Using looper with standard FCB Uno chip (how to send 4 CCs at once)

  • So, this is my first post in a while and my contribution to the “looper without remote” fraction in da house.
    But first of all I would like to thank all of those who made this possible in the first place: Damian Greda, Peto et al. for cracking the looper mystery and WS for making the code understandable for us less gifted in NRPN programming. And, of course, thanks to the KPA team for making the function available to all of us!


    Anyway, it has been pointed out a couple of times, that the FCB with a standard Uno chip (NOT Uno4KPA!) can only send 2 CCs at a time. This, of course would make the looper function more of a tap-dancing than a musical performance. However, it is in fact possible to send 4 CCs (and actually up to 12) simultaneously.


    Here’s how you do it:
    Although the Uno chip only allows you to send 2 CCs per switch, when in stomp mode, you have the possibility of determining which stomps are activated when any patch or other stomp switch is pressed. This means that you can activate up to five stomps with only one switch (thus, up to 12 CCs). How to get this working with the looper?First, let’s take a look at the necessary commands:



    So, as you see, all commands are exactly the same, except for the CC#98 value. So, we can program the first half of each looper command (CC#99 V125, CC#98 Vxx) to a specific switch and then have all of them also activate one and the same stomp for the ending sequence (CC#06 V0, CC#38 V1). It is important, though, for this stomp to be in “momentary” mode, so that it sends the necessary “closing” command (CC#38 V0). In order to do this, make sure that the alternate value is set to zero and that the CC toggling is deactivated. (this seems counterintuitive, but that’s how it works).


    I know, it sounds a lot more complicated than it is, and it actually took me quite a while to figure out how to get this running properly. I made some screenshots though, to make the whole thing more undertandable.



    In the first screenshot you can see the settings for switch nr 1. It sends the beginning half of the rec/play/odub command. Pay attention to the “Stomp Box” settings below. Nr 1 is set to ON. This means that every time I activate the switch, it will also activate that stomp box (which actually is switch nr 6).


    Now, in the next screenshot you can see the settings of that stomp box. It is important that the “Alt” box is unchecked. However, it is also important for the value in the greyed out part to be set at zero, to make sure it will toggle between values 1 (when pressed) and 0 (when released).



    Since this is the “closing part” of all commands, I have all switches used for looper functions set to activate this same stompbox. As a result I only need to press one switch at a time and, supposing I want to implement all looper functions, I would still have at least 3 switches available to do other fun stuff ;)


    Ok, so I hope this actually made some sense and helps some people out in implementing the looper with their FCBs.


    Cheers!


    David


    p.s: damn, I think this is the last time I post something long on the forum. The session kept “timing out” on me!

  • Excellent suggestion, works quite well with my FCB uno-chip with the 3.1.2 beta OS on the Kemper.Thanks for the effort.
    I could not get the graphical Editor from your pictures to work with my uno chip. It did not recognise the version, but used the Ripwerx .jar Editor instead. No problems there. Thanks again for shedding light into the darkness of midi-remote controlling the Kemper!!

  • Finetuning the awesome ideas of Damian Greda, Peto,Verminante,WS to the FCB1010 UNO-chip users. Here are the controller values in the Ripwerx editor. This setup gives you one stompbox less (s-10 in my case) and assigns four presets of bank 18 to the 4 looper commands. Running status on not required in global settings.



    Again: I am using FCB1010, regular uno chip, not uno4kemper.
    Loopercontrols are as follows:
    Hit preset1(on bank 18) starts looper. second hit on 1: overdub. press 2 to stop. triple 2 erase all. hit 3 to undo an overdub. and 4 being pushed during playback triggers start. when pushed during stop it will playback as long as pushed.
    The position of the looper pre or post effects shows up on page 11 in the system menue, with my present OS 3.1.2 it is only partly visible, since no remote is connected, but it is the button on top, far right.
    60 second looper is fine for finding the right tone, tweaking or even solopractice on a chorus. to tweak use looper as pre, to record a chorus and then change to lead guitar for the overdub use looper as post.
    Just in case you were wondering ?(:thumbup:

  • I have a doubt: can I actually program custom stompboxes cc for different pc?


    I programmed my uno chip directly on the fcb1010, assigning the 5 stompboxes to 5 fixed effect slots, no matter what program change I choose.
    If I modify one stombox via the computer editor as you did, shouldn't be reserved for looper function (so I have only 4 stompboxes left for 4 effects)?

  • Yes,that's what my tiny brain figured. Or you go with the kemper memory option. Assign two repeating CCs (of the four the looper appearently needs) to one of the lower row footswitches, which you have to press once to put the 2CCs into kemper memory.

  • Yes,that's what my tiny brain figured. Or you go with the kemper memory option. Assign two repeating CCs (of the four the looper appearently needs) to one of the lower row footswitches, which you have to press once to put the 2CCs into kemper memory.


    that's what I do at the moment: on the program change row (the lower), I assign the first half of the message to one switch and the other half to other switches.