I spotted a neat new midi foot-pedal from Meloaudio recently and was all set for purchase, then I decided to download and RTFM. It didn’t say how many banks of presets were offered and the the manual was decidedly thin, so I checked the forum. Thank Clapton i did – The unit offers lots of profiles for various rigs, but the two custom profiles were what interested me, since I could tailor them.

HOWEVER, for the custom profiles, the same midi messages are sent for all the banks – you can’t edit them per bank!  Utterly crazy. Why limit the use of this good-looking machine in this way? Some people will find the preset profiles adaptable for their needs, but most would surely want to use the custom option. It seems to has been rushed out (they admit this on the forum) and I hope they work on it soon. I’d hoped this would be a FCB1010 killer, but as it stands, it’s just not there yet. Extraordinary that the FCB remains the most flexible and user-friendly device, although it’s too big and Behringer show no signs of wanting to bring out a mark 2.

In case anyone from Meloaudio is reading, here are some suggestions for what I’d expect from a modern midi controller.

Custom edit for ALL banks
Ability to send midi notes
Editing software (utterly essential for copy/paste banks, autoflll incremental midi values and saving different setups)
Stereo jack socket for bank up/down footswitches, to free all 10 switches for midi messages

The new-ish Nektar Pacer is also a potential winner, but it won’t be one until they also create editing software for it, plus the pedal is presented as an ableton controller, not everyone will use it for this and will probably not want the play, stop icons printed on the pedal itself. I’m utterly amazed that the perfect, flexible, easy to use, compact controller hasn’t been created yet. All the required soft & hardware is available, they just need to consult potential users during development and realise that what people want is a flexible device, rather than put their efforts into pre-configuring it for specific uses at the expense of flexible custom settings.

Until that happy day comes, I’m still obliged to try and build my own solution or lug the massive FCB around with me…