Some scattered thoughts and questions

Pedals
#1

Sorry about the format, some of this info is in other threads but I figured one post rather than 6 is easier to manage.

I was super excited about the Ribbons arriving. I’ve had it for a week now and it has not disappointed. To the extent I’m sort of gutted to now be going on holiday for a week.

I’m loving the sounds of basically everything - I just need to wrap my head around the presets because jumping through every page and changing every single parameter while exploring it’s range doesn’t feel very efficient.

As others have said it’s actually a lot more intuitive to navigate than you’d think, given all the layers/pages. The manual is very clear too. Though it’s surprisingly hard to shake the muscle memory from using finite encoders with presets/pages and not having to min/max every parameter before changing them - instead relying on the LEDs. This is a huge improvement but takes some getting used to.

One thing that keeps tripping me up is knowing which page I’m actually on without cycling the push button, but perhaps I’m missing an obvious cue for that.

I love the saturation so far, but the compression was a big reason I went for this. It was mentioned in another thread that a factory reset will change U4 back to compression if you’ve received a unit on the latest firmware. This won’t affect anything else other than any saved presets?

Ideally I’ll have this set up with the midi CC, but somehow after so many years of being a music tech nerd I still don’t really know how to do that.

I want to be able to control Ribbons without relying on a DAW and figured I can probably assign the 16 control pots on my Beatstep Pro to control each page. I’m hoping just assigning the correct CC messages in the midi control centre will allow control without a DAW?

Can the CV/expression input also work with a standard sustain pedal to control the Touch function as it is on the unit? ie. Short momentary tap to latch or long press to hold? I’m possibly just being dim but I couldn’t see any info about how EXP parameters are actually assigned?

As far as the best setup for mono in > stereo out, mix setting 2 and buffered bypass will allow that even when bypassed? I appreciate that’s a ‘just try it yourself’ question but I jammed the pedal straight in to my board like an idiot as soon as I got it, and I’m not sure if a TRS splitter from a mono out will duplicate to both inputs or not without pulling apart and rewiring.

Thanks in advance if you’re able to clear any of this up. You’ve been so incredibly helpful on here so far and taking the time to answer questions and some pretty big feature demands.

Cheers

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#2

Hi @ZestyCloseEscape and welcome to the Kinotone forum!

When I use Ribbons I typically load up the Init preset (Preset 1), which puts Ribbons in a transparent state and then I pick a couple settings to play with. Some of my favorite settings are a combination of just a couple parameters. If you find a combination of settings you like or something you might use for a performance, you can save them as a preset in slots 2-8.

If you try to dial in everything all at once you’ll find yourself in a cacophonous swamp pretty quick :slightly_smiling_face:

The cue is the base color of all the LEDs on the page.

  • Page 1 = Green
  • Page 2 = Blue
  • Page 3 = Pink
  • Page 4 = Red

If you see a color on any of the four LEDs, you know which page you’re on. The only time this doesn’t work is if you have all four parameters on a page turned up to 100%, in-which case the LEDs are all white and you would have to press the push button (which isn’t so bad).

The introduction of the white is important because it helps you to find out where noon / 50% is when the pots are misaligned. You will see the LED “click” from the base color to white right when a parameter is set to 50%. This is helpful for parameters like the Reverb Mix and Position setting which sets the Reverb Mix to 0 and changes from pre to post when at the 50% setting.

image

Factory reset resets the following: Factory presets, saturation/comp setting, midi channel, bypass setting, and mix setting.

Yup! I’m not so familiar with the Beatstep Pro but I do this all the time on my Keystep 37. The Arturia stuff is great because you can configure which MIDI CC’s you want to control with the encoders using the MIDI Control Center. The Beatsep Pro is also nice because it has TRS MIDI and you can just use a 1/8" to 1/4" cable to connect it directly to Ribbons - just don’t forget to switch the two jumpers inside to the “Type B” position. See the online manual for more info on switching the internal jumpers.

Unfortunately it won’t work with a standard sustain pedal because expression pedal inputs typically send out 5V on the ring and then “listen” on the tip. Most sustain pedals just short the tip and sleeve together when pressed, which Ribbons would always see as 0V and do nothing.

An expression pedal like the Moog EP-3 will work but it has a different feel/vibe than a sustain pedal.

If you’re up for some soldering I could provide a wiring diagram for a little adapter that can convert a standard sustain pedal to CV/EXP.

The CV input doesn’t do any timing assessment to determine whether a CV is a momentary tap or long press. If Touch is mapped to CV, it is activated if the CV is >2.5V and deactivated if <2.5V.

The paper manual says that the CV/EXP and MIDI topics are covered in more detail in the online manual. You can read all about CV/EXP configuration here.

Exactly. Set both Mix and Bypass settings to option 2 to split your mono signal into stereo regardless of whether or not the pedal is bypassed.

Hope that covers everything. Happy to answer any follow up questions.

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#3

Thanks so much for taking the time with all that. I’ll (RTFM again and) report back on my success.

I have a couple of expression pedals so I’ll see how that workflow goes and hopefully won’t need to be getting the soldering iron out.

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