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Hello, I have an old Alesis QS8.1 keyboard. For some reason, it no longer interprets voltage from external continuous controller pedals correctly, and I have a lot of live material that uses wahs and things like that. For a workaround, I was wondering if there are any simple units that have a voltage in (1/4" jack) and translate that into MIDI continuous controller data. Of course, to work correctly, it would have to send MIDI data omni, so all channels can react to it.

Prime Mover wrote:Hello, I have an old Alesis QS8.1 keyboard. For some reason, it no longer interprets voltage from external continuous controller pedals correctly, and I have a lot of live material that uses wahs and things like that. For a workaround, I was wondering if there are any simple units that have a voltage in (1/4" jack) and translate that into MIDI continuous controller data. Of course, to work correctly, it would have to send MIDI data omni, so all channels can react to it.

I really don't know. Forgive me if I'm wasting your time, but if you have a MOTU firewire interface, is there anyway something like this might be useful to you:

http://www.motu.com/products/software/volta

Would something like this work?

bkshepard wrote:Would something like this work?

Wow... that looks kinda cool, huh? I'm glad we have so many smart people on this board!

You know, I've gotten so much great advice and help on this board, I always feel a bit humbled. It's nice to be able to contribute something helpful now and then.

I've been a fan of the MIDI Solutions interfaces for some time. They come in really handy when you need something like a simple footswitch trigger, but don't want to lug around an entire synth just to have a MIDI pedal.

Yes, that might just work. The only question is whether it can be set to send on ALL MIDI channels (omni). They actually have another pedal here http://www.midisolutions.com/proddfs.htm, which is a two-pedal version of the original, and that the documentation DOES state that it can send on all MIDI channels. I suspect that the 1-pedal converter does the same, it's just not explicitely documented (I can contact them).

But these things don't run cheap, at $150 for the single-pedal version, and the price unlisted for the dual-pedal version, it seems kind of overblown. This is exactly what I'm looking for, though. I would just have thought that there'd be a lot more options to choose from out there. Especially with all the MIDI keyboards out there that don't have Voltage Controller inputs.

Yeah, they're not cheap. Another possibility is if you Google CV to MIDI Converter, you'll get a whole bunch of DIY project diagrams and instructions in addition to the commercial products. If you've got the electronics chops, that might be a less expensive solution for you.