FCB1010 Pedals

[Jermak]

I have a second hand fcb1010 with the 1.2 11Prom and noticed that the volume pedal didn't go all the way up on the animated page in the 11R in Protools. So I got out of PT and loaded up MIDI-OX and the volume pedal is sending CC7 from 7F (127) which is right for toe down, but 3F for heel down. Now this should be 0.
Is this something with the 11PROM or with the adjustment of the LED thingy in the FCB?
Yes I have done the calibration in the 11R.

Any Ideas?

[Benoni]

this may help

http://duc.avid.com/showpost.php?p=1766510&postcount=25

[Jermak]

Originally Posted by Benoni

this may help

http://duc.avid.com/showpost.php?p=1766510&postcount=25

Cheers mate. I knew I had seen that before but forgot where, I searched using Google and didn't get anything useful. I will now go and attck it with a hammer. Thanks again.

[eurekasound_dave]

At the end of this webpage they show the expression pedal mechanism:
http://www.el34world.com/Misc/Music/FCB_1.htm

Getting the LED & Photodetector aligned is paramount. If that doesn't get you all of the range, then bend the LED & photodetector closer to one another (without hitting the plastic strip) - that should do the trick.

Cheers,
Dave
http://www.eurekasound.com

[Jermak]

Thanks Dave. I did open it up and fiddle a bit (not with the hammer though).
I did align the emitter and sensor and that did help me get a few more lower numbers but not low enough. So I put a washer on top of the brass pegs (under the pc board) This raised the assembly up more towards the clear end of the strip. Now I can get down to 05 as the lowest CC.
However when looking at the CC's in MIDI-OX it starts at 7F and continues for quite a lot of 7F's until it jumps to 3F. Then it seems to go down from there OK. Looking at the gradient strip, it doesn't even look like a linear gradient.
Can someone run their FCB1010 directly to MIDI-OX and see if they get a linear gradient from 7F to 00.

[Jermak]

Ok went back in and tried pushing the LED and sensor closer and on the volume pedal got a 00. On the wah pedal I lifted the pcb board up with washers like the volume and pushed the sensors closer and got 00 on that pedal too.

But I still get cc's on both pedals missing everything above 3F except 7F.

Dave is this the 11PROM or does this happen with the original PROM?

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by Jermak

Ok went back in and tried pushing the LED and sensor closer and on the volume pedal got a 00. On the wah pedal I lifted the pcb board up with washers like the volume and pushed the sensors closer and got 00 on that pedal too.

But I still get cc's on both pedals missing everything above 3F except 7F.

Dave is this the 11PROM or does this happen with the original PROM?

Do you have the original FCB1010 PROM to swap back in? It seems like that might be the quickest most surefire way to determine if its a hardware issue or the 11PROM.

[Jermak]

Originally Posted by sunburst79

Do you have the original FCB1010 PROM to swap back in? It seems like that might be the quickest most surefire way to determine if its a hardware issue or the 11PROM.

Ah great master of the nearly 10,000 posts, I could do that. Now this is where it gets embarassing when I first noticed this I did swap back, but then I was only looking to get the 00 as the lowest. In getting the 11PROM out a corner leg of the prom broke off (pre-weakened?) - by pushing the 11PROM back in it made enough contact to work OK but I am not game to try it again. I'll wait for 1.4

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by Jermak

Ah great master of the nearly 10,000 posts, I could do that. Now this is where it gets embarassing when I first noticed this I did swap back, but then I was only looking to get the 00 as the lowest. In getting the 11PROM out a corner leg of the prom broke off (pre-weakened?) - by pushing the 11PROM back in it made enough contact to work OK but I am not game to try it again. I'll wait for 1.4

Ahhh. I understand.

I have 1.3 in a FCB1010 and the pedals are smooth here. EPROMS are tricky. You need a good pair of jewelers or miniature needle nose pliers to straighten the pins with out breaking them. They are (too) fragile by design. I started to bend mine putting it in and had to stop and carefully straighten them all out. And I've done enough electronics work that I'm pretty comfortable with doing these things. The location of the PROM in the FCB is shaded by the lip of the unit. Get some light in there so you can see enough to ensure that the legs are lined up. Its worth spending a minute making sure that the legs on each side are all lined up in the same plane and that the angle of the legs is the same as the socket.

[eurekasound_dave]

Originally Posted by Jermak

Ok went back in and tried pushing the LED and sensor closer and on the volume pedal got a 00. On the wah pedal I lifted the pcb board up with washers like the volume and pushed the sensors closer and got 00 on that pedal too.

But I still get cc's on both pedals missing everything above 3F except 7F.

Dave is this the 11PROM or does this happen with the original PROM?

I think moving the LED & Photodetector closer together should be enough - you shouldn't need the washers. In fact, that could be causing the problem on the high side.

When you run expression pedal calibration on startup (Keep switches 1 and 5 pressed while powering up the unit) you'll get to see the actual values that the 11PROM is reading from the expression pedal circuit. Hopefully you see lows < 0x10 & highs > 0x70. (The values are in hexadecimal, so 0x0 to 0x7F would be 0-127).

The 11PROM uses an algorithm to compensate for the pedals not spanning the entire range. But if the low > 0x40, or the high < 0x40 - the algorithm would act as you're saying.

In general, you'll want the expression pedals to natively cover as much of the range as possible. Behringer, UnO, and our algorithms scale over the remaining range, but that inherently ends up skipping numbers, which you can hear if the jumps become too large...

Cheers,
Dave
http://www.eurekasound.com