@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.
You can access this on the SY-200 by going to MENU → CTL FUNCTION. CTL-1 is unique in that you can configure what happens when you tap the switch vs hold down the switch and these options are documented in the bottom right of the page.
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!