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Looper's Delight
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The Ground Control Pro can send 8 control change messages when
configured for "instant access" buttons. In this mode, the top two
rows of 8 buttons send control changes, the bottom row of 4 buttons
(plus 2 bank switch buttons) select "presets" which may send up to
8 program changes with bank select.
Each of the 8 instant access buttons can be configured as toggle or
momentary. Buttons can only send one control change message on
one of 8 configured MIDI channels. Preset buttons can only send
program changes.
The biggest limitation of the GCP is that the instant access buttons
cannot be configured differently for each preset, they are global.
What this means for the EDP is that you can control at most 8
DirectMIDI functions. In that respect, the FCB is more flexible since
it can send control change messages with each preset allowing you to
access every DirectMIDI function, albeit with a lot of bank
switch dancing.
The FCB is less flexible than the GCP in terms of the number of MIDI
devices you can send control changes to. The FCB can address 2
MIDI channels if you don't use momentary buttons, and 1 if you do.
The GCP can address 8 MIDI channels, with or without momentary buttons.
I ended up choosing the GCP because I can work around the
instant access button limitations with a computer, and I liked
the smaller size. If I gigged without a computer, I would
probably have gotten the All Access instead.
The All Access has a similar configuration of instant access
and preset selection buttons. The main advantage is that
the control change messages sent on the instant access buttons
can be different for each preset. This would allow you to call
all of the DirectMIDI functions. Some other features of
the All Access:
- supports all 16 MIDI channels at once
- preset buttons send up to 16 program changes plus
5 other messages of any type
- preset buttons may send a sysex string of up to 30 bytes
- can define song/set sequences of presets
The All Access is about $350 more than the GCP and about $600 more
than the Behringer. Frankly I think this price is insane for what it
does, MIDI foot controllers aren't that damn complicated. But sadly
there's nothing on the market that competes with it. I'm rather
disappointed with Behringer, how much hardware cost could they
possibly be saving with their MIDI channel limitations? All they need
is a little more memory and a descent OS, sell it for $50 more, and
they could blow away everything out there.
Jeff