Hardware musings
Not to knock the CrusFX, I'm sure it will be a kickin piece of hardware, but I've got a few reservations, and a suggestion.
As much fun as it would be to have that nice little LCD & keyboard on the floor, you could never gig with it live. Between a hyperactive lead singer and drunk idiots hopping up on stage, you'd be lucky to have a gig where the keyboard or screen didn't get axed. If it's going to be on the stage floor it's got to be bulletproof. And beer proof. (And roadie proof if you're really lucky or rich.)
My suggestion - only put on the floor what needs to be there. A robust pedal board. 1 expression pedal, bank up, bank down, and 5 - 10 stomp switches for selecting patches or kicking effects in and out. One large single line LCD for the patch/bank name & number, and some LEDs to indicate what's selected.
Run a serial cable from the pedal board to a laptop, and you've got something that is looking much more giggable. Laptops are getting pretty common at gigs these days - I've lost count of the number of keyboard players I see toting an iBook or pBook.
One of the bigger Atmel AVR's has everything you need to run the pedal board. 2 Uarts (1 for LCD, 1 for serial comms to host), ADC for expression pedal and plenty of digital I/O's for stomp switches/LED indicators. If you publish the protocol like you mentioned in a previous thread, people could even brew their own.
The pedal board would then be able to control everything you normally do in a live situation. If you really needed to tweak effect parameters on the night, a laptop has the potential for a much better UI than the tiny LCD front panel you get on most rack units these days.
Sorry about the long ramble.
Cheers,
S8.
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