Zaphod B
Raccoons-Be-Gone, Inc.
I was getting kind of uptight last week as I have been having some random intermittent issues with the MIDI connection on my guitar rig's MIDI footboard controller. Sometimes I would not be transmitting any MIDI at all from the controller and sometimes it would work fine, and when it worked fine it would stay working until I unplugged it to break it down, and then on reconnection it would sometimes not. Tried some contact cleaner, which worked .... sometimes. Very puzzling.
And with a two-night gig coming up I was getting nervous that the thing would go into "not working" mode, and that controller is how I switch amplifier channels and multieffect presets.
So to the dumbass part.
The foot controller has a 7-pin MIDI connector, with the two extra pins being symmetrically placed at the ends of the 5-pin semicircle of normal pins. Those two extra pins are for phantom power input.
It turns out that the little indexing bump on the 5-pin cable wasn't quite deep enough to engage the keyway on the controller jack. And I had been inserting the cable into the jack one pin off in either direction, and that's when it didn't work. And if I paid attention to sticking the damned thing in right, it worked just fine.
And with a two-night gig coming up I was getting nervous that the thing would go into "not working" mode, and that controller is how I switch amplifier channels and multieffect presets.
So to the dumbass part.
The foot controller has a 7-pin MIDI connector, with the two extra pins being symmetrically placed at the ends of the 5-pin semicircle of normal pins. Those two extra pins are for phantom power input.
It turns out that the little indexing bump on the 5-pin cable wasn't quite deep enough to engage the keyway on the controller jack. And I had been inserting the cable into the jack one pin off in either direction, and that's when it didn't work. And if I paid attention to sticking the damned thing in right, it worked just fine.