(I hope I posted into the right group now...! ;-) )

I’m intrigued by the half-damper feature of the Motif XS8. I never used feature before on acoustic pianos, so this is a completely new thing for me. Question: I have a Roland DP-10 pedal that switches between Continuous (for half-damper effects) and Switched modes.

When set to Switched mode, the pedal works like a straight on/off sustain.

When set to Continuous mode, the pedal doesn’t work at all.

I can’t see how the signal routing from a Roland pedal would be that much different than the Yamaha FC3. Plus, because the feature already exists in the board, it must be an easy fix to update the firmware to understand and process Roland pedal data to convert the signal to the XS’s methods.

My main reasons for not buying the FC3:

1) I didn’t know that half-damping was an option
2) I prefer an L-connector rather than straight for my pedals
3) I have always used Roland piano style pedals

Does anyone have any thoughts?

Hi!

Just wanted to let you know I had exactly the same situation.

I tried to contact Yamaha Support (here in Sweden) but I got no response.
As you say, this is most probably a very easy firmware fix. If the want to. Or they want to sell their own pedals… ;-)

/Jakob

I guess I don’t have anything against them wanting to sell their own pedals… Apple has been getting away with proprietary systems for years. Maybe I’m just an open source idealist. LOL!

Thanks for joining the discussion. I hope we get some information from Yamaha that can be posted publicly. I’d hate to have to send a PM for something that interests lots of people.

Just a little perspective here… Yamaha’s foot switches for keyboard synthesizers have the opposite polarity from most other vendors and while many keyboards support changing this polarity in the instrument, Yamaha has not provided that capability in their synthesizers. So for a sustain pedal, you must either purchase a Yamaha foot switch or one that is compatible with Yamaha’s polarity. Despite many years of customer requests to add this polarity switching to their keyboards, they have not yielded to that request.

Given that history, I doubt that they would be motivated to make Roland’s half-damping pedal work with the XS (or S90ES for that matter).

Just my 2 cents.

Brad

I’ve got the same.....
I resolder the pedal and now it’s working…

greetings,

robbie

Click thumbnail to see full-size image

Thanks Robbie! That appears to be the most practical solution given Yamaha’s history.

Brad, this is my first Yamaha board, and it’s impressed me so much, I may even be willing to overlook the company’s decided stance against providing software support for polarity switching.

I still need to read the manual to learn how to program the board, work the sequencer and sampler, and set up my own arps for live performance. but so far I’ve had fun with practicing with the built-in stuff.

robbie50 - 14 April 2009 03:23 PM

I resolder the pedal and now it’s working… [with image]

Hey Robbie,

Follow up: IT WORKS!!! That’s so awesome. This is more than a mere polarity switch. All three lines: White, Shield, and Red, ALL had to move one position: Red, Shield, and White.

I wasn’t sure if I had to, but I insulated the shield with electricians tape.

Thanks for the tip.

-Tony

Tony Chung - 16 April 2009 03:43 AM

Follow up: IT WORKS!!! That’s so awesome. This is more than a mere polarity switch. All three lines: White, Shield, and Red, ALL had to move one position: Red, Shield, and White.

Just wondering, as I might need to do a similar fix pretty soon ... You had White, Shield, Red in this order originally, and you ended up with just exchanging the Red and the White wire?

From:  Red Shield White
To:  White Shield Red

/me just wants to be absolutely sure ...

kind regards,

David S.

other idea if someone doesn’t feel good about going inside their pedal is to make short conversion cable.
buy 20-30cm 2 wire plus shield cable, one female and one male TRS plugs and have wires switched around inside the plugs.
this way you can also easly use your pedal with another keyboard without having to redo your pedal again.

The FC3 is a TRS pedal… to get the full benefits of half dampering it is recommended that you get the Yamaha FC3! If you have just TS connected it will be simply ON or OFF not a continuous message controller.

Try recording your sustain pedal and looking at the data. If you get on cc064 = 0 or 127 then you are not getting the half damper effect.

If you are able to record values continuously from 0 through 127 you are then able to get the half dampering effect.

If all you know is ON/OFF on your sustain pedal, you cannot know what you are missing with the continuous pedal effect.

no idea why i said TS, i even mentioned 2 wire plus shield cable which indicates need for TRS plugs, anyway fixed the post to remove confusion.

Bad_Mister - 17 April 2009 09:01 PM

The FC3 is a TRS pedal… to get the full benefits of half dampering it is recommended that you get the Yamaha FC3! If you have just TS connected it will be simply ON or OFF not a continuous message controller.

AFAIK, both the DP-8 and DP-10 from Roland are “analogue” pedals, not just on-off pedals.  I know for sure that the DP-8 has 3 wires with a “stereo” jack-plug.  And the DP-8 pedal is what I’ll most probably use together with an XS.  Why DP-8?  Because it’s 1/3 of the price of the Yamaha FC3 pedal.

i think BM post was in regards to my typo about plug types.

I’m looking with MIDI-OX.....
So, when I set my pedal to “switch” I only see;
00 or 7A

When I set the pedal to “continuous” I see a range of numbers;
00
1A
2B
3F
to 7A

so it’s working fine!
And it is a Roland DP8....25 Euro!!

greetings,

robbie

Post from dazo (Posted on: April 17, 2009 @ 03:49 AM) confused me a little with words “you ended up with just exchanging the Red and the White wire?”

Is it possible to clarify what exactly needs to be done:
1. Just exchanging the Red and the White wire, or
2. Like it is shown on the image posted by robbie50, “All three lines: White, Shield, and Red, ALL had to move one position: Red, Shield, and White.” (quotes from Tony Chung’s post).

Thanks in advance.
Iaroslav

hi guys, thanks for the great posts

can i assume, if i get the Korg half damper pedal (15euros), and the polarity is reversed, i can resolder it like in the picture?