Using an old DMC Ground Control

[Anglian]

I have an old DMC original Ground Control, (V2.4), that I thought I might be able to use control a small rack system I’m thinking of putting together. I’d like to use it with the bottom 4 buttons as presets and the top 6 buttons as ‘stomp box’ on/off switches and indicators which are remembered with the preset.

I thought I could use the GCX CC commands, 80 to 87, to enable/disable the FX sections on a G-Major 2 but I have found out by monitoring the midi data sent from the Ground Control that by default it sends these on channel 16. If I then set my G-Major 2 to be on channel 16 via the device menu the Ground Control, (to capture the program changes & CC commands), it will not share its GCX channel with a device channel and changes the CC commands to be sent on channel 15. I don’t have the G-Major 2 unit yet so I don’t know if it will be able to ‘learn’ the CC commands on a different channel to the channel set up in its midi menu, I suspect it won’t.

John, do you know of a cunning way to get around this?

I realise this is an old product and you explained in another posting how to achieve this with the newer Ground control Pro, but I’d appreciate it if there was a work around. The ‘G Link’ menu looks promising but I believe you need the physical G Link unit to utilise this stuff. I assume there is a bit of SysEx chatter that goes on to indentify it to the Ground Control?

I have a GCX unit and I’ve had some very helpful email chats with Harmony previously, one suggestion was if I do the 8K upgrade to the Ground Control I could enable a second ‘virtual’ GCX unit to utilise for the G-Major 2 as these CC commands are passed through the first GCX unit. This means I can use the first GCX unit to do some useful switching independently to controlling the G-Major 2.

Thanks for your help.

[JohnClark]

The Ground Link settings will be of no use to you without an actual Ground Link unit connected to the Ground Control. The only way to have the state of the Instant Access buttons on the original Ground Control be saved with a preset is if they are set as GCX Loop controls. Updating the Ground Control to the expanded memory could work but you will have to set the G-Major to receive in OMNI mode in order for it to receive the Program Changes on one channel and intercept the GCX #2 Control Changes on MIDI channel 16. A potential problem could be that there will be some hiccups when doing this because the effects blocks will be enabled by the incoming Program Change as well as receiving an individual "on" command from the Instant Access buttons. You can test this before committing by connecting your Ground Control directly to your G-Major and attempt this setup using the GCX #1 Control Change messages.

Alternatively, a Ground Control Pro will do all this and more, smoothly, with no modifications or programming trickery necessary.