GR5 / Kontrol Pedal board Feature Request

SOME BACKGROUND:
I play guitar in a U2 tribute band, and emulating all the setting The Edge may use for just one song is a challenge that the Ground Control Pro (GCP) has made easy.

We now have some international show opportunities and shipping 500 lbs. of gear internationally (a guitar vault with 8 guitars, my rack system and accessories) is not feasible. So I purchased GR5 Knotrol and it sounds amazing!

MY FEATURE REQUEST:
It would be AWESOME if Native Instruments would release an update enabling users to set up the Kontrol buttons they can be mutually exclusive of each other. And here two ways I see this working...

1) Using Kontrol button #1 as an example, users could drag the button #1 label over any other Kontrol button or combination of Kontrol buttons, assigning "off" functionality to button #1. Then all other buttons shut off when stomping on button #1.

and/or

2) Create a "mutual exclusivity" context menu option for each button. When assigned "mutual exclusivity" that button will turn off when any other button is pressed.

MY PROBLEM:
With a set list of over 50 songs, to create multiple presets/racks per song is a pain. Imagine re-ordering that set list! Besides, with containers, I should not have to do that.

Here is an example... for the song "Beautiful Day" there is four distinct guitar parts using very different combinations of effects. In GR5, for that song I added four containers, each with different preset combinations for each song section.

On the Kontrol pedal board I assigned the on/off setting of container 1-4 to buttons 1-4. The problem is switching from container to container. I cannot make clean transitions.

For example, container #1 is a softer part with delay and chorus. Container #2 is much louder and dryer tone with fuzz-like distortion and different delay setting. The transition between the two containers in either direction sounds really bad! And I have to tap-dance attempting to stomp Container #2 on then quickly stomp Container #1 off.

But imagine if I could make those buttons mutually exclusive. Then the transitions are very clean. This is how my current hardware configuration works using my Ground Control Pro (GCP) pedal board.

If you read this, thank you! I'd love to know what you think of the idea.

 

Hi,

As long as you need always exactly one container active, here's how to do it.

1. Load you preset, and add your containers
2. Click on the pedalboard icon next to the preset name. The pedalboard should appear at the bottom of the window.
3. Click on the small up arrow, right next to the pedal. That should display the 'range controls' panel. Per effect assigned, you have 2 sliders.
4. Assign button 1 to container 1.
5. If you click button 1, it will trigger container 1 on/off. That's not what we want. We want container 1 to be on every time we hit the switch.
6. To do that, move both sliders for container 1 to the right.
7. Verify that the only way to turn container 1 off is with the mouse.
8. Assign button 1 to container 2.
9. Change the range for container 2 by moving all the sliders to the left.
10. Now container 2 shuts off every time you hit button 1.
11. Repeat 9-11 for every other container.
12. Repeat 4-11 for every button

Cheers

 

Brilliant! I will give that a try tomorrow.

Thank you!
Chris

 

Thanks for your reply with the instructions. I learned something new and its worked... well sort of... There is one major problem with this method.

Even though the container states change correctly, the lights on the pedalboard don't reflect the correct button state. For example:

1. Button1/Container1 is on and the light for Button1 is on...
2. I press Button2 and Container2 turns on and Container1 is shut off.
3. The light for Button2 is on reflecting the correct state for Button2.
4. However the light for Button1 is still on even though Container1 is now off.
5. So, the board's visual representation of the the button states is wrong which will be dangerous during a live show.
6. To make things more confusing, the button labels are all the same: "container on/off" so from the LIVE view I can't tell which button is for which container, or which container is on or off and the button state are wrong.

The container concept is great, however when assigning a button to a named container, that button label should show the container name.

Also, to use containers this way, the button lights on the Kontrol board need to reflect the correct button state.

Thus my feature suggestion...

• Let us assign buttons to containers
• Let us define buttons as being mutually exclusive.
• If a button knows it is mutually exclusive, it shuts off when another button is pressed resulting in changing the state of the container assigned to that button as well as the light indicating that buttons state.

With this method we would only have to assign one container to one button.

Using the current slider method, if I have four containers states that I want to be mutually exclusive, I have do 16 assignments (1 on / 3 off for each of the four buttons).

Chris

 

Hi,

For the lights, you can have them always off, by toggling the 'Enable Hold Mode' (right click on the button).

But yeah, the procedure I gave you is mostly a workaround.
If you toggle 2 effects by mistake, you'll probably have trouble identifying the one to shut off.

You won't have the feature anytime soon anyway... so that's currently your only solution.

Well, you could buy an arduino (or similar) and build your own footswitch controller. I've done it with a teensy USB 2, and it was a fun project.

I think that the real long term solution would be for N.I to give us access to a scripting language to control what 's going on in GR. Very much like the KSP from Kontact.

That would allow the most tech savvy of us to go batshit crazy on our pedalboard. I would particularly like the fact that I could finally program buttons to act as 'shift'.

Cheers

 

scripts would be AWESOME!

 

AND, if the script was open to a general USB driver, we could make our own controllers to get information from GR, like the tuner, component states, etc.