Korg T1 Pedal/SW compatibility and settings

[mholland]

I have an old Korg T1 that I restored a couple of years ago, and up until now I have not tried to plug anything into the "a*s. PEDAL/SW" jacks, though I do have a sustain pedal plugged into the damper jack. The sustain pedal works, but I just attempted to plug an expression pedal (Zoom FP02) into each of the "a*s. PEDAL/SW" jacks in turn, and rocking the pedal seems to have no effect on locally generated sounds, and also does not send any MIDI data. The sustain pedal and joystick control do affect local sounds and send MIDI data, so it's not the Local Control and CNTL settings that are at fault.

This subject has come up on Korg Forums (http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/ ... d43daee184), but I can't get help there, because I have never been able to get a response to my problems registering. That thread (and the operations manual) indicate that the functions of pedals plugged into those jacks can be assigned in the global settings menu, but I can find no information in the reference manual on pedal settings beyond the damper pedal polarity, and I can find nothing (aside from damper pedal polarity) in the global settings menu.

This all leaves me wondering whether there is (1) a compatibility issue with the Zoom pedal, and (2) whether there really is a way to assign the functions of the pedals in global settings. Is anyone around here familiar enough to confirm/deny these conclusions or help me figure out next steps for troubleshooting? If it helps, my working assumption is that M1 knowledge is likely to be transferable to this problem since the M1 and T1 are pretty similar in a lot of ways.

Thanks!

[madtheory]

The Zoom may not be compatible. But I think that's not the reason you cannot access the pedal settings. I'm going from memory here- of the Korg M1 I used from 1993-2000 and the T1 I used briefly in 2003. I think read the manual again, the intro part about how to navigate the menus. You need to page up and to the right in global menu to get to those pedal settings. Same as you do for the synth editing.

As to the compatibility, you'll probably find it will work but only with a limited range. Polarity will also be an issue. You'll need a pedal that is Korg/ Yamaha compatible such as M-Audio EX-P.

[mholland]

Interesting. The M1 manual explicitly shows a "pedal assign" function in the global mode menus (https://cdn.korg.com/us/support/downloa ... f#page=111), but the T1 reference guide contains no explicit reference to such a function (https://cdn.korg.com/us/support/downloa ... F#page=115). I just got my hands on an On-Stage KEP100 (it was cheap, locally available for delivery, and has a polarity switch and trim knob, so it seemed like a good bet). When I get it trimmed just right, the toe-down position of the pedal results in a program up message when plugged into one jack; the other jack sends a program down message. So, some success, but not useful to me.

I guess the other thing that occurs to me is that maybe the T1 is set up to identify whether it sees a voltage divider or a switch at the input. I believe from googling that the Korg EXP-2 is just a 50k pot, so maybe if it sees a resistance greater than 50k between the tip and sleeve it defaults to a switch behavior, and if it sees 50k within some tolerance, maybe one jack defaults to volume and the other to something else. I can wire up a 50k pot or put a 100k resistor in parallel with one of the pedals I have to test this theory.

Otherwise, I really don't think I'm missing anything in the T1 global menu, so if I'm wrong about the voltage divider vs. switch detection, maybe I'm just SOL. The only things I can think of are that maybe there's a way to alter the settings through a sysex dump, or maybe there's a firmware update out there somewhere. The T1 manual seems to suggest that M1 settings can be dumped to the T1, but of course I don't have an M1 to use for that purpose. I'm also thinking of reaching out to MusicTechGuyUK, who is a T1 enthusiast, and whose YouTube videos guided me through fixing up my T1 (including the factory settings sysex dump that you kindly provided input on two years ago).

[madtheory]

No, I think the problem is the manual is not super clear. You have to read several different sections to find all the steps to make the pedal work. Here are the steps:

1. Use a compatible pedal
2. Assign it in Global mode (tell the T1 if it's a switch or a pot)
3. Assign it to a parameter in Combi or Programme mode in the respective control page.

Here is the manual converted to text searchable. Just search for the word pedal and you'll see the 20 places where it is mentioned.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4cx8mczb6anty ... e.pdf?dl=0

Good luck!

[mholland]

Aha! Thank you! I had been fixated on global mode, but you led me (by the nose, thank you) to the pedal settings in the individual programs, which is good enough for my purposes, since I can just select whatever program I have set up the expression pedals in when I'm using the T1 as a MIDI controller. I remain convinced that it is impossible to assign a global setting for the pedals, unless somehow the A00/B00/C00 settings are inherited by default or something like that. That seems to be what the last row of the table on p. 16 of the manual is saying.

I am getting a full sweep of the volume range with my On-Stage pedal, so now it's just a matter of playing with different pedals/pot tapers to get the behavior I want. Thanks for the OCRed version of the manual and the insistence that there was a solution, as indeed there was!

[madtheory]

That's great! You're welcome. To be fair it's a complex synth and the manual could be better. Korg are great. The manual for the Triton Rack is a lot better. They did a great job there of getting that complex synth across. Much better use of categories than on the T1 manual. Triton is probably the best UI of any ROMpler ever in my opinion, even without the touch screen.

I'd love to hear what user samples sound like in a T1.