Tips and Tricks

Some valuable information for GP-100 owners, culled from the GP-100 mailing list archives. Thanks go to the many people who contribute their ideas to the mailing list.


Morphing

To avoid misunderstandings: I use the word morphing for the effect where
you use the continuous controller to move gradually between two
different sounds.

First of all:
you can't morph from one patch to another. Any way I wouldn't know how.
But you can morph between two sounds. It happens within a patch.

Off course you know that you can assign parameters to a continuous
controller, for example the one on the FC200, or a separate one (Boss
EV5). Basically what you do with morphing is continuously changing
parameters (up until 8 at a time) until you reached a (completely)
different sound. I use three different ways to morph for three different
situations:
* morphing without changing preamp type
* morphing between two similar preamp types
* morphing between rather different types of preamps (jazz chorus
to metal types for example)

1) morphing without changing preamp types

Let's suggest that we have two different distorted sounds that we really
love, although for different situations. For example a very dry sound
with lots of drive, trebly, with just a little reverb; and another with
lots of sustain, delay, a little chorus, a bit more bottom end and lots
of reverb. Let's assume you would consider it very cool to move
gradually between those two sounds.

Take one sound as your initial sound. This is the sound you will get
when you change to the patch. Make a list of all the parameters and
their values that are different in the other sound. May be there are
more than 8 parameters different. In this case you have to choose the
most important. This is because there are only 8 parameters you can
assign to a continuous controller. Now you start assigning the 8 chosen
parameters to the controller. For the minimum value you dial the value
of the initial sound, the max value is to be the value of the second
sound. Don't forget to write the patch to the memory.

Pressing down the continuous controller will result in the desired
effect. You can really show off in a band situation, because most of
your non guitar playing collegues (? is this the right word) hate your
for the sudden changes in your sound.

If you've got more than 8 parameters you can try to use the assignments
9 to 16 to assign a parameter in on/off mode. For example you can assign
the delay on/off parameter to such a assignment. If you've gotless than
8 parameters to assign you'd prefer to assign the volume of the delay to
one of the continuous assignments, because this way the delay is coming
in gradually, which is cooler.

I hope this doesn't sound like abacadabra.

2) morphing between two similar preamp types

Basically this is the same, but now you have to assign the preamp type
to the controller as well (you can use assign 9-16 for this one, saving
space for another parameter to be controlled continuously), off course
there will be an audible change, but with similar types of preamp this
is not a big deal.

3) morphing between rather different types of preamps

This is the easiest way of programming. Here you use dual sound mode.
Sound one might be a clean sound, sound two a lead sound. By assigning
the master levels of both sounds (one of them reversed: min = 100; max =
0) to the controller, you can morph from sound one to sound two.

Why not using this very easy method in every morph-patch? Well:
* you can't use the fx loop
* more important: instead of morphing between sounds, you use two
sounds at the same time. This can be heard in the middle - if you listen
closely - where two sounds are played at once. The effect is less
impressive.

Why then using it?
You can avoid the audible change from one preamp to the other. So I use
it when the difference between preamps is too big.

What a lengthy story!!! I hope something of this is of any help.






Wah on/off and Frequency Control

Here's what I do:

Set up one controller on the gp100 to act as a normal wah
(a continuous controller which affects the wah frequency),
then set up a second controller which responds to the same
midi channel, but as a switch with off corresponding to 127
and on corresponding to 126.

This allows you use the same pedal to turn the wah on/off
and control the frequency. When you press the pedal all the
way down, it will turn off, any other positions will turn
it on and control the frequency sweep.












Volume Levels When Switching Patches

Changing patches can sometimes lead to surprising level changes, especially when moving between patches which have volumes set a different values.
To retain a constant level which is determined by your foot controller, use the "Assign Hold" function.


"Assign Hold" can be On or Off.
(Under one of the Utility/Global menus).

Off : always resets the controllers for a patch on changing (until they
are moved manually)

On : hold the value of the various controllers when changing patches.

It is not possible to use Assign Hold on some controllers but not
others. It is all or nothing. I use the ON setting for this reason. I
use the FC-200 pedal as a master volume control between 50 and 100 for
ALL patches. This gives me an easy way of boosting volume at any time.
If I boost the volume on one patch, and change patches, I want the
volume to remain at the boosted level. You should be aware that this
will then affect all of your controllers. For example if you use
Controller #80 (latch control on the FC-200) to switch on Delay (for
example) on one patch and Chorus on another, then it will remain ON when
you change patches. Personally I always have #80 set to Tuner On/Off
(silent tuner is invaluable at gigs IMHO).



Digitech Control 8

There's been a lot of messages recently on foot controllers - I've just
tried out Digitech's new Control 8 with the GP100 and if anyone is looking
for a no-fuss, no-programming, MIDI footpedal, this is the one. It's about
half the price of the FC200 (in Australia, anyway), about half the size and
half the weight - very gig-able!

It is (I'm told) an upgrade of their older Control 7 unit with a built in
control pedal, making it a Control 8 (duh!). In addition to the expression
pedal, there are 5 footswitches which select 5 consecutive patches, and two
bank footswitches to move up and down in the groups of 5 patches.

Of course, you can use the GP100 patch mapping, so if you have a bank of
patches 15 thru 19, the GP100 can map any one of these to any one of the 400
GP100 programs.

If all you need is an easy way to select patches and use a control pedal,
that's all there is to it! But there is more; it can also send CC messages,
and I'll try to explain as best I can.

You can press two footswitches together to swap between program mode and CC
mode. This mode won't suit everyone, though. The 5 footswitches become 5
CC toggles for CC numbers 21 thru 25. Pressing them alternately sends
values of 0 then 127. When using the GP100 with an expression pedal, like
this unit has, most players will want to set the GP100 to "remember"
previous CC values when changing patches. That way, you don't get sudden
volume changes when changing patches. The down side here is that it will
also remember the last CC values sent on CC21 to CC25 if they're used in the
current GP100 program.

It's not entirely useless, though. For example, you could program CC21 to
always be chorus off/on, CC22 for delay level, etc. That way, changing
patches would change the sound, and you'd keep your existing effect settings
(just like using channel switching on an amp with stompboxes). One cool
thing in CC mode is that the bank up down become patch up and down, so you
can use CC's and patch changes at the same time.

I haven't tried setting up the CCs to set tempo delays, yet, but I'm
guessing I'll have to set the interval to half the normal setting, and press
a footpedal 8 times to set the tempo (I hope I'm wrong!).

All up, I reckon its a great bargain. You can see it at
http://www.digitech.com/c8/index.htm

FC200 vs. ART X-15

I have both an FC200 and an ART X-15. I should say had, becasue I finally
took the ART apart to salvage the parts that I found useful out of it (the
main logic board).

The main differences between the units are:

Different feel of the pedals. I like the FC better in this regard, because
it has a more positive feel when engaging the pedals. Try using both. I
find that the FX is impossible to use without shoes.

The FX has 10 buttons available to control FX on off.

The FC200 has 13.

The FX has 2 pedals built in.

The FC has one pedal built in, but you can add external pedals (up to eight
I think). You can also use these jacks to add switches, so that you can
have up over 20 FX switched on and off.

The FX allows you to switch between the modes (controllers/patches) with a
built in switch.

The FC has a little switch on it that you have to press with your finger
unless you have very small feet. I find that if I'm too lazy to bend down,
I can press it with the side of my foot. I wouldn't want to do it in the
middle of a solo though. However, the FC has a jack on the back that you
can plug an external switch into that will allow you to switch between the
modes. The FC has two additional modes, one where it will send note
on/off, like a pedal keyboard, and one where it will send system exclusive
messages, which allows you to control all the functions of the Geep with
your feet. You can edit and save patches, everything!

The FC is less clunky and slightly smaller.

My Art started acting up, the pedals wouldn't go all the way back down to
0. Very annoying when using the pitch shifter. I opened it up and put the
guts in a little box. I don't use the pedal function of it, but I wired it
to a bunch of footswitches and use it in addition to my FC200. I also use
a midibuddy. I would say that of all the footswitches I have ever bought
the FC is the winner hands down. This includes the Lake Butler Midi
mitigator (sp), the Ground control, the ART X15 and the Rolls Midi Buddy.

The holy grail of foot controllers is still a step away, but the FC200
comes pretty close. I am especially happy with the feel of it. To me
that's pretty important, you wouldn't want a guitar that sounds great but
is no fun to play.

I've made a little template to fit on my FC on which I have written what FX
are controlled by what switches. This is a must in a complicated setup.

My favorite pedal would be the following.

Start with an FC200. Add about 5 switches on the front. Allow each switch
to be assigned any midi message at all. Have a little display above each
switch that is programmble (so you don't have to make a template). Allow
any function (i.e. mode, bank up, etc) to be assigned to any switch on the
front. Have one more function that would allow you to toggle back between
a number of setups (you define how many). Allow any switch to perform more
than one function. For example, you could have a switch that would allow
you to switch to a different setup (i.e. all switches now do something
completely different) and at the same time it sends out some program change
messages on different channels and a couple of controller change messages.







GP-100 Meter Function

This is a poorly documented, but important, aspect of the gp100.
I did some experiments with this a while back and I
think I have it figured out.

The clip light serves two different purposes. Normally,
it monitors INPUT level. In other words, it lights up
if the input level is too hot.

When you turn on the meter mode, it monitors OUTPUT level.
As you scroll through each effect it will light if that
effect is overloaded. As Ken pointed out, many of the
factory patches (and a number my early ones which were created
before I figured this out) have the Master Level (the last
one in the meter chain) set too high. For SLDN SUPER LEAD,
I have to turn the Master Level down from the factory preset
value of 100 to around 50 before the digital clipping goes
away.

Basically, you can have awful digital clipping ocurring, and
the clip light will never come on unless you check each effect
in meter mode.

GP-100 Software Version

You can check the software version of the GP-100 by holding down the PREAMP and WRITE buttons while turning the unit on. Press "EXIT" to return to normal operation. Version 1.05 is the latest version. Apparently it has some fixes to midi dumps relative to version 1.03.