So, I’ve been on a bit of an odyssey of late with pitch and harmony pedals. I’ve tried a few and found that the ones in my budget range don’t handle polyphony well at all, and the ones outside my budget range don’t do that much better. The new Boss XS series (XS-1 and XS-100) appear to have made a leap forward in polyphonic tracking. I’ve watched a ton of the videos Boss flooded the market with — usually w people doing stuff i’d never dream of even trying… But the fundamental capability of the pedal comes through.
As often happens when one is rabbit-hole diving, I became somewhat exhausted with the topic…and out of the blue (no idea whay it took so long) i thought: “I can probably do everything the XS-100 does with Midi guitar…and a lot more, of course.” So I looked through the Midi Guitarforums and saw that the pitch shifting topic had indeed come up, and the idea of using it to get pedal steel-ish sounds (which is more in the neighborhood of what I am after than Tom Morello….) All good, and plan to dive into that today!
…But it also got me thinking: given the depth of many pedals out on the market today, a Midi Guitar Pedal would certainly be…well…a very interesting thought experiment at the very least. I wonder if any other users have ever day dreamed about this idea? Or…Jam Origin folks?
In my own daydream, I keep imagining it selling like hotcakes…
not that you need another option but ‘whammo’ by kuassa worked well for me. i was using it before mg3hex came out to do individual string bends/emulate a pedal steel.
i believe the prospect of a hardware device has been raised a few times here, there is obviously interest, but the challenges inherent to manufacturing such a device, especially in modern tariff times are severe.
if such a thing were to happen, my personal preference is for the hardware package to be designed to fit inside the guitar itself. current mini/rasppi type cpu’s aren’t powerful enough yet, but will be soon.
but before any hardware solution, i’d much prefer to see a native linux version of the software. i think many windows users will want to abandon ship this year.
I thought that the “hardware” idea might have come up before – I just didn’t find it in my quick searches. Part of what got me thinking about this though, was the looper pedal I bought — oh yeah, it was a looper pedal rabbit hole led to the pitch shifting one. …I ended up buying a Boss RC500, which is a rather deep pedal, in an otherwise unassuming package. Also interesting, the approach Boss has taken to documentation of the X00 series products — sort of austere, seemingly because there’s just too much to cover. (Roland certainly knows that territory quite well.) But that also came to mind when the thought of the Midi Guitar Pedal arose in my mind’s eye: what would the classic quick start / user guide look like? Then all the rest: what would the I/O look like? The screen / knobs… Should it have a built-in expression pedal? All that fun stuff.
Well…fun to think about anyway. …And yes, as you can tell, my preferred version would be something with knobs and foot switches — velcro’d to a pedal board!
I’ve often thought about this and have concluded that a commited mind could figure out a way to DIY this for MG2/3 (standard) using a very small computer and a custom enclosure with the appropriate I/O. But, as an MG3 Hex user, the complexity expands a great deal making it virtually impossible when considerinbg the resources it would take to develop it.
But the fundamental capability of the pedal comes through.
