Recommendation Needed for an MFC Backup Unit

[guitarjim]

Hey all,

I currently use my old HD500 as a backup pedal board for my MFC-based board, and I keep it in the rehearsal room so I don't have to drag my primary board with me every week for rehearsals. Unfortunately, the HD500 is driving me nuts. The MIDI settings keep resetting to their default states and I haven't been able to figure out why. I need to keep my rehearsal Axe identical to my primary in case it goes down during a gig and I need to swap it out, so I can't tweak the Axe to use the HD500 default Midi settings.

Can you non-MFC users recommend an inexpensive controller that I can use instead? I only need 5 switches that I can set to specific Midi CC#s, and I'd prefer two expression pedals, but I can live with 1 if I have to. It's only a backup so I don't want to spend a lot of money, or I'd just buy another MFC.

Thanks very much for your help.

 

[stratamania]

Possibly a Behringer FCB1010, with one of the chip mods available for it may be an option. Or one of the smaller Liquid Foot products spring to mind.

 

[guitarjim]

Possibly a Behringer FCB1010, with one of the chip mods available for it may be an option. Or one of the smaller Liquid Foot products spring to mind.

Sorry to be such a noob on this topic, but I haven't looked at controllers for a long time. In looking at the FCB1010, it looks like I can assign a midi CC# to each switch as well as each expression pedal. Can you tell me why I might need a chip mod?

Thanks.

 

[MikeyB59]

I have the Uno chip for FCB 1010. Haven't used it for a while, but what it did for me was allow me to run in an IA mode where I had 5 persistent IAs (CCs) and 5 patch change switches. It also fixed the non-working midi thru, so I could use a Behringer knob box to control all the volume/gain stuff plus a few other things via knobs. I ran the knob box via midi into the FCB and both sources would send control data to the Axe.

It's hard to beat the FCB for the $. I got one used for $100 and paid about $10 for the chip.

 

[guitarjim]

I have the Uno chip for FCB 1010. Haven't used it for a while, but what it did for me was allow me to run in an IA mode where I had 5 persistent IAs (CCs) and 5 patch change switches. It also fixed the non-working midi thru, so I could use a Behringer knob box to control all the volume/gain stuff plus a few other things via knobs. I ran the knob box via midi into the FCB and both sources would send control data to the Axe.

It's hard to beat the FCB for the $. I got one used for $100 and paid about $10 for the chip.

That does sound hard to beat. From what I've read, given that I just need to have 5 persistent IAs and 2 persistent expression pedals that I will assign to the values of External 1 thru 7, I won't even need to mod it. Thanks for the advice guys.