mesa footswitch channels layout for midi switching

[ostia man]

I need to find out which pins of the 7pin midi jack on the roadster controls each channel and the groun conection. In order to make a midi cable i can use to change channel with the voodoo lab control switcher
Example: pin1 ground. Pin2 channel 1. Etc...

 

[domct203]

Why not just use the 1/4" external trigger jacks?

Dom

 

[ostia man]

Why not just use the 1/4" external trigger jacks?

Dom

I dont use a rack. So the control switcher will be on my pedalboard. To many cables.

 

[Mobi]

Hi,
I had the same problem like you... I have a pedalboard and want to be able to switch amp channels together with FX pedals. I looked around and finally opted for this solution :

I use the jacks at the back of the dual rectifier to go into a control switcher. From that I run a standard midi cable (5m) to my pedalboard. I use a musicomlab switcher on the pedalboard to switch amp channels together with FX pedals on my board.

 

[nocluejimbo]

Hi,
I had the same problem like you... I have a pedalboard and want to be able to switch amp channels together with FX pedals. I looked around and finally opted for this solution :
I use the jacks at the back of the dual rectifier to go into a control switcher. From that I run a standard midi cable (5m) to my pedalboard. I use a musicomlab switcher on the pedalboard to switch amp channels together with FX pedals on my board.

That looks fantastic.

 

[ostia man]

Hi,
I had the same problem like you... I have a pedalboard and want to be able to switch amp channels together with FX pedals. I looked around and finally opted for this solution :

I use the jacks at the back of the dual rectifier to go into a control switcher. From that I run a standard midi cable (5m) to my pedalboard. I use a musicomlab switcher on the pedalboard to switch amp channels together with FX pedals on my board.

Super nice!!!! I did try to put the control switcher in the amp. But never thought about replacing the back bar(dont know how you call tat). Thanx a lot. I'll definetlly do this

 

[Mobi]

That 'mesh grille' on the back of my amp is the standard grille that came with the amp when I bought it. (it's the 3channel dual rectifier but not the multiwatt version). I think that the multiwatt dual rectifier has a smaller 'tube guard' right? (as in the picture I found below)
The control switcher is attached to the grille with 2 small tie wraps, so no glue or screws are used. The 4 small cables that you see are George L's that I cut to be the perfect length between the external switching jacks and the control switcher inputs. Again using small tie wraps to hold the 4 cables together. The small size of the control switcher also means that I can still use the Mesa dust cover on the head. And it only adds some minor weight to the amp.

I'm just thinking if you have the multiwatt version how you could attach the control switcher to the back? As you can see in my pic the control switcher is all the way to the right of the amp, near the rectifier tubes. Since I use silicon diode rectification and not tube the 2 rectifier tubes are not used, so they don't warm up and you don't get any heat from the tubes to the switcher. If you would connect the control switcher to your 'tube guard' that might give a heat problem as the 4 power amp tubes do become pretty hot. Maybe you could swap your tube guard for a grille like mine? The grille is only attached to the amp with 4 screws (see picture above) in the 4 corners, so you need to have some wood in the corners to attach the grille.

I've just found this picture... I see that there is 2 small pieces of wood in the left and right corners of the amp, so you probably can use the same grille as I have and just use 4 screws to attach the grille. You might be able to order a spare back grille from Mesa?

What I also did is I bought a 5m standard midi cable, a 5m guitar cable and a 5m power cable and I created 1 big cable using 'cable snakes'. This cable runs from my pedalboard to the back of the amp where the 3 cables come out 1 to the midi on the control switcher, 1 to the input on the amp and 1 to the power adapter to power my pedaltrain. That way I have only 1 cable running from my pedaltrain at the front of the stage to my amp. (I hate to have cables everywhere )

The reason for the musicomlab switcher is that I have a small pedaltrain with a lot of pedals and I didn't want to buy a new pedaltrain, so I did look for the smallest footprint switcher. It fits the pedaltrain 2 nicely and I still had room to fit the other FX pedals. (all cables are George L's to save space on the board)

If you find a solution for your setup please post some pictures as I always like to see other people's solutions for this kind of stuff ;-) .

 

[Gnarkill3k6]

@ Mobi

What does that little switch do between your send and return jack? Nice clean solution, btw.

 

[Mobi]

That switch is a mod that the previous owner had done by an amp tech. It switches the FX loop between serial and parallel.

Thanks for the comment, it does look clean ;-) The last thing that I did was group the 3 cables that run from my pedalboard together with cable-snakes. Now I have 1 big cable running from the pedalboard to the amp, which is nice. I use an X2 wireless system on the pedalboard so no more wires running everywhere, which also means I can't break my own cables anymore ;-)

 

[Gnarkill3k6]

@ Mobi

Since you can switch between series and parallel... how do you like it best? People often say they hate the stock parallel loop... but I don't really understand the downside of the loop being parallel.

 

[Mobi]

To be honest I don't use the FX loop. All my FX are on my pedalboard and are conencted to the musicomlab switcher. Guitar signal goes wireless to the musicomlab and from there to the amp input. So no FX loop for me ;-)

 

[Coker]

I use an amp gizmo from rjm and can now use all the footswitch functions via midi