Default Midi CC for Whammy DT

[Wheresthedug]

I have just added a Whammy DT to my board. At the moment it is placed in front of the PBC (not in a loop) although that may change in future. I am using Midi to select program changes on the Whammy on Midi Channel 4.

Is there a quick and easy way to tell all presets to Default to sending a CC value that put the Whammy in bypass state unless I manually override this when creating a particular preset? Something similar to the default status for loops and switches in the Audio Tab.

I know I could set up a command that sends a default CC of say 23 which is Whammy Octave Down in bypass state but will this still send and override the desired preset say CC2 which is the same preset but active?

 

[rjmmusic]

The easiest way would be to create an IA button that bypasses the Whammy. Make it so that the off state is bypass. Turn on Send on Preset Change and Update on Preset Change for the button. The button will send a bypass message for all presets, unless you program the button to be on for particular presets.

 

[Wheresthedug]

Thanks Ron!

 

[Wheresthedug]

I spent some time last night working on presets now that the Whammy is fully wired on my board.

As I start experimenting with the Whammy DT pedal I am getting some pretty random quirks so I need to seriously think about how best to consistently create the desired outcome.

I understand the IA button option but am not sure how best to configure it. Presumably this button would need to be on every button page which would reduce the other available button real estate? It might be possible to do some pretty cool things with this option. Could I set the IA button to IA Cycle through a range of status such as

push 1 Whammy bypass / DT bypass
push 2 Whammy on / DT bypass
push 3 Whammy bypass / DT on
push 4 Whammy on / DT on

The other potential issue is that the Whammy DT soesn't have a straight forward bypass command. Instead it selects a specific effect in either active or bypass state. Therefore a bypass PC may result in a change of the actual effect but the IA status to turn it back on would need to send a specific PC number to re-engage the correct effect.

It might just be easier / safer to put the Whammy in Loop 1 and use Loop on/off to activate the effect. However, this would put it after my wah which may affect the tracking.

I suppose I could put the Whammy and Wah together in Loop 1 if necessary.

How are others using the Whammy in their signal chain?

When I try and use the Whammy in presets I get some pretty random outcomes which all seem to stem from the fact that the Whammy DT has two different effects in one pedal (Whammy and Drop Tune) but they share a single midi channel and have a fixed set of midi PC values.

Let's say my last preset used a Drop B tuning so the DT side is set to -3 semitones (PC58) but the new preset uses the Whammy +2 oct effect (PC22). I would need to send two midi commands when changing; the first would be any DT Bypass command (PC61 - 70) followed by a second PC22 command to engage the Whammy +2 oct effect in an active state.

I have tested this in the Editor by sending two PC numbers from a single button push. It seems to work fine. However, when I try to set up a new patch "on the fly" from the Midi control button page I have created on the PBC itself I can only select one PC number for each unit. Any attempt to send a second obviously overrides the previous number.

I currently have my Midi Control Button Page configured as

1 - Return to Presets
2 - Tap Tempo
3 - Triaxis PC-
4 - Timeline PC -
5 - Mobius PC-
6 - Whammy PC -
7 - Loops/Save
8 - Triaxis PC+
9 - Timeline PC+
10 - Mobius PC+
11 - Whammy PC+

I can think of two ways to that may be able to get round this but I don't know if they would work and there may be a better/easier option.

1 - Move each Midi device (or at least some of them such as Timeline and Whammy) to their own button page. This would free up enough buttons to have two sets of -/+ buttons for whammy PC numbers. I would probably need to sett up two Whammy pedals in the editor and it would probably be best to set the preset ranges to the limits of each individal effect (ie 1 - 42 for Whammy and 43 - 78 for DT).

2 - Keep the current single Midi button page but convert the PC-/+ buttons to two separate cycle buttons. I imagine this would require two Whammy devices to be set up in the editor and the PC range to cycle through (probably using the PC+ action) would need to be limited to the range for each effect.

Would these otpions still override the first PC command when the second is sent?

I am using the Midi In on the PBC to send changes to only the Whammy pedal. Another thought that has just occured to me is that Whammy can receive in Omni mode, could this be used to send PC changes on two different Midi Channels for the two different effect ranges?

Would it make sense to create a macro or something that sets the default status of the Whammy in every preset to say Whammy +1 oct and DT bypassed? This macro would be set at the first command in every preset regardless of whether or not the Whammy is intended to by in use. That way I would always have instant access to the Whammy effect but would never have to worry about accidentally being in the wrong key. However, the macro would be overriden by any PC values sent later in the sequence by choice. I would probably also need a quick way to restore settings to the default macro to avoid any legacy PC values if I change a preset.

Could I set it up so that the bypass macro is sent automatically if the Device is unchecked in a preset?

I really seems that Digitech have made the midi control of the Whammy DT very difficult to implement properly.

 

[rjmmusic]

The Whammy is a difficult thing to deal with because of the non-standard way that they use PC commands.

The first thing you'll need to do is turn on "Direct Send" for the Whammy device in PBC settings. This will make the PBC send PC messages without any attempt to filter, remove redundant messages, etc. That will allow you to control both effects in the Whammy so that controlling one doesn't effect the other.

I recommend setting up two IA cycle buttons, one for Whammy and one for DT. Then have each one have four steps (Bypass, effect #1, effect #2, effect #3). Set the buttons to have Send on Preset Change and Update on Preset Change turned on. Then you can program those buttons to automatically select specific effects for each preset. That's the best solution I can think of off the top of my head, hopefully others with Whammy pedals will let us know how they're using theirs.

 

[Wheresthedug]

Hi Ron,

I hope some others can shed some light on how they are using the Whammy pedal in their setups. That would be very interesting.

I have started trying out various ideas and will get to your IA suggestion shortly. In the meantime I tried setting up the two different devices idea on a dedicated Whammy button page. (I now think this might be able to work with just a single device under the right circumstances)


This works great for the Whammy side by setting a max PC number that corresponds to the Whammy max setting (PC 42).

The second set ofbuttons for the DT side also works fine going right up tot he max PC number 78. However, is I go below the min PC number for the DT side it just keeps going right down to PC1. ONce it has reached a PC lower than 42 it can't get back out out the 1 - 42 loop. Is there any way to set a minimum PC number as well as a max PC? That way one set of buttons could control PC1 - 42 and the other set PC 43 - 78. Both would work independently so I could set up any combination I want on the fly. and hold the default IA store button to create the preset.

 

[Wheresthedug]

Just tried your IA Cycle idea. That seems to work well although it does limit me to only 4 presets from ech each side. I have only just got my Whammy DT so don't know whether I will want to use more than four favourite settings but at least I know that is a workable solution.

 

[rjmmusic]

There's no way to set a minimum PC, since all MIDI devices are supposed to start at PC 0 (or PC 1 if they start numbering there).This is another place where non-standard MIDI implementation gets in the way.