Hi
I have my MC-6 successfully controlling a c4 synth and hx-stomp, as well as routing midi clock from a boss rc-10r. Just added an sy-200. Program changes work fine. Having trouble with control changes. Would appreciate any tips
I am going to look on the forum for generic troubleshooting advice since that would be helpful. I wonder how folks are doing testing to try to understand if messages are reaching the device, if it responds correctly to cc in events etc.
Thx
Michael
Hey Michael, I’m in the same boat as you are with almost the exact same setup (MC6, HX Stomp and SY-200) and I’ve been running into CC issues as well. I’m assuming you’ve looked at the MIDI section of the menu in your SY-200 to see which CC#s are assigned to what, correct? I’m trying to turn the pedal on and off using MIDI and CC#28 is the default CC# assigned to this function. I’m able to turn it ON by sending 127 to CC#28 but I haven’t been able to find the value to turn it OFF. I’ve tried sending 0,1,2,30,126 and 127 (again) and none of them work. 70 worked once but when I pressed it again it turned the pedal ON again and then never turned it back off on subsequent presses.
As far as I can tell, the control changes work, they’re just documented very poorly just like everything else Boss and Roland does. Maybe CCs are buggy and Boss might work out the kinks with future firmware releases? My SY-200 is in the FX loop of my HX Stomp so for now I’ve just resorted to enabling / disabling the FX loop block on the HX stomp for the SY-200 but I would eventually like to figure this out. I haven’t yet gone through manually testing all 128 CC values for each channel but if we can get this in front of enough SY-200 users on here, maybe we can do some sort of community CC message testing to see what works and what doesn’t? @james I don’t suppose you’ve looked into the SY-200 at all?
Hey Chris/chonger -
Yeah, I have the same experience as you - one of the first things I did was try to setup an on/off and I have seen the same limitation. I gave up on that particular struggle, since 1. I can turn it off on the pedal and 2. as you have done, I’ve set it up in the return/send, and so if that is not enabled on the hx stomp, it’s no longer in the chain. have you tried cc 28 to turn on and 70 to turn off, and cycling between those two using a pos setting?
So far I haven’t tried to do anything else except set up a preset up/down, which I got working successfully using an external 3 button aux.
I will definitely keep you posted as I play with it more. Right now at least theoretically everything is working OK besides the on / off, as I expect the program changes will work ok. I’m potentially going to try to send expression controller messages from the hx stomp to the Sy-200 using command center, and then I expect I’ll get more insight into what’s going on.
Thanks for getting in touch - good to find someone with the same setup!
this is my whole board.
MC6 controls HX stomp, C4 synth via neurohub, SY-200.
3 button aux can page up/down presets on any of them, depending on the bank
C4 and SY-200 are L/R on the return/send from the Stomp.
The main tempo is run off the Boss RC-10R. I ran into issues with trying to have the MC6 be the main tempo manager, so the boss RC-10R is the main tempo clock, with tempo inherited by SY-200 and HX Stomp.
The Boss FS-F5 is a tap tempo pedal connected to the RC-10R.
Midi baby switches between condor presets - it is on its own MIDI island.
My next project besides forwarding CC expression commands is having the FS-5U act as a freeze pedal when the HX stomp has poly sustain engaged.
So right after I posted my last message I went into my DD-500 to see what I’m doing on that pedal to turn it on and off using MIDI. I thought there might be similarities with that and the SY-200 as they’re both Boss pedals. The default on / off control change for the DD-500 is CC#27 so on a whim, I tried that for the SY-200 and it works! 0 to disable and 127 to enable on CC#27. CC expression and hold (freeze) using the MC6 are also next on my list to figure out and I’ll make sure to keep you posted if I find anything.
awesome. thanks!!!
It works great. thanks!
Hi all, just got my Sy 200 and I want to use the expression in my Helix to remote controll the hold function. Programm chnages and midi tempo work well. CC changes not. On a patch on CTL is the hold function and my plan was to assign this to the helix expression pedal. If I remember right The cc is 80,81, 82 for the CTL1-3. In the helix I set the min value to 0=off and max to 127=on. But this did not work. In some cases I pushed the pedal down and then the programms on the SY 200 flip around . So programm chnages were done?! I alos looked on the midi menu to identifiy the right cc messages.
How did you configure hold?
Thanks George
@juro1971 Hey George, I’ve spent the last several hours figuring out how to use the SY-200’s hold functionality with MIDI and I think I finally got it all figured out. First off, as you correctly observed, the SY-200’s has 3 different CC#s for CTL1-3. Each of these are configurable but the default numbers are:
CC#82 = CTL 1 (Right footswitch)
CC#80 = CTL 2 (External footswitch)
CC#81 = CTL 3 (External footswitch)
Everything I’ve listed is for CTL 1 (CC#82) but it should work for any of the other controls.
In addition to letting you configure the CC#s for the controls, the SY-200 also lets you configure what happens for each of those controls. You can see the full list of these control options on page 11 of the SY-200 manual.
In some cases I pushed the pedal down and then the programms on the SY 200 flip around
What likely happened was that CTL-1 was set to 
which increments the preset when you tap it and holds when you hold it down. Because you were likely sending single messages to CC#82, it took the message as a tap and incremented the preset. I ran into this same issue myself and here’s how I got around it.
First I set CTL-1 FUNCTION to S.HOLD and set the SW MODE to TOGGLE on the SY-200. Then I did some testing and found out that it actually takes two CC messages to CC#82 to engage hold and two of the same messages to release hold. So:
Send 0 to CC#82 AND 127 to CC#82 to engage hold
Send 0 to CC#82 AND 127 to CC#82 AGAIN to release hold
You mentioned that you were trying to use your Helix expression pedal to engage the hold on the SY-200. I don’t know what kind of MIDI messaging options the Helix gives you for your expression pedal but you would need to find a way to have it send two messages to engage the old and then two of the same messages again to release the hold.
Hope this is helpful. Good luck!
Hey chonger, thanks for your long explanation. In the meantime I could solve the problem also with the help of the helix forum.Helix MIDI out Program Changes to Boss SY-200 - Helix - Line 6 Community
I did a simple mistake. I did not scrolled deep enough in the parameter settings of the SY-200. With a simple change of the SW Mode parameter to “moment” for the assigned CTL 3 in my case I could solve the problem. Works fine now.
Thanks!
George
Interesting! So this lets you use your expression pedal to engage hold? How does that work? As long as you’re moving the expression pedal the SY-200 holds and when you stop moving the pedal it stops holding?
