Controlling the Vortex - again..

[van Sinn <vansinn@post.cybercity.dk>]

Yes, I know, well-worn topic   I went through Andy Butler's site and the 
archives for anything Vortex, MIDI CC to CV et al..

Seems noone ever really solved the issue. Some found a solution for the 
swell pedal using some CC->CV adapter, like the ProSolo or JKJ CV-3.

I fully understand the problem of stepping through registers/presets, 
i.e. that stepping is always 'up', via a 4bit protocol, and that it's 
more than difficult to handle the where's-my-reference-point issue..

Did anyone ever come up with usable solutions to the preset stepping?

My own take is simply using only two presets for special effects, so 
'up' is always kinda round-robin between those two.
My Vortex (still in transit from the US) comes with the foot switches;
I expect decoding what they do and interface some MIDI on/off switches 
(FCB1010 or Sholtz Octopus) to trigger those.


WRT MIDI swell, I won't invest into far more features than needed.
Two seems usable: Doepfer MCV4: http://www.doepfer.de/mcv4.htm, and JKJ 
CV-3, both of which can be had at a fair price.

As no CV-3 manual seems available, I'm not sure about hooking up, but 
from pics would guess it's just cables in, adjust trimmers and go..
Anything I need to know?  Don't see how the lfo may be used, unless 
there's some way of remotely switch it in/out et al..

The MCV4 is a sexy little thing to have at the back of a Vortex, and is 
my primary candidate ATM.


Comments?

-- 
rgds,
van Sinn