Hi everyone,
I've just acquired a 32 note AGO pedalboard as well as 2 manuals out of an old Rodgers instrument. Plus a swell pedal. All the contacts (including magnets on the pedals) are still intact as are the individual wires from each key (61 + 1 for each keyboard and 30 + 1 for the pedals. I think the +1 goes to the ground / power supply). I'm hoping to make a project of wiring this stuff up. I'd like to keep things simple, but I'm very much a beginner when it comes to all of this. Below are lots of questions - I've looked at the forums and found lots of helpful links, but I'm still uncertain as to exactly what bits of hardware I'll need.
I currently have Hauptwerk up and running on my Macbook Pro, but just via a Mio Midi USB plugged into my Kawai Digital Piano. That works fine at the moment and I'm considering the following two options:
1) Wire up the pedal to a MIDI encoder and then daisy chain that through my piano and then have (hopefully) a functioning one manual organ. Benefits of this: I think I'd just need to buy a MIDI pedal encoder and a power supply. And then if I fail miserably I'm just out a relatively small amount of money.
2 ) Ditch the piano and rig up MIDI encoders to the two manuals keyboards and the pedalboard. A plus of this is that I imagine I can save money by getting an encoder that will work for maybe 2 keyboards + pedal, or at least some combination thereof.
The guy I bought the parts from told me that in terms of the wiring, it's just basically a matter of
a) getting the right midi hardware
b) hooking each of the 61 + 1 + 61 + 30 + 1 wires to the right part of the hardware.
c) daisy chaining them together.
d) connecting this to a 12 volt power supply
e) having a midi interface (would my MIO work?)
First, does the above sound about right? Am I missing any hardware that's not on my radar? I see things online about midi decoders, but I don't think I need any of those for this project.
Doing everything in parallel makes me think I need 163 pins - are there any encoders that would be this large? Probably not, I'd imagine I'd need a few midi channels for this. But I've read about these matrix encoders that lead me to believe that in theory I can attach my 61+61+120 wires into an 8x8 + 8x8 + 8x4 grid and then just spit out 8+8+8+8+8+4 = 44 wires into a modestly sized midi encoder. Am I off base with this idea? My only reason to do this would be to save money on hardware, but if this winds up requiring extra skills / hardware, I'm probably happier just to do whatever is simplest.
For instance, in reading this: https://www.midi-hardware.com/index.php ... n=tutorial it looks like I can buy
(2) BBS-1k,
(1) BBSP
(1) MRG2
some WiPlugs - I'd like to avoid soldering, but it looks like some of the plugs this site sells are unavailable.
(?) I'll need some sort of power supply for this, right? Can I just get a small one from amazon / home depot?
This seems eminently affordable, and much cheaper than anything I could find on midiworks.
Alternatively I've looked at stuff like this: https://www.midiboutique.com/hwce2 and I'm pretty confused - it looks like this isn't the right setup for parallel input, so I'll need scan matrices set up? (Where do I get those / how hard is it to set up? Do I need to do any programming?)
Thanks for any pointers. In general if there's an affordable kit out there, I'd be happy to buy it. The only premade kits I could find were unfortunately pretty pricey, so I wanted to look into alternatives, hence my post here. Thanks so much for the help!
Adam in San Diego.
I've just acquired a 32 note AGO pedalboard as well as 2 manuals out of an old Rodgers instrument. Plus a swell pedal. All the contacts (including magnets on the pedals) are still intact as are the individual wires from each key (61 + 1 for each keyboard and 30 + 1 for the pedals. I think the +1 goes to the ground / power supply). I'm hoping to make a project of wiring this stuff up. I'd like to keep things simple, but I'm very much a beginner when it comes to all of this. Below are lots of questions - I've looked at the forums and found lots of helpful links, but I'm still uncertain as to exactly what bits of hardware I'll need.
I currently have Hauptwerk up and running on my Macbook Pro, but just via a Mio Midi USB plugged into my Kawai Digital Piano. That works fine at the moment and I'm considering the following two options:
1) Wire up the pedal to a MIDI encoder and then daisy chain that through my piano and then have (hopefully) a functioning one manual organ. Benefits of this: I think I'd just need to buy a MIDI pedal encoder and a power supply. And then if I fail miserably I'm just out a relatively small amount of money.
2 ) Ditch the piano and rig up MIDI encoders to the two manuals keyboards and the pedalboard. A plus of this is that I imagine I can save money by getting an encoder that will work for maybe 2 keyboards + pedal, or at least some combination thereof.
The guy I bought the parts from told me that in terms of the wiring, it's just basically a matter of
a) getting the right midi hardware
b) hooking each of the 61 + 1 + 61 + 30 + 1 wires to the right part of the hardware.
c) daisy chaining them together.
d) connecting this to a 12 volt power supply
e) having a midi interface (would my MIO work?)
First, does the above sound about right? Am I missing any hardware that's not on my radar? I see things online about midi decoders, but I don't think I need any of those for this project.
Doing everything in parallel makes me think I need 163 pins - are there any encoders that would be this large? Probably not, I'd imagine I'd need a few midi channels for this. But I've read about these matrix encoders that lead me to believe that in theory I can attach my 61+61+120 wires into an 8x8 + 8x8 + 8x4 grid and then just spit out 8+8+8+8+8+4 = 44 wires into a modestly sized midi encoder. Am I off base with this idea? My only reason to do this would be to save money on hardware, but if this winds up requiring extra skills / hardware, I'm probably happier just to do whatever is simplest.
For instance, in reading this: https://www.midi-hardware.com/index.php ... n=tutorial it looks like I can buy
(2) BBS-1k,
(1) BBSP
(1) MRG2
some WiPlugs - I'd like to avoid soldering, but it looks like some of the plugs this site sells are unavailable.
(?) I'll need some sort of power supply for this, right? Can I just get a small one from amazon / home depot?
This seems eminently affordable, and much cheaper than anything I could find on midiworks.
Alternatively I've looked at stuff like this: https://www.midiboutique.com/hwce2 and I'm pretty confused - it looks like this isn't the right setup for parallel input, so I'll need scan matrices set up? (Where do I get those / how hard is it to set up? Do I need to do any programming?)
Thanks for any pointers. In general if there's an affordable kit out there, I'd be happy to buy it. The only premade kits I could find were unfortunately pretty pricey, so I wanted to look into alternatives, hence my post here. Thanks so much for the help!
Adam in San Diego.
Last edited by aboocher on Wed Nov 07, 2018 11:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.