There are some very good products for midi control out there. I can only reference Voodoo Labs Ground Control Pro (GCP) and its companion switching product, GCX. Why both? Two reasons. really good and "fine" control – I can set the system up in a linear fashion (1 button controls 1 thing, or 1 patch controls 1 thing) and/or I can set it up so that one button controls many effects which is more related to how a song progresses. The second, cut the length of cable between where I stand on stage by 80% and have true bypass on everything. All my pedals and rack effects are about three feet from the amps and the pedal board with controllers is 30 feet away. I'm running a evil "Twin" and a JVM410.
I started using the H9 as the last effect in the stomp box chain on the GCX. The top four switches on the board control a compressor, a few distortion pedals, and the 4th simply sends a midi CC out to the H9 to bypass it. The IA buttons do more that just switch. The GCX is what helps control the other effects pedals. That H9 splits the signal to buttons 6 and 7 for amp bypass. I had a set of rack effects in the preamp loops of both amps. Button 7 and 8 controlled bypass on the rack units. I had the GCP setup in 8 IA, 4 bank mode. 4 buttons plus an up/down button could control 1 midi effects unit or all three. I have a foot pedal in the expression pedal one spot, and a tap tempo spdt button in expression pedal 2 slot. They are the perfect pair for the H9. Completely configurable to the algorithms, or almost. That's what I call the age of innocence. 1 H9.
I got a wild hair and one evening a few months ago, and tried that H9 in both amps effects loops. Took about three seconds using the iOS app to set to kill dry to take out the phasing issues. I was hooked. Took pedal 1 to MAX, and got pedal two and three. Took out the Lexi and the old spx1000 which served me well. The front end H9 now does the fancy stuff like stereo effects. The two H9s inserted in the amp loops do more of the reverb / time based effects stuff. Button 7and 8 are the amp H9 bypass switches. Bank 1 though 8 (the numbering is different, but it gets to the point) are front end H9 specific. Bank 9 though 16 control each AMPs H9 in tandem – meaning if crystals was in amp 1, it's also in amp 2. Lots of reasons to go this way, especially if you are amp hoppin a lot. Banks 17 up are set for songs, and the display tells me which song. That's what I call the age of MAX. 3max.
That's a bit of words there, but to simplify – GCP will certainly handle midi control – it also handles sending expression pedal info to more than one unit – it sets you up to also add switching later if you are considering that. There certainly are better midi controllers, but the one I have is performance proven, and does the job well.
best regards and play on..
Lance
