Can I connect Beat Buddy to another pedal with MIDI in / out?

BeatBuddy General
1 
      I'm a 65 year old with no understanding of MIDI whatsoever. I'm wanting to connect my Beat Buddy to my Korg SDD- 3000 Delay Pedal and / or my Boss RC-300 Loop Station. My questions concern whether or not I can connect them directing with the MIDI cables or do I have to have some type of pedal / device in between them to make it work. I keep seeing these MIDI, (base stations?), for sale to route your MIDI devices. My dream would be to just connect the Beat Buddy MIDI *out* to the MIDI *in* or the Korg SDD-3000 Pedal and then connect the MIDI *out* on the Korg SDD-3000 to the MIDI *in* on the Boss RC-300 Loop Station or any other Looper that has a MIDI *in*.
        I've got a ton of great equipment and have been a player / singer / songwriter for over 55 years but the digital world pretty much stopped me in my tracks. I used to record my tunes on tape and tried to switch to digital recorders but failed badly. I'm hoping this is an easier issue to get around.
       Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You,
Rick (arlum).

2

I’ll be 64 in 10 days, so age is no excuse. So, let’s look at what we have here. The BB is a drum machine, mostly, or really a sample player, it can either set the tempo (be the master), or receive tempo (be a slave.) Don’t you just love those old non-politically correct terms? The Korg is a delay device. I don’t know if it can be a master, but delays are best being set a slave. The RC-300 is the problem. The RC-300 can be a master. It is designed to only be a slave to another RC-300. There are some half-assed work arounds to get it to be a slave, but they do not seem to hold perfect sync. The best of these that I’ve found uses the tap tempo of the RC 300 to simulate it acting as slave. The does let it get a tempo from an external source but is does not lock to it. This results in some tempo drift, which after time is noticeable and not good.

And, by the way, I do not own an RC-300 so somebody may have more insight on this, but I’ll bet it also requires some more midi knowledge, too. I also don’t own a Korg, but I have other digital delays that can be midi synced.

So, now that we got that out the way, how should we proceed? Right off, if you do not already have it, you will need the midi breakout cable from Singular. This connects to the midi port on the BB, and gives you a standard 5-pin midi DIN in and out connection. With that cable, you would need two more standard midi cables to link up all three devices. It’s important to keep in mind when dealing with midi plus audio that your signal paths do not need to match. They are two separate strings of signals. With that, I would suggest you route you system this way:

Midi

RC-300 (Master) > BB > Korg. The BB and Korg could be flipped in this chain. That main thing is that the RC-300 will set the tempo and the BB and Korg will follow that tempo. When connecting devices, you go from the midi out on device 1 to the midi in on device 2, then the midi out on device 2 to the midi in on device 3, etc.

Audio:

I’ll assume you want to loop your delay. You probably should not loop your drums. Whether you need to loop vocal is up to you. There are uses for that. This would be one typical audio setup:

Vocal > Korg (left) > Loop > Mixer 1

Guitar >Korg (right) >Looper > Mixer 2

BB >Mixer 3 & 4

This would then allow you to adjust the left and right panning in the mixer even though the Korg is treating the signals as left and right. Of course, you could also use the Korg as an insert effect on your mixer. which would probably be even better.

As for the midi, each of the three device are going to require you to make the correct settings. You want to have the RC-300 set to Master for clock or tempo. You’ll want the BB to be able to receive Midi in, and for it to be set as the Slave for tempo. You do not want the BB to receive Note Data. Same for the Korg, it should receive tempo data, but not note data. You’re going to need to look through the manual for all three devices. Try not to get frustrated by it. All that midi is, is a language for sending musical data. It controls some on an off switches. It says hit note X, this hard, at this time and hold it for this long. That is the most basic note command. Beyond that, it can say when to turn on an effect, and so forth, but you probably don’t need any of that. All you need to be concerned with in your set-up is how these device pass tempo to one another. But, you also need to be sure that they will not pass other commands that would screw something else up down the chain. That can usually be controlled with having device on separate channels. But, again, you need to make sure that the tempo data is coming though, and you need to make sure that you BB can get start and stop, if you are using the RC-300 to control it.

Good luck!

2 Likes
3

Sir,
Thank you for your reply. I’ll get the cables required and see what I can do. I think I understand the concept. I run into issues with terms and names used in manual instructions. I can connect A to B. It’s understanding what and where A and B are that proves to be my hassle. Selecting from a menu that uses abbreviated names for possible selections just makes it worse. I’m going to give this a shot. I do want to make this work.

Thank You, Rick

4

It might take a while to go through but there’s already a bit of discussion regarding the BB and the rc300

https://forum.singularsound.com/search?q=Rc300

1 Like
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Thank You. I’ll read them.

Rick

6

This post (from the ones ghostofweedon linked to) contains the settings for the BB and the RC300. It looks to be very useful:

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Thank You Phil_Flood,

That gives me a big step up on figuring this stuff out. I’ve ordered the Beat Buddy MIDI connect cable and two 5 ft. MIDI cables for connecting the three pedals together. As soon as they arrive I’ll be taking the plunge.

Rick

8

Well, I’ve learned that the Korg SDD-3000 pedal does not send nor receive midi clock information. It cannot be set up to share tempo control. This is the first negative I’ve ever come up with concerning the SDD-3000. I think it’s got the most beautiful delay sounds out there but won’t work with other MIDI pedals. It’s MIDI input output connections are pretty much just for use with computers and sequencers. They won’t work for interconnecting pedals.

When I went searching I only found a handful of delay pedals that would work in this application. The Strymon Timeline, the Pigtronix (top version) Echolution, the T.C. Electronics Flashback 2 X4 and the Eventide Timefactor. I guess that’s bump #1.

9

The Pigtronix Echolution 2 Filter Pro also works with midi. Another device that works is the Adrenalinn from Roger Linn. That is a multi effects unit, but it has several time based effects that are great. Meris also has several midi enabled pedals.

10

I wish there were a way to use some type of device that would make the great vintage effect pedals able to respond / sync / clock with each other. There are just so many wonderful pedals that have to at least be put in reserve when newer tech creates pedal to pedal information sharing that the vintage greats just can’t take part in.

11

Something like this, if you have tap tempo:

https://www.disasterareaamps.com/shop/smartclock-gen3-tap-tempo-controller

12

Someone had a great idea there. Now I’m wondering about my SDD-3000 again. While it won’t do the MIDI clock thing it does accept and work with expression pedals. I connect a Mission SP2-R expression pedal through the pedal input and it can control the Delay Time, Feedback, etc. It uses a TRS cable. If the smartclock-gen3 can set a Time that the BeatBuddy and RC-300 can take in through their MIDI inputs and at the same time send it to the SDD-3000 pedal through it’s TRS jack it could make everything sync up perfectly.

13

Unfortunately, I looked up specs and went though the manual on SDD 3000, and, for whatever reason, Korg did not provide a means to have tap tempo from an external input. So, other delays that allow an external tap tempo input could work with the unit I posted, but not the Korg.

14

I’ve found another delay pedal possibility. Has anyone here tried pairing up via MIDI the Beat Buddy, (as the tempo / clock controller with the Walrus Audio Mako DI. Walrus Audio says the Mako DI can have it’s clock controlled from a MIDI control pedal. Would it work connected direct to the Beat Buddy without having a MIDI controller pedal in between?

15

That one will work, according to its manual. You’ll just need the BB midi breakout cable and one standard 5 pin midi cable. Set the BB to send clock, and the Walrus will receive the clock and sync the delay accordingly.

16

Thank You.