FCB1010 mods

shasha

shasha

Fractal Fanatic
Thought that some of you FCB1010 guys may be interested in this and maybe give you some ideas or something.

IMG_2069.jpg


Basically I did the noswitch phantom power mod using a relay and a 5V regulator. I went with that method because I didn't have an AC power supply laying around and this was just easier (and a bit neater).

I added two buttons to it. One for tap tempo and one for the tuner. I used the built in PCB and jacks for the switched outputs. A couple words of warning, the bottom switch location is very tight all the way around. That was the absolute only place it would fit without hitting the switch PCB and the height is pretty shallow. The other switch has acres of room in comparison. The other thing is that the stock PCB seems to short out the tip of one jack to the ring of the other when using 2 cables. Basically you can't use both at once if you leave the board stock. One solution was to buy two new 1/4" jacks which would be the right way. Or if it's 2AM and you just want to finish the damn thing you can do what I did and just cut the traces with a razor saw. This pedal is 10 years old and I have another one upstairs so I wasn't too worried about it.

After that I made a break out cable using an old VGA extender cable that looked like it was built during the Cold War. Made up the breakout portions and proceeded to spend the next few hours soldering. I've got about 3 different layers of heat shrink tubing in there so it isn't going to short out any time soon.

And of course no foot controller is usable if you don't know what the buttons do. I decided to make up some custom labels. Printed them up and used a laminator so they don't get all nasty and used some cheap spray adhesive to put them on. The hardest part was getting the holes for the LED's right, but a single hole punch is the perfect size.
 
Dang! That looks really cool!

When you hit the tuner do you have to look at the Axe Fx display for tuning? Just curious...


Totally wish i could do all this to mine...
 
D20 said:
Dang! That looks really cool!

When you hit the tuner do you have to look at the Axe Fx display for tuning? Just curious...


Totally wish i could do all this to mine...
Click to expand...
Yeah, still got to look at the display...for now. I've got a few ideas I am mulling over, but it's not a huge issue right this minute.

I'll probably end up with an MFC-101 if I get to the point that I absolutely need to see stuff on the display, but right now I am trying to spend more time playing guitar and less time playing engineer. :mrgreen:

voes said:
nice mods! congratulations!
Click to expand...

Thanks man, I got the original idea for the phantom power mod from your thread and site. I've been a member of the FCB1010 user groups forever, but I never really saw the need for phantom power because everything I used was on the PC anyway so I didn't care about a single cable solution. But seeing how you set yours up got the ball rolling.
 
I'd be interested in your cabling details. What do both ends look like underneath all that heat shrink?

What are all the cables? I can guess most of them:
MIDI In/Out
Switch 1/2

It's the last one I'm not sure of. Guitar? MIDI?

Is the MIDI cable all in one for your MIDI interface?
 
Ahhh, what does it look like underneath...ehhh, it's ok. Not my best work, but everything's soldered and heatshrinked individually going from main cable to pigtail and then the big heatshrink on the outside.

Everything is in the cable, MIDI, tap tempo and tuner (switches), and phantom power and the extra red cable....

That last red cable is another TRS (had the extra wires in the main cable) and it can go to my FCV100 expression pedal that plugs into the BCF2000. The plan was to program all the parameter sysex data into the BCF2000 so that I could adjust any effect level or setting with it and then the FCB1010 would plug into it and the output would go to the AxeFX. After figuring out how to make the BCF2000 work with the AxeFX I realized that the hard part wasn't programming it, it was coming up some kind of convention to figure out what controlled what. :razz There are so many things you can edit that I could never keep track of it.

There were some other issues like the encoders would always start out at zero so a little tweak here and there wasn't really possible. I couldn't figure out how to translate parameter data back to MIDI to go from AxeFX to BCF2000 so that the fader position was what the AxeFX was at. (if that makes any sense at all).

Basically it was a plan that failed miserably.

But the other expression pedal does work, I just don't use it.
 
Looks fantastic!
I had been thinking of taking a saw to mine. Decided not to bother...

How are your pedals behaving? mine are all screwy. Like most of the throw on half of the travel. And both differently too.
I know there are people that modified the foils stuck underneath the pedals.
 
My pedals work great. I just run the calibration every few years. :razz

Now this thing is over 7 years old so there's a chance that they changed something over the years for better or worse?
 
Bought mine used. I don't know how old it is. Believe me, it looks faaaarrrrr more used than yours and I didn't make it that way. Well. It works. Except for the pedal taper. Really, with the UnO chip, if I set both pedals to read 100 one is at 2/3 and the other is at less than half.
I have recalibrated it, last time after my 3-year-old stood on it for a while and suddenly it didn't go down to 0 anymore. My wah wouldn't turn off. But recalibrating only fixes the ends of the travel, not the taper in between, so it seems.
 
Hey Shasha,

Nice mod.

I was thinking of adding one or two buttons myself (using the relays). If you don't mind answering a couple of questions about your mod, that would be great!

1. What kind of buttons are those? (brand?)
2. How exactly did you use the existing board? I was thinking of just soldering wires from the button to the bottom of the PCB that is attached to the relays, (where the metal connectors are sticking out)
3. Which traces did you cut?
4. If you could make some 'gutshots' , that would be great!
5. Do you still have those templates for the labels :D?

Thanks in advance for any info you might have.
 
1. I bought the switches off of e-Bay years ago and had them laying around. They just happened to fit and are the right size. They were from China and there are no markings on them, but I am about 99% positive that they are the same ones as in this auction: http://cgi.ebay.com/Momentary-Push-...Electrical_Test_Equipment&hash=item4aa8b42772

2. I originally did what you are talking about, but the circuit traces on the board were strange. For some reason both buttons closed the same output jack. I traced it out and there was a common connection in there that I couldn't come up with a way to bypass. At about 1AM that night I just got fed up and decided to cut the traces since it'd be easy enough to jumper them if I ever had to restore it for some reason.

3. I just cut the board's traces right down the middle. If you look at it there are a few that run from one side to the other and those were the ones that were the problem.

4. I put a PDF guide on the yahoo user group here and the file is called FCB1010 buttons.zip. It's a walk through of the whole process with pictures. Can't recommend joining the group highly enough; tons of good information and guides and people that really know the FCB1010.

5. The templates are in the zip file (just updated it for you).

I'd post them here, but we can't attach zip files or pdf's.
 
Thanks a lot. Let's see if I can manage to pull this of. I won't be making that breakout cable though..soldering DIN5's is a bijatsj
 
So,

here's what I ended up with. Put the tap tempo on the "ridge" because it's easier to reach that way. Poor man's multicable :D

fcb008.jpg

fcb006.jpg
 
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