Phew, picked up the tourman today (cheers Jord, Ad and Mo). Man, its heavy and thats without any gear inside! Got some extra strength velcro at the ready..feeling a bit rough this afternoon hoping to perk up to start laying gear out tonight having been a bit quiet on the project for a week or two.
Quick update on the case, only a week before I get my hands on it. Then its down to adding decent velcro and squeezing everything into place. Meanwhile had a play with fx send on the mixer and need to settle on a typical audio signal path for live performance, also need to stack the MPC memory with a sample library or two, and design a general map preset for Spin Doctor to EMX...speaking of EMX need to start saving some instruments and bare bone patterns. Stuff todo then!
Well, here is the Pioneer EFX 500, replacing the RT 323. Simply not room for everything plus dynamic FX needed in the setup more than the bass from the Zoom, which can be done on the EMX. The unit is well built but chunky, need to measure up as it was already a squeeze with the smaller Zoom, however love the simplicity and type of effects, hands on, MIDI in for BPM sync, and nice and easy to read retro display.
Hmm, well as i wait patiently for the case i got to thinking about the practical side of using the gear and there are too many manual instruments for one pair of hands, and not much in the way of fx and expression. So, its possible the rt-323 will be dropped from the line-up and replaced with a pioneer efx-500..leaving the emx for most of the work with the mpc on samples, and efx on master fx..watch this space.
Well, the £5 USB MIDI adapter turned up today, plugged it in..and it works fine. I loaded up the Windows Spin Doctor profile editor, saved and sent changes down to the hardware, cool. It's a one-off thing, but necessary in order to set the advanced controls needed to work with the EMX-1 in the way I need. The Spin Doctor is great, very open in terms of configuration, functional, with the bonus of purple metal casing and large LED display.
Well, I've got all the gear and cables, and the pedal board + case will be here at some point in the next few weeks, so I thought I'd try and see if it all really fits. I was pretty sure, but wanted to get a step closer to the end-game while waiting for the board to arrive. It just about squeezes on. I taped the area on the floor with masking tape, laid out the machines and power, then plugged it all in. I haven't added the cable tidy yet, that'll help sort the spaghetti out a bit. That's as much as I can mock it up right now. Looking forward to not having to build-up/tear-down each time and instead just switching it on to play the complete set up. I had a quick jam while I had everything out and plugged in, it's addictive stuff. It's still very different to what I'm used to and very hands on but that's part of the fun.
The Kenton Spin Doctor arrived today! This is in theory the last piece of the puzzle apart from the case, for RIG-1. This is a well built MIDI controller that I wanted specifically to extend the live-control options of the EMX-1. This means in theory I can now have dedicated control over CC values per channel and tie that up with the 5 synths of the EMX. The only problem is that you can't do advanced edit using just the unit, you need to use a bit of software to create and upload the custom profile and I don't have a USB-MIDI interface. Anyway, that's next steps, for now I plugged it in and used the factory stuff, up and running really quickly it all just worked. A great functional unit from Kenton (who I got my MIDI-THRU box from) in a metal case, not plastic. The weight is increasing all the time, something else I didn't really factor in with old gear. The EMX is particular is quite heavy, hope the pedal board and Velcro can handle it.
This looks like the best fit/price/build for the project. A friend may be selling one also, it's a sign! It will save a lot of time building a case, and Velcro means I keep some flexibility for future configurations. It's the largest of the Diago pedal board range, I'd go for the next size down but that would mean loosing a piece of gear. Any bigger and it starts to become so bulky it's hard to store, and easy storage is one of the goals. Now if only the Launchpad would sell I could fund this next part, fingers crossed.
I just put a spanner in the works and added this to the list, basically to expand the EMX-1 live control capability. I might have found a way to wedge it onto the pedal board I've got my eye on, but we'll see when it arrives when I can lay it all out on the floor and wire it up. I seriously need to stop adding gear but this was too good an opportunity to miss to get independent control over some of the features of the EMX-1. Also the short audio cables arrived, which is great, going from a stack of 3-6m cables to a small pile of 1m cables saved me a lot of space on my hypothetical board. The multiple power adapters are a bit of a pain, wish they were all 9v so I could get one of those multi adapters but hey it's fine sure I can make it fit..but more gear means more power, and I'm already at the limit on the power block. Still, it's progress.
Hmm, so it's possible I might be able to squeeze into a large pedal board flight case - this is good for four reasons.. 1) you can get one off the shelf, plenty of flight case companies out there, 2) they use Velcro which is a great idea to solve how I keep stuff in place but still have the ability to move it around, pull it in/out as needed, 3) the whole board comes out so you're not always fixed to the rest of the case when performing, and 4) reasonable price (about £150). Almost too good to be true, I'll keep reading up and double check my measurements.
Worked it down to these two layouts pretty much, give or take a few tweaks and swaps. The top one would need a deeper case, the one below more likely to go into a keyboard/guitar flight case. I need to keep playing around but I'm closing in now that I'm taking into account space for cables, ventilation, power blocks that kind of thing. Before I was focussing on the units with just a massive pile of cables behind.
Found some cheap cable tidy to chop up in town, might come in handy, also a cheap plug double as I might need to exceed my 6-way. On the right you can see a pile of gear before setting up.. the tear up and tear down is starting to get pretty boring, but I've got no choice until the coffin is built so tonight started to measure up the gear, adapters, space for cables that kind of thing, to help figure out a layout without having everything unpacked and so I can see if any flight cases are close enough to use off the shelf (well, minus custom frames inside to hold everything in place).
Wow, the mixer has the brightest LED in the world, might have to cover up the power light. Also got the masking tape out and started to tag the adapters. I gave in on the large mess of cables (it was getting a bit out of hand, plus I might be selling a few of the long ones) and ordered 1m MIDI and 1m 1/4" audio cables from eBay, I was amazed how cheap there were. The MIDI cables arrived already and have been tested, the audio cables next week sometime. Started to dig into the MPC and 323 manuals, finding out a bit more about how I'm going to sync patterns and switch things on and off.