New gear – foot controllers

I’m going through some old notes that I’ve taken on possible future additions to my rig. Most of the stuff has to do with pushing the boundaries of my live performance setup, so lots of pedals and controllers. Here are the things I’ve come across.

Behringer FCB1010

Behringer is known to make some kind of cheap stuff, so I’m not sure about how good this pedal is going to be. It is inexpensive though, and has a lot of functionality. Also there is a firmware modding community that has sprung up around it.

Roland FC-300

A higher-quality offering from Roland, this competes with the FCB1010. I haven’t looked into how the features stack up against the Behringer though.

Keith McMillen 12 Step chromatic foot controller

This is a new guy on the scene. I hadn’t heard about them until recently. This is a chromatic foot controller with aftertouch. The pads are velocity sensitive. I think it can be used to send patch change as well as MIDI CC messages. This is one to watch.

Roland PK-5A

Roland makes some really high quality chromatic foot controllers, however they are pretty expensive. The 5A is pretty much out of my budget for the time being unless I end up picking something up used. Fatar makes a foot controller too, but I think that they have been discontinued. It might be possible to find one on eBay though.

Rocktron Hex expression pedal

I’m looking around for an expression pedal that looks really sturdy, because I want to be able to perform with it and not worry about breaking things in the heat of battle. The best idea seems to be to use the chassis of a wah pedal, since these things have stood the test of time with guitar players on stage. This rocktron pedal is one of a few that I’ve seen that use a basic wah pedal body.