Change presets with an external midi pedalboard ( Voodoo Lab Ground Control )

Hi, I’ve had the Mod Duo for a week, I like it a lot. But I have a problem that prevents me from being able to keep it if it’s not solved. I plan to use the Mod Duo on stage with a midi pedalboard (Voodoo Lab Ground Control ) to change the presets. I managed to do it by being connected to the modulator via the usb port. But as soon as I use the Mod Duo as a standalone version, changing presets (snapshots) doesn’t work anymore. I really need help, thanks.

Are you talking here about plugin presets or pedalboard snapshots? (previously called pedalboard presets)

If the latter, I think the limitation on pedalboard snapshots is not intentional.

Actually, I’m talking about the snapshots.

Unfortunately, I think I’m going to part with my Mod Duo, I didn’t get the answer that allows me to make it work for live and that’s a shame. Plus I always have a lot of background noise when I add saturation pedals.

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To change snapshots using a midi controller you must go to the settings and set the midi channel for that to the same midi channel your controller outputs PC messages.

https://wiki.moddevices.com/wiki/Device_Settings#Sync_.26_MIDI

You can have one channel for snapshot switching and another for pedalboard switching.

Granted, the mechanism is at the moment very rought around the edges.

You need a floor controller able to send messages on 2 different channels if you want to navigate through both pedalboards and snapshots (or use 2 different controllers).

And since snapshots are not currently sortable from the interface you have to be very careful when designing them.

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Cool, I didn’t realize that was also available for snapshots! I just checked on my Duo and I see that option. So it looks like snapshots can be individually mapped with PC messages; I can’t wait to test this out. I should be able to set up my MIDI foot controller to select (or even toggle between) snapshots now - this would be a huge win for my usability! Great timing too, after a couple years of owning and tinkering with a Duo, I’m using some of my quarantine time to get serious about building out and fine tuning a bunch of genre and song-specific pedalboards.

Thank you for the tip @Tarrasque73

You’re welcome. I just discovered this lately.

I think it’s a great feature that should be advertised more openly.

I like the concept snapshots. I’d prefer to work most time on shapshots than pedalboards. First, snapshot switching is gapless. Second, I’m a guitarist. I don’t need infinite pedalboards. In most cases i need some well done “basic” pedalboards (say, one for metal, one for pop, one with a Fender amp simulator setup, one with a Marshall…) and then a good number of variations of those pedalboards. These variations can very easily be done through snapshots in the pedalboards.

for instance, once you have a Metallica basic pedalboard, you can have a shapshot with distorsion off and echo an delay, one with distortion cranked on and one with gain boost and wah and be able to play all of Enter Sandman just by switching shapshots.

What I’d like to see in te feature to make this embrional feature even better is.

  • display of current selected pedalboard and snashot in the screens (I read that’s already being worked on)
  • possibility of reordering shapshots in the list (this is a must)
  • possibility of switching pedalboards AND snapshots using only one midi channel. This is very important for cheapos like me who own a simple floor controller that just outputs to one channel and can’t afford another or a more expensive one. This could be achieved by adding an “offset” setting to those already existing, so that if offset is set to let’s say 50 and both channels to 1, program changes from 1 to 50 select the corresponding pedalboards, while PC 51 would select snapshot 1 (in the current pedalboard), PC 2 snapshot 2 and so on.
  • possibility of creating new snapshots directly from the device. Now, i know a full pedalboard creation would be impossible without the web gui, but being able to fiddle with the plugin parameters on stage or rehearsing and saving the state to a new snapshot for keeping and later editing would be really great.

If you like the midi snapshot features help me to push them to the Mod devs. They are known for listening to whining of users and try to imlement popular requested features :wink:

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Exactly what I’ve been wanting to do :smile: You can have also have some fun doing things like changing the state of one or more loopers via snapshots, tempo changes, …

That seems to be a very useful feature indeed! I also only have like three pedalboards I primarily use and do the rest with snapshots.

Have a question regarding toggling between different snapshots. Let’s say I have 5 snapshots, I want to jump from snapshot 2 to snapshot 5, how do you do that? I know I can set it for next in line on the Duo itself via footswitches 1>2>3>4>5, but don’t know how to jump to certain snapshot. I have the Voodoo GC pro.

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  1. Enable the MIDI snapshot navigation in the settings and select a channel that will work with the GC Pro. https://wiki.moddevices.com/wiki/Device_Settings#Sync_.26_MIDI
  2. Edit your device presets to override one or more of the buttons to send a PC message. I’m not familiar with the specifics of your device but at a glance it looks like it is possible: http://www.voodoolab.com/manuals/ground_control_pro_manual.pdf

Edit your footswitches on the GC to send a PC message with a value corresponding to the number of the pedalboard in the bank list (like 5 in your example).

I’ll add a disclaimer that this feature has been a little flaky for me. A couple times recently the snapshot nav wasn’t working until I went to settings and re-saved the snapshot nav channel - I think it might be related to having the web interface connected. /cc @falkTX

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Thank you for helping me out. I’ll try those setting as soon as I get home.

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