Count Rackula

Started by giffenf, November 25, 2019, 11:43:48 AM

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giffenf

Since this forum has been such an inspiration for all my wacky guitar ideas, I figured I'd share my latest (and possibly greatest; it's certainly the largest) creation.  I've been working on it a while, but the name came to me sometime around Halloween.

Ironically, it all started when I tried to design/build a gig rig that was small and easy to carry, set-up, and use.  I looked at Kemper, Helix, even Headrush, and while they had plenty of features, I wasn't that crazy about the sounds I could get out of them (except for the Kemper, but it wasn't so easy to carry around) relative to their price.  So I thought iOS has available apps that sound about as good for live use as the previous platforms, and then running them into a Quilter InterBlock, via an iConnectAudio4+ interface (based on the recommendation of a friend).  And if my iPad had worked a little better (it was getting old and flaky), I might have achieved something along those lines.  But it didn't, so I decided to go a little bigger (spoiler alert:  this became a trend) and I didn't need more headaches in my life, so using a Windows PC (even though supporting Windows PCs is what I do for a living) for music just didn't seem like a good long-term strategy, so I bought a MacBook Pro and started playing with the options available.  I liked the tones I could get out of Bias FX, and later Bias FX2, and their support was very responsive (I even got answers on Sunday nights). 

But with all the capabilities of Bias FX, I still couldn't do what I can do so easily with a VG-99 or a GR-55, or a GP-10:  go in and out of Drop-D (or other) tuning on the fly in mid-song.  And no acoustic guitar models sound better than the ones in the 99, the 10, or the GR-55.  And I already had all those devices (I have two GP-10s, for that matter).  But the problem I always had with the 99 and the 55 was they were hard to gig with.  The 55 took up a lot of floor space for what I used it for, and the 99 needed to be perched atop an amp or other safe place, and that always took time to set up (and tear down).  And if I used the FC-300 (which I also already had) to drive the 99, along with the 55, well, I never get that much room on stage.  So, what to do? 

I shelved the whole idea and went back to my Pedaltrain-2-based semi-analog system with the GP-10.  And I started pondering what I could do to make that easier to work with.  Jumping from one patch to another for different songs took time and dancers get bored quickly, so I seldom had enough time to go from one song to another and get everything turned on and set the way I needed to before the drummer started counting off the next song.  Maybe if I could use that MIDI thing to do the work for me, I know the 10 doesn't have a class-compliant USB MIDI interface, but Primova can fix that, so I bought a MIDX-2 and learned MIDI Designer Pro, and built a control surface for the GP-10 that quickly calls up whatever patch I need (assuming my iPad would boot up, which I could usually get it to do).  Then I remembered that OnSong, which I was already using, can send MIDI streams when songs are called up, and upon further investigation discovered I could send additional commands from within a song in a variety of ways.  So I could have all the MIDI commands I need for a given song, e.g., call up the normal pickup patch, turn on the overdrive, turn off the chorus and delay, and be ready to go BEFORE the drummer even figures out what tempo to use.  All I'd have to do is...code the MIDI streams for each song...for 3 bands...which is about 185 songs.  OK, that's gonna take a little tedious time.  But I have a job that isn't too demanding, and if I'm working on something that looks like a computer, no one will know the difference, and if they did, these days they might not care, so after a week or two I had it all in.  And with an iConnect Lightning-to-MIDI cable, my iPad (when it worked, which, thankfully, was most of the time), could tell the 10 what to do.  And it did.  But then I thought about Bluetooth.  Could I make this work wirelessly?  I found a used Yamaha MD-BT01 for cheap, and with the midimttr app, jeez, that was easy.  I'm the only rockabilly player I know of who's using a GP-10.

And I could have stopped there, but apparently, that's not how I roll.  I kept thinking it would be so cool to be able to do the piano intro to Merle Haggard's "Silver Wings" with the country band, the trumpet part to Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire," etc., and pondered how to make that happen in a giggable format (the dangers of a job with much idle time, idle hands and the devil's workshop and all).  Well I never had a rack system in the '80s, but I had a 10U rack case I wasn't using, wonder if I could shoehorn everything into a rack case and put it on wheels like a rock star.  As luck would have it, about the same time, we were decommissioning a computer room at work and discarding a bunch of perfectly usable rack stuff, so I got a Furman power conditioner and a bunch of shelves for free, and that got me started with the proof of concept.  I figured the elements would include:

The Furman power conditioner
The VG-99, on a shelf
The GR-55, on a shelf
Some way to amplify it; stereo would be possible, but not necessary, I have a Quilter Tone Block head I'm not using, I could put the speaker cab on top of the rack case, which would make it easy to hear, and the Tone Block has its DI XLR jack on the front so I could easily go direct if needed
Some way to combine the audio signals to feed to the Tone Block, how about a 1U line mixer?
Since I've got the MacBook and the interface, why not throw Bias FX in?  1U for a slide-out shelf to hold the Mac, and the interface could go next to the Tone Block on a shelf

Hey, this just might work.  Found a used Behringer line mixer for $50 at Guitar Center, OK, that'll all fit.  Now...how to CONTROL all this?  Well here's a crazy idea, how about the FC-300.  I mean, I already have one, it'll do the 99 just fine, but what about the other stuff?  Having got my feet wet with MIDI, I thought, "The 99 can speak MIDI, so can the 55, heck, I got the Elite version of Bias FX, it hears MIDI, the 300's got a Patch Mode (SysEx was a non-starter for me, I was much more familiar with PCs and CCs), I could build patches that call up the right settings for each thing I want, hmmm."  Crazy, but it just...might...work!  And after adding MIDI streams to all those songs in OnSong, could building a patch on the 300 be anymore tedious?  Well, yes, it could.  Lots more tedious.  But I built one "do-all" patch so I could just copy it to a new patch location, then tweak the PC number and any CCs that needed adjusting, and hold off on the patch-copying process until I was sure the original patch had everything it would need.  That should minimize the tedium. 

All right, let's plug all this in and see if it actually works.  And it mostly did.  I could get audio out of all 3 devices, routed through the mixer, into the amp.  Cool.  But how do I select amongst the various devices?  Reaching for and hitting the channel mute buttons on the mixer for the stuff I didn't want to hear wasn't a workable solution.  If the mixer just spoke MIDI, I could code in mute commands for the non-needed channels.  And then I could use one of the expression pedals on the 300 to control the Main output on the mixer for an overall system volume control.  Somebody must make a rackmount MIDIable mixer.  So I looked.  Midas does, but it's a little pricey and way more functionality than I need.  Hey, Behringer makes one, and the small one (the XR12) is still more than I need, but it'll do the mutes and level controls via MIDI.  And sure enough, I found a used one on reverb and the seller sounded a little desperate, so I made a moderately lowball offer, and he took it.  And since the MacBook is there already, I have a convenient way to control and monitor it.  Oh yeah, how do I get one MIDI controller to talk to 4 devices?  I chose a MIDI Solutions Quadra Thru (1 in, 4 Thru ports) and stuck it on top of the iConnect interface to make it easy to plug a long MIDI cable from the 300 to the rack.  Then I thought about controlling it from both the iPad and the 300, that's 2 MIDI sources, how's THAT gonna work?  MIDI Solutions to the rescue again, with their MIDI Merger, 2 In, 2 Thru, and both inputs pass through to both outputs.  Could this all actually work?  Yes, it really does.

OK, proof of concept seems to have succeeded, but now it needs to be a little easier to work with.  The 99 and 55 ought to be on slide-out shelves, too, to facilitate knob-twiddling, and the new mixer is 2U tall instead of 1, and now 10U isn't enough.  12U racks are available, but expensive, or they're the big, flight-case-style, which weigh a ton.  Even though it's on wheels, I'll still have to lift it up to some stages.  Found a used SKB roto rack with a pop-out back, not ideal, but it'll do the job, and the seller was nearby, so shipping was cheap.  Spent some quality time with a screwdriver and re-mounted everything.  Now I need to cable it.  It's going to need a bunch of custom-length cables, because everything needs to be longer than 3 feet, but shorter than 6.
Bought a bunch of Switchcraft straight and right-angle plugs, and 80 feet of Mogami cable (I meant to only buy 40, but I put it in my website shopping cart twice and got twice as much; oh darn, lots of spare Mogami cable!), and fired up the soldering irons (I use a big iron to get the shell of the 226 plug hot enough to form a good solder joint with the braid on the cable; learned that lesson the hard way).  The cables needed to be long enough to extend when drawers are pulled out, and retract when they're pushed back, but also needed to stay out of the way of the shelf brackets.  I ended up attaching the cables to rubber bands and suspended them from above so they pull back and stay up when the drawer is closed.  It doesn't look great, but it keeps the cables out of harm's way.  Lots of zip ties later, everything's connected, and it still works.

But in working so much in the back of the rack and trying to route cables at least somewhat neatly (a task I think I failed at, again), I observed that the back section of the rack...is dark.  And working with black cables, it's hard to know what is going where.  It'd sure be nice to have some light back there.  Then I noticed the switch next to the BNC connector on the back of the Furman, labeled "12 VDC."  A light connector!  Now they probably intended it for one of those gooseneck lights for mixing boards, but, have you ever seen those LED strip lights, that adorn everything from pedalboards to party buses to taco trucks?  They run on 12 volts.  I call it Destiny.  Well I did the interior of my gig van with them to illuminate the cargo bay better than the stock lights did, and I had some left over.  Enough to do a halo around the inside perimeter of the rack, and now, there's illumination.  I may just leave it on for the eerie appearance (I think it will give) on a dark stage.

Then I thought of a few more details.  Like a tuner.  That could be the most important pedal of all, and the two that are built into the 99 and the 55 are hiding out of sight (assuming I could even activate them).  Well, Bias FX has an on-screen tuner, and you can call it up with MIDI, so if I keep the Macbook screen up and the Bias FX window in the foreground, that'll work, and will also make it the most expensive rackmount tuner ever.  But setting it up that way is a lot to remember.  So maybe a pedal tuner, stuck to the mixer on the front, where I can always see it.  Trouble is, most pedal tuners are visible straight out, and this will be closer to the ground, so I need a pedal that displays at an angle.  The Boss TU3s would fit, and it displays at an angle.  And I already had one I wasn't using.  But it points the wrong way, facing somewhat down instead of up.  I opened mine up to see if I could invert the display, but no such luck.  So I inverted the whole tuner so it's upside down, and finally my dyslexia has turned into a benefit because I had no trouble adapting to "flat goes to the right, sharp goes to the left" and I can see it from most anywhere.  It gets its input from the Aux2 out of the mixer, the jack for which is right next to it, which is convenient, and I had a 9V power supply I wasn't using, so, done deal. 

I'm using the Aux1 output of the mixer to feed the Quilter amp rather than the Main output, mostly so I wouldn't have to build an XLR/1/4" cable.  And that's beneficial if I ever want to use a different amp, because I can just unplug the cable that feeds the Quilter and plug into the Aux 1 out.  This, of course, made me think "What if I want to use a different amp, like my Quilter MicroPros?"  Those have footswitchable options like channel selection, boost, tremolo, reverb, etc.  But they're not MIDI-switchable (I was getting a little MIDI-crazy at this point).  How can we resolve this (OK, I admit, at this point, it's more of a quest for a solution to a problem I don't have yet, but once I get going, it's hard to stop)?  Voodoo Lab makes a Control Switcher that switches four things (about two more than I usually need, but I can deal with that) on and off via MIDI, via 4 1/4" jacks, or a DIN connector.  That sounds promising, but the Quilters use a CAT5 jack and cable to connect their footswitches.  I needed to make an adapter.  I found a cheap panel-mount DIN jack and drilled out a surface mount CAT5 jack, did a little soldering and punching down, and voila, adapted.  CC 92 switches channels, 93 turns the boost on and off, 94 switches the tremolo, and 95 the reverb.  Added the 4 different commands to the master patch, and now we're ready.  If you've been counting, this makes MIDI device #5, and I've only got 4 ports on the QuadraThru.  But the 99's MIDI Out does a nice job of MIDI Thru, so I just ran a cable from it to the Control Switcher, and we were good to go.

I started adding the MIDI code to the OnSong patches (props to my employer for all the spare time at work) and noticed that the commands I already had in there for the GP-10 were on Channel 1, because that's the only channel the GP-10 hears.  But the mixer uses channel 1 as well, and can't be changed.  Could there be some overlap where a command intended for the 10 gets heard by the mixer and chaos ensues?  Yes, it could, they share some common CC numbers.  Fortunately, I'm using the Primova MIDX, and with its powerful configuration utility, it can translate inbound messages sent to other channels into Channel 1 that only the GP-10 will hear.  So I (more tedium) reset the channel number for all my songs to 8 and told the MIDX to translate 8 to 1, and it all works.  Whew.  So the mixer uses channels 1, 2, and 3, the 99 uses channel 4, the 55 uses channel 5, Bias FX uses channel 6, and the Control Switcher uses channel 7, the GP-10 uses channel 1, masquerading as channel 8.  Holy crap, this is getting complicated.

With that all done, I spent the better part of a day copying patches on the FC-300 (I made a spreadsheet of everything I wanted and what they should be set to in order to be able to know when I was done; it also helped group them in banks of 5 for sensible gig use).  And another half a day yesterday debugging everything.  And it worked great.  Then I came back later and tried it again, and no sound at all.  The FC wasn't on speaking terms with the mixer, and it was muted.  Was this all for nothing? I calmed down and cabled directly to the mixer, all good.  OK, what's the weakest link here?  Hmmm, didn't I grab some 10-year-old MIDI cables to test this with, and are they still in use?  Um, yes.  Wiggle the cables, functionality.  Let the cables sit for a moment.  Non-functionality.  I'd already squirted them with contact cleaner, there were bigger issues with these.  Jumped in the car and got to Guitar Center before closing, bought a half-dozen MIDI cables (for spares, ya know), and replaced the old ones.  All better.  It all tested correctly, so I closed it up, storing all the cables (Furman power cord, amp speaker cable, GK-cable, and the MIDI cable goes into the case with the FC-300) inside, and lifted it off the cart I was assembling it on and strapped it down to its wheels.  Took it for a test roll into my music room and set it up.  It was amazing how fast everything comes out and plugs in.  Flipped the switch on the Furman and it came to life. 

Which begs the question:  how does it sound?  I had to play with the Output selection settings on both the 99 and the 55, but Combo Amp sounds the best for both of them.  Bias FX needed  fair bit of EQing on the mixer to sound believable, but it wasn't hard to get there since you can edit the EQ on the Mac.  The mixer has its own WiFi access point so the Mac just finds it and connects to it when it boots up.  Shortly before completion, the old iPad gave out and I had to get a new one.  Up to that point, this was one of my cheaper projects.  Not anymore.  I'm sure I'll tweak it some more before I gig with it the first time, but I think it's ready.  With some more practice with it, I will be, too.

I noticed I forgot to take pictures of the FC-300, I'd swear I shot at least one, but I'll go back and do that tonight and upload it when I do. 

Here it is with the drawers out:


Since it's called "Rackula," here it is at night:


Packed up before the cover goes on (once I unplug the red MIDI cable):


Ready to roll (once I strap down the cab and the 300):


The VG-99 on its shelf (with the US-20 nestled behind it, always in "Both" mode)


HAMERMAN409

Wow - impressive work and a very enjoyable read. Funny how things can just grow once an idea takes hold!

My favorite part is the boss tuner - I totally get it since having a good tuner is crucial. I am spoiled these days since I am very used to seeing all six strings at once on the GR-55's tuner - that helps a lot when you just want a quick tune check between songs after some whammy fun.

giffenf

Thanks, it's becoming more and more fun to use, the more practice I get working with it.  I made a couple of discoveries in practicing with it, one of which had to do with the tuner.  Not the Boss tuner, but the on-screen tuner in Bias FX.  When it activates, like most tuners, it mutes the output.  But Bias FX's MIDI implementation uses MIDI messages as toggles, rather than binary (i.e., on or off via sending a 0 or 127), so sending any value to an assigned Bias CC changes it from its current state to the opposite state (unless I'm missing something).  So switching quickly to Bias became dicey, because it was usually, though not always, muted, and the Boss tuner was doing a fine job of telling me how my tuning was, so I figured I could do without that headache, and removed the MIDI message to turn on the Bias tuner from all my patches (a little more tedium).

Another issue I found was that when the XR12 boots up, it mutes the Main and all the Aux outputs.  This is a good thing, but until I unmute the Auxes, I won't be making any noise.  And the only way to do that is to unmute using the Behringer app, or send a couple of MIDI messages.  Booting up the Mac, starting the X-Air app, and clicking the appropriate places to unmute is easy but not terribly quick.  And sending a couple of messages is pretty easy to implement, so I added an "Unmute" patch to the 300 that sends a couple of "0" values to CCs 21 and 22 on Channel 2, and just stomp it to unmute the Auxes and start making noise.  I already have the Exp 2 switch on the 300 set up as a panic button to mute the Aux 1 (the only thing plugged into an audible device) if things go horribly wrong, but I didn't want to change its function, so I went with the "unlock" patch.

And finally, here's the FC-300 with the extra FS-7s, the Pedaltrain battery to power it, and the MIDI Merger to combine the 300's and the iPad's MIDI instructions and send them down the red cable.



The FS-7s are stuck down with Dual Lock, which I use on almost everything but doesn't work terribly well with velcro, but the pedalboard case (from rondomusic.com) is pre-Velcro'd with the fuzzy side on its surface, so I should probably ignore my disdain for velcro long enough to stick some hooky-sided velcro to the pedals and not have to rearrange them every time I take the lid off.

giffenf

It had its first gig on Friday night, with the country band. And while not perfect, it performed exceptionally well, and yesterday I addressed all the issues or potential issues that I discovered in live use, and made another discovery while resolving things.





The stage we were on was pretty shallow, and where I had to stand relative to where I had the rack made it so I couldn't see the tuner if I had the laptop shelf out, so I didn't use Bias FX all night, though I tested it to see if it worked, and it did. The bandleader liked the way it sounded, the bass player/sound guy didn't say anything beyond the initial "What the hell is that?" (but gave a nod of approval after a baritone guitar solo), the other guitar player didn't voice any disapproval, and loved the synth parts when they came about, and the Peruvian drummer asked, at a break, "So, you are, how you say...a gear nut?" I read that as a resounding success.

This was its first venture at riding around in the van, and I was interested to see what would happen with the vibrations associated with motorized transport. As I expected, all the wall warts fell out of their outlets on the Furman, so I needed to find a way to prevent that. And one MIDI cable on the VG-99 came out, but that was an easy fix, I just secured both of those cables to the shelf the 99 sits on, and they won't be going anywhere. The Furman has screw holes for strapping wall warts into their special outlets, but I got that unit used so if it came with those straps, I didn't get them. And the newer Furman units don't have the screw holes, so they don't offer them as accessories. Online forums recommend duct tape, but that doesn't seem like a good long-term solution. I found some screws in my parts bin that fit the threads in the Furman's screw holes, but didn't have anything suitable for straps, and didn't want to go to Home Depot on a Saturday at this time of year, so I came up with the idea of using velcro on the face of the outlet (with a couple of slots cut for the plug to go through) and another piece of velcro impaled on the plug, and except for that enormous Apple power adapter, they seem to hold in pretty snugly. I put another piece of velcro on the Apple device to attach it to the shelf bracket above, we'll see how that goes.

I used a couple of ratchet straps to hold the rack onto its dolly, but this had the issue of A: not being tight enough to keep the rack from moving around on the dolly, and B: in attempting to get it tight enough, it put enough pressure on the molded case to make the molded back not fit in easily. So I pulled out the bottom shelf and all its attendant cables, drilled some holes in the dolly and the rack case, and bolted it on, permanent-like. That looks and works much better. And while I had all those cables out, I opted to (attempt to) route them all a little more neatly and pull out those two old MIDI cables that I'd unplugged but left in there to avoid having to cut all those zip ties to get them out (I cut them all this time and re-did them).

With all that maintenance, I needed to test it, and except for Bias FX, it worked just like it was supposed to. But it appears I plugged the USB cable into a different port on the audio interface (there are two, and I couldn't remember which one I had used before; I had a 50/50 shot, and I lost), so with a little reconfiguration to send the right inputs to the right places, Bias sounded better than ever, and (hopefully) always will because I saved all the settings as a preset.

But one thing I've always struggled with in this beast is how to plug a normal guitar into it, should I ever want, or need to. I always keep an "Oh S***" cable handy that I can use in a live situation to go straight from a guitar into an amp to get through a set in case of emergency, but what if I have a particular guitar that I want to run through the whole system? The 99 has a regular guitar input, but it's on the back, and if you have anything plugged into it, it mutes the signal from any normal pickups you have on your guitar with the hex pickup on it. So my only solution is to, whenever the need arises, just slide out the VG-99 shelf and plug the guitar into it, then unplug it when I'm done. Given the rare nature of the need to do this I'm living with it that way for now. Primova used to make a Subsonic Filter which, among other things, allows what I want to do, but though I have one of those, it's on another board and I want to leave it there.

When I first got it, I had noticed, then chose to ignore, that channels 11 and 12 on the mixer are high-impedance, 1/4" inputs, so I wondered what it would sound like if I plugged straight into that. It would bypass the ability to use any of the 99's effects, but I thought maybe an acoustic guitar, which is what I would likely want to plug in anyway, would sound OK through it. So I tried my Martin 000C-Nylon and Gumby, the oval-holed archtop with the Duncan MagMic, and they didn't sound OK, they sounded GREAT. With the mixer's EQ flat and going straight from there to the amp, it was really nice. The mixer's effects aren't great, but I'll experiment with some reverb on that channel and see how it goes. And if I really like it, there's TWO of those inputs! I am, how you say, a gear nut.

Still need to add a couple of patches on the floor controller to enable/disable that mixer channel, but aside from that, it's ready for another go. Next one will be with the Lizards, we'll see how that works out.

Elantric