A TRS cable has two bands around the plug (as opposed to a regular guitar patch cable, which only has one).
Meris also uses TRS, so I wonder if something is failing at the midibox. Do you have it powered? If I remember correctly the midibox takes a standard 2.1mm 9V center-negative power plug and it has a pretty low current draw, so it should be easy to power from whatever power supply you’re using. Not having power to the midibox could potentially cause the midi messages to not go through. Could be something else, but it’s a start.
Every device has to be set to a channel (1-16 are the available channels), and it will only respond to messages sent on that channel. Every device should have a unique channel, kind of like a phone number. When a message is sent, only the device with the phone number it’s sent to will respond (you can send multiple messages to multiple devices practically simultaneously over their separate channels).
Each device is different, but both Meris and CB are all knobs and no digital menus so it’s a bit obscured. If I remember right, Meris has a way to get it into midi channel mode (by powering on while holding certain buttons down or something), and then you turn a certain knob while one of the lights blinks. The number of times it blinks is the number of the midi channel, and once you have it set to the right channel number you release it or power it off. Chase Bliss I think requires you to send a message over a certain channel while holding the two switches down or something like that. Check the manuals, they will clarify that. They might already default to a particular channel. If that’s the case, find out what they are, and if they are already different from each other (the Meris and the CB), then no editing of the pedals is necessary.
So you want to decide the channel for each device, then set them up accordingly in the PBC editor. On the Devices tab, you can add new devices. For each, there’s a place to set the midi channel. Just make sure they match to the pedal. For example, if you set the Meris to midi channel 1 and the MOOD to midi channel 2, in the editor on the devices tab you would reflect that by creating a new device for the Meris and setting the channel
You might do a web search on midi basics, particularly for guitar pedals.
That Pedal Show has an episode that’s a decent primer. PC messages are Program Changes, which typically are received by pedals as preset numbers. So say you have a setting on the MOOD you that love and you save it as preset 1. On the PBC, you might have several presets used on different songs where you want to use the MOOD with those same settings. So on the PBC, on any preset where you want to use the MOOD in the same way, you would set it to send PC 1. One thing to be aware of, some pedals start their numbering at 1, and some start at 0. There’s an offset option on the PBC’s devices tab so you can configure accordingly for each device. You might also want to start a notepad, spreadsheet, or something like that to keep track of your pedal presets for easy reference when programming presets on the PBC.
PC messages are a single number sent on a particular channel.
The other main type of midi messages used on pedals is CC, or Control Changes. These are typically received by pedals as individual setting values. For example, the midi spec for the MOOD will give you a CC number that represents a certain knob, and it will be able to also receive a value between 0-127 representing the knob’s position. These will come in handy when you want to tweak just one setting while on a given preset, for example with an expression pedal.
CC messages involve two numbers sent on a particular channel - one is the number representing the parameter you’re accessing and the other representing the value of that parameter.
It’s unlikely that the cables are faulty, but worth making sure the right cables are in the right places.
It’s a lot to learn but it’s not too bad (and it can be fun). This forum and also the
Facebook PBC group are great resources. For questions like this, the FB group might be best because there’s a lot of people there who love to chime in, whereas I find the forum best when I have a really specific question that only Ron of RJM himself would know the answer to (he’s super responsive).
