I just got an XSONIC Airstep programmable MIDI footswitch, and a Zoom FP02 expression pedal, for use together, but I’ve not been able to get the Zoom pedal to work with either the Airstep or with my Boss MS-3, and I’m hoping it’s something simple.
On the MS-3, with which I’ve used an M-Audio EX-P for a while now with great success, when I swap in the Zoom FP02, it certainly recognizes the pedal but the sweep doesn’t go all the way down to zero. For the applications I’m wanting to use it for (volume swells, wah, and envelope/formant sweep), I do kinda need the full range. I cannot find an obvious way to “calibrate” the Zoom pedal on the MS-3 the way I can calibrate it on an IK Blueboard, and the Zoom pedal doesn’t even have a physical “minimum” setting onboard the way the EX-P does.
The experience on the Airstep is a little different but the Zoom FP02 seems even more unusable there. With the pedal connected, I can see the “test” function that the Airstep app presents in the UI to configure the pedal’s behavior (which I presume is probably supposed to be a simple MIDI monitor on the pedal’s output), but when I do go to test, it’s like it only recognizes three points of output at the max end of the pedal sweep. IOW it seems to report zero throughout the entire sweep until the very end, where it goes up to three (out of, presumably, 127). This seems to happen both when I test in TRS mode and in RTS mode; the tiny little signal just winds up on the other side of the sweep. And curiously, on the Airstep, the EX-P exhibits the same behavior as the Zoom pedal–at the very end of its sweep you can see it recognize a couple points of output, but not remotely the whole physical sweep of the pedal itself.
I admit, it’s kinda frustrating, especially since the EX-P works so well with both the MS-3 and with the Blueboard. The Zoom unit works great with the Blueboard once you calibrate it, but it seems like a no-go with both the MS-3 and the Airstep.
Does anyone out there have any guidance on this? I’m wanting to use that Airstep as my primary footswitch controller, as it seems to be gloriously programmable. Does anyone know of a remedy for the problem I’m seeing, or if not, can anyone confirm out-of-the-box success with the Airstep and a different expression pedal?