bank.

[Austin73]

As it stands Stan on my board because I use the MKS as the brain I get all the options of the keyboard on the pedal board so to speak (although haven't boxed her up yet.)

The boards aren't analogue so to speak just a crap digital version ha ha ie on or off which I use to switch the diode matrix of the keyboard. Which then translates into MIDI

You'd have to look into the CORE module on UCAPPS or the other module you talked about for doing patch change displays etc but that puts the money up.

You really need to just buy a cheapo MIDI control keyboard and stick the pedal board onto it - twice as easy and twice as cheap then you can spend more time on designing the boxes etc.

On my design I have all the MKS switches and display in a wood box tnat can take upto 3 pedal boards and all switches are footswiches so it sort of looks like a Bob Bradshaw rig lol

Then as I get nicer boards I can mix and match them. Also I plan to put the same connectors on all my keyboards so I can just plug them in and away I go.

I'm sure this is of no help but just my idea.

Any problems PM me

Cheers

Aus