Re: PMC-10

[Kim Flint <kflint@annihilist.com>]

At 6:12 PM -0500 12/20/97, Ed Drake wrote:
>kim said:
>
>>You might want to try the Rocktron All Access pedal. It looks to me like 
>the
>>most powerful and rugged pedal out there, although the price is quite a 
>bit
>>higher. ($500?)  The people I know who don't pay much attention to the 
>price
>>tag all seem to use the Rocktron. I'm not sure if it does what you're
>>looking for though.
>
>kim, I checked into the All Access and the list price on that sucker is
>$999, so I'm guessing the street price is $600 (ouch!) or more. Does 
>anyone

yep, they ain't cheap.


>I'd love to check out a PMC-10, but I think the problem there is finding
>one, and then if you do, crossing your fingers and hoping you don't get 
>one
>with the memory crashing problem or a faulty hand held programmer. I've
>done some Web searching for this unit but I've had no luck so far. This
>will probably take time, patience, persistance and luck to find one of
>these.

I found one pretty easily, actually. I haven't looked in a while, but I
imagine they show up fairly often. For ~$100 and the feature set, I would
consider the memory/programmer problems infrequent enough to not worry
about them. I've never had the memory problem myself, and you can buy
another programmer from Digitech if you need to. I'm not sure how much, but
I imagine it's reasonable.


>There is also a Yamaha Midi unit, that seemed at the time I checked on it,
>to have a lot of features but I don't remember the model #. I do remember
>downloading some info about it from Yamaha's Web site. I also remember I
>hated the display which consisted of Patch/preset numbers and that was 
>all,
>no patch naming.

Do you mean Roland? There is the FC-100, which is quite powerful and has a
built in expression pedal. But like you say, the display is only a 3
charcter LED type, which sucks for a pedal.



>Finally, one other MIDI controller which I am aware of, is the PC-1600x
>from Peavey. Now I've never been a big Peavey fan, but this seems to be an
>incredibly deep controller, however as a guitarist this unit won't work 
>for
>me because it is a desk/table
>top controller.

if you've got loops going, your hands should be free some of the time, 
right?

>It has 16 buttons along the bottom with a slider/fader over
>each of the buttons. The buttons can be configured to work various ways
>(toggle or momentary, etc) and the sliders can be assigned to send various
>MIDI info as well. There is info about this device readily available at 
>the
>Peavey web site if someone wants to check it out. I don't know the price 
>of
>the PC-1600x but a friend of mine got one at a music store blowout for 
>$200.

Really? I'd buy it at that price. Where? I've been seriously thinking about
getting a controller like that. Once I had two expression pedals at my
feet, I realized I wanted more! A bank of sliders would be perfect.


>Anyway it's sad that the one of the most feature laden as well as possibly
>most affordable but maybe not as roadworthy units (PMC-10) is no longer
>being made.

I do know people using the PMC-10 successfully for international touring.
The pedal itself is really quite rugged. The programmer is the only flimsy
part, and you wouldn't have that plugged in while performing.


> I'd like to compare all of these units and see what shakes out
>as far as features, price, and availability. Maybe the market is ripe for
>someone to come out with a top notch affordable MIDI controller or maybe
>the market is so small, that's why the PMC-10 and the rfc-1 midigator are
>no longer around and the All Access costs so much?

That's basically it. The only significant market for midi pedals is
guitarists, and then only the small number who are willing to do more than
plug direct into an amp. ...And most of those only need to send program
change to their Digitech rack unit. A lot of that market is stripped
further by the pedals with all the multieffects built in, like Zoom and DOD
have been doing well with. The few players who need something more
sophisticated probably have a larger amount of gear and a correspondingly
larger budget, and will demand something with very high quality, which
appears to be the AllAccess. I think that's why the cheap, sophisticated
pedals wound up succombing to the cheaper, unsophisticated pedals. I think
if someone were to make put out another midi pedal now, it would either be
something cheap and straightforward to compete with the DMC ground control,
or something more expensive and powerful to compete with the AllAccess. The
best pedals were being made several years ago; getting one used is
definitely the best deal.

kim

______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                   | Looper's Delight
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