My MIDI pedalboard project


 
 

When I was a teenager (about 25 years ago), I learned to play organ.  My father purchased a Yamaha electronic organ for me and I took some lessons.  It had two keyboards:  an upper manual where the right hand plays the melody, a lower manual where the left hand plays the chords, and a pedalboard where the left foot plays the bass line.  A long time ago, I replaced my old organ by two MIDI keyboards (they are much better, with touch sensitivity, better sound...).

But I missed my pedalboard, so I removed it from the organ and used it in combination with the other keyboards.  But I didn't like its sound, I would have preferred  the "clunk" of a more funky kind of bass sound. So I considered purchasing a MIDI pedalboard, so I could hook it to one of my keyboards and choose any program in its sound banks.  It must be so cool to have it sound like a mellotron!!!  Here's a nice Wikipedia page about bass pedals.   My old organ pedalboard

My old organ pedalboard.


Commercial MIDI pedalboards are expensive!!!  The Roland PK-5A, PK-7 and PK-25 pedalboards are sold more than $1000!  And the upcoming Moog Taurus 3 pedal is priced at $2000!   I don't have this money, and I don't need professional gear, being a non-talented amateur musician.

I needed a cheaper solution.  Don't forget I have an analog pedalboard already, so all I have to do is "MIDIize" it!		 Roland PK-7
Roland PK-7 MIDI pedalboard.

How could I do this?

Some people wire their pedalboard with a cheap, used, MIDI keyboard.  But I don't have a MIDI keyboard ready to be be butchered, and relevent documentation is not easy to find.

Other people build their own MIDI pedalboard encoder!   While I have some knowledge in electronics, the diagrams seem really difficult!		 home-made pedalboard
Making a MIDI pedalboard from a cheap keyboard.

One day, I found the Basyn MIDI adapter kit on eBay:  it is a tiny circuit board designed to convert an analog pedalboard into a MIDI pedalboard.  Exactly what I needed!   And at $55, the price was right.

Here's a link to the instruction sheet:  it is easy to wire the MIDI adapter to the pedal board;  the adapter has 14 pins:  one side of each pedal is wired to the first 13 pins, and the other side of each pedal is wired in series to the last pin.  Thanks to a small connector, you don't have to use a soldering iron to attach the wires to the adapter.

The MIDI adapter has 2 buttons:  a program select button and an octave select button.  You press on of the buttons, then press the pedals to select the desired sound bank and octave.  A 9 V power adapter is required.		 The Basyn MIDI kit on the instruction sheet

The Basyn MIDI kit on the instruction sheet.

I purchased my Basyn MIDI kit on february 5th from eBay seller "bjlevine" (also known as "Anime Collectibles", located in Altamonte Springs, Florida). The "buy it now" price was $55, and shipping Canada was $19.

First deception:  the parcel took one full month to reach me.  Seller charged $19 for priority postage but the tracking records from USPS show that it was still in Florida 2 weeks after purchase!  What kind of priority shipping is this?  I'm used to receive much bigger circuit boards (PCI cards) from Hong Kong one week after purchase, for less than $5 shipping!

Second deception:  after wiring the MIDI adapter to my pedalboard, all worked fine except one thing:  the highest C produced a sound when I turned on the unit (while the pedal was not pressed), and then no sound came from this pedal when I pressed it.  It acted like there was a shortcircuit between the high C pin and the ground, but under inspection, my wiring seemed OK (it had the same behaviour when the pedalboard was not plugged to the pins:  it looked like some kind of internal short circuit).

So I emailed my concerns to blevine:  did he know why the parcel was still in Florida 2 weeks after purchase, and did he know a solution about my high C problem?  I never received a reply to this email.

No big deal, with the low C working, I still had a full octave.  I didn't insist.

I didn't use the pedalboard very much in the following weeks.  About 3 months later, I tried it again and, after about one hour of use, it completely stopped emitting any MIDI signal!

Ouch!  3 months is a short life for an electronic device.  I figure it was still under some kind of warranty...  So I contacted bjlevine /Anime Collectibles again.  I tried the support email (twice), and eBay messaging:  I never got a reply!

This is where I'm really upset:  maybe I did something wrong while wiring the Basyn kit to the pedalboard (I doubt it:  it is a really easy circuit), but when documentation promises customer support, customers who paid $74 should at least get a reply!

The weird part is:  if you look at bjlevine's feedback on eBay, customers say they got great help from him...maybe I'm the only customer who gets ignored?

On july 6th, 2009, I returned my defective Basyn MIDI adapter kit to Anime Collectibles asking for a repair or replacement.    I have no idea what will happen.

What next?  If I get no news from Anime Collectibles, maybe I'll give a try to the pedmux13 MIDI encoder by Sound Research.  The price is similar, the circuit is simple too (the pedalboard is divided in 2 rows, this time); there is some soldering to do: not a big deal.  Let's hope they have some kind of customer support and reply to emails!

Yves Pelletier ( Contact author )