Old 01-04-2005, 04:06 AM   #1
Silent8ob
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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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Old 01-04-2005, 12:15 PM   #2
Justin
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That's cool, actually something I'm planning for the next prototype (though minus the laptop).. What I'm actually thinking of doing is a small box with lcd and keyboard and knobs, and having the footboard be on the floor connected via serial. The footboard part could actually connect to the main part so you could use them as one, or seperate however you like. Anyway you'll see some pictures soon--the crusfx is mostly just the being ridiculous set up

-Justin
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Old 01-23-2005, 10:37 AM   #3
aenimalius
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Just a couple of thoughts on how to make this thing more gigable, though they're probably mutually exclusive ideas.

1. Keep the profile low. It would probably be best if the parts of the unit that people will interact with (keyboard and foot switch board) don't extend much higher than an inch and a half off the ground.

2. Make it modular. It would be great if the keyboard could detach from the unit so that it doesn't get trashed during gigs. Also, it would be nice to be able to pull the switchboard away from the main unit to accomodate various stage setups.

3. Make it fold. If you're sticking with the crucifix shape, add folding points or hinges to section the unit off into six squares. This would allow the entire unit to fold up into a box, (add a handle to one face?), making it easily portable, easy to deploy on stage, and just generally really cool.

Yeah, i know. I'm nuts. None of this may be feasible, but then again, it might.
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Old 02-09-2005, 09:04 AM   #4
FarrisGoldstein
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Why include a keyboard at all? Why not just a ps/2 or usb passthrough so that you can plug in your own KB if need be?
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