An unexpected find : CV-to-midi

The Moog Forum Minimoog Forum
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Old school owners may want to know about this. There’s something for regular midi-Voyagers users too.

You all know what a midi-to-CV converter is, right? Darn useful if you have an OS or a modular. But it’s a one way ticket.

Roland’s current top of the line guitar processor is the VG99. To go along with that, they offer the FC-300 midi foot controller, with two expression pedals on board, with the possibility to add three more external ones. My local music store ordered one to go along with a specially ordered VG99. The thing is the customer did not buy it. Hard item to sell if you don’t have the right customer.

I thought the unit was nice and sturdy, and I had some midi programming in mind so I thought it could serve as a base. The music store caught with a hard to sell item, I made an offer below cost and got it. The unit turned out to be different than I thought, but I put it to use immediately on the midi-equipped LP, then added a couple of standard expression pedals to it to improve my synth-guitar setup.

Upon adding expression pedals, i realized immediately that what I had was a CV-to-midi converter. It took almost a month to realize that if the unit could translate the CV of an expression pedal, it could do that to any CV. And it can. Early in the process, I still have a few things to figure out, such as the voltage range it can work with and so on. My CP-251 provides for more processing options.

Net result is I now have midi IN and OUT of the Voyager OS, in a kind of modular way. My midi-to-CV sports a full 4 CV outputs, lots of possibilities there. It’s more an experimental setup at this point than one suitable for performing, but it works and is a lot of fun. In a true modular fashion, the possibilities are next to endless.

Another benefit of the CV-to-midi capabilities is that you can configure a CV to work on any midi CC’s , even those that don’t an equivalent CV in (such as EG amount and filter resonance). That works with a regular Voyager, an LP, or any other midi synth. The OS however is limited to it’s CV inputs.

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I use an FC-200, the older version. It gives a total of 7 CV to MIDI channels. All programmable. I use the Signature out through a VX-351 for MIDI to CV out. Amazing what these machines can do!

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Darn, I (naively) thought it was a novel idea. 7 you say? Got to get some info on the FC-200. Anyway, I got 3, that’s plenty to experiment with. The more I think about it, the possibilities are mind-boggling. I am sure you know what i mean :slight_smile: I did not expect the unit to become such an important piece of gear. Don’t want to ever part with it now :slight_smile:

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Yeah, I got the FC-200 on eBay. I bought it for the price of the 6 Moog EP-1 pedals that came with it. Then started to play with it and found many of the cool things it did.
(Where it is really usefull, though, it those machines that don’t have knobs but accept CC’s. )

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also my doepfer drehbank features cv to midi conversion!

6

That looks like a cool unit. I wonder if I could find one somewhere.