Micro Clock / Smart Clock users?

rjmmusic

rjmmusic

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Staff member
A question to those of you that have Smart Clocks, Micro Clocks and the like - why are you using them? What does the PBC lack that the Micro Clock has?

Just wondering if there are some improvements to be made...
 
Great question. I built a board for myself with a Selah Quartz on it once, and very quickly got rid of the Quartz because the PBC did the same things better IMO. Plenty of people still do it though (I just finished a pedalboard build for a client with a PBC 6/X and another Quartz as a matter of fact).

My suspicion is that it is a combination of two things:
1) The tempo pedals give a constant visible reading of the tempo (something I wouldn't mind on the PBC if I'm being honest).
2) It frees up a switch on the PBC for other functions.
 
For a very short period, I continued to use the Quartz after moving to the PBC to handle BPM and Tap Tempo duties.

The reason - it was familiar (I used it previously with the G2 switcher), BPM was always visible, could be quickly adjusted, and I didn't need to do any menu editing/button presses to get to my delay page on the PBC. As I grew more familiar with the PBC functionality and downsized my board I built the clock/tap tempo functionality into the PBC and dumped the Quartz.

I do miss having the tempo read out from time to time but that's not something that detracts from my performance... more of a safety blanket or convenience factor when I need to tell someone else in the band what BPM we're on. Having the current BPM visible on the bottom right of the screen (opposite the loop indicators) would solve that.
 
Midi clock from PBC works fine for me using tap tempo. Occasionally the pedals are a little wonky reading the tempo, but I think it is a pedal thing (or inherent in midi clock).
 
I asked my client out of curiosity. He gave the two reasons I listed above, plus added that he likes having a dedicated & always accessible knob for adjusting tempo on the fly.
 
I have a DAD SmartClock cuz I used it when my old FAMC Liquid Foot midi clock+tap never worked properly. Then I downsized to the little board w/LT and it's sat in a box ever since. Now I'm building a bigger board again with a PBC and it's still not coming back. Why would I consider it? It have 3 isolated tap outs where I can only get 2 with the func outs of the PBC (or 1 with the LT) - isolated at least. And it shows tempo continuously, which obvs the MM/PBC doesn't. And it has a knob so I can adjust tempi manually to exactly what I want easily. But it's not worth it for the footprint and what I need to do vs what I can fit on the board and have to carry about.

So that's what it misses by comparison, basically what the others said, but I'm quite happy to do without and just use the PBC/LT these days! :)

On second thought's only the old FAMC LF+ can do song change IA sends AFAIK, so I'm not sure I could use the PBC song change to set the patch(+default song tempo) on the SmartClock, without putting those PCs in PBC patches and then patch changes within the song keep resetting any new tapped-in tempo. So that's probably a good reason not to use it anymore! o_O
 
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A little late to the party, but a big +1 on the BPM always being visible. It'd be great to have an option to always display the current BPM.

I've explored using a Smart Clock/Quartz for that reason and the fact that I'm sending tempos to pedals in a variety of ways and they have more outputs. But very happy that the PBC is able to accurately send tempos to two pedals with tap tempo inputs using a TRS cable (a Diamond Tremolo & MLjr) and midi at the same time.
 
I have a disaster area mini smart clock. How do I connect the smart clock and the El Cap to the RJM so that I can control the EL Cap with the smart clock and the preset changes from RJM? The El Cap only has one input/output for such things.
 
You could connect the Smart Clock to the MIDI input on the Mastermind, and the MIDI output of the Mastermind to the El Capistan. Set MIDI Clock to Receive on the Mastermind and it will pass MIDI clock from the clock to the El Capistan.

If you have a PBC/6X, you can split the MIDI output jack into a MIDI input and output with a cable like this: https://btpa.com/midibs-ii.html
 
I think I'm going to send the disaster area micro clock back becuase its trs and not 5 pin midi. Which smart clock do you recommend? Do you need a spliter cable to do midi in on the PBC 6? Thanks
 
I've got the normal non-micro one. That's got full size ports and I've never had any issues with it. But I don't use it anymore since the PBC does what I need these days.
 
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