Picked up one of these yesterday.



The thing that initially interested me was that it's designed for 2 way midi communication: the knobs are 'endless' encoders so have no fixed start and end point, and the LED value indicators can be updated from incoming midi messages.

So the ideal outcome is that any S-gear preset change, amp A/B change, or other on screen parameter change, will automatically sync with what's displayed on the controller.

Reaper by default lacks this ability (from what I can see) but I've worked out how to send midi messages out to the controller through Reaper scripts. So.... early days still, but I am pretty confident that my S-Gear Viewer app will be able manage this syncing (I did a quick test and got the gain control synced up when I changed presets).

The other nice feature with the controller is that the knobs can be pressed, so are also buttons, which can send different midi messages. My thinking is that the Gain knob will change amp channel when pushed, the Bass knob will change Bass Switch, Treble knob: Bright Switch, Amp Drive knob (for Wayfarer) will be the Amp Drive Switch for other amps when pushed etc. This seems a great use of these buttons, and frees up the 16 dedicated buttons for something else.

It also has two 'layers' so you can have 2 completely independent mappings for all controllers.

Some fun times ahead playing with this and integrating with my S-gear Viewer app.

This looks interesting kierank, very useful that it has encoders rather than pots. I think I will get one to experiment with.

The clickable knobs is cool but I wonder is there any way to indicate (via return Midi) the state of a knob (i.e. clicked on/off). Be great if you could change the LED colours to represent different state.

Do let us know how you get on with your Reaper script.

Thanks Mike. Doesn't look like you can change the LED color. I guess the first row of buttons could be used for the switches I mentioned, as they will be related to the knob above.

The other use for the clickable knobs would be to set the value to a fixed number e.g. click the knob to set the control to 5 (like what a mouse double click achieves). Or maybe better - click to set to 10!

P.S. I don't think they have a Mac editor.

mike wrote:

very useful that it has encoders rather than pots

The Behringer V-Amp series used encoders instead of pots since their inception in 2004, IIRC.

This drove me a bit crazy this week, but finally got it done - full bi-directional sync between S-Gear and the X-Touch Mini!

I did this by creating a 'JS' plugin to map the CC numbers to parameters and read and send the midi messages, and then just using the standard Reaper parameter linking to connect the plugin to S-gear.

There are a lot of JS plugins that come with Reaper. They commonly have no interface except for drop down menus and sliders, and will perform either audio or midi processing. I was able to use the midi ones to grab their code for midi send and receive and then adapt for what I needed.

The plugin ultimately has about 30 menus to select the CC number for each parameter I wanted to map, and then 30 sliders for each of these parameters. This number was because amp A and B had separate mappings. When the plugin detected a midi CC for one that had been mapped, it would move its corresponding slider. The tedious part was in linking these sliders to the corresponding S-Gear parameters (in both directions). This was what enabled the bi-directional syncing: if I moved/changed something directly in S-Gear, it would move the slider in my plugin, which would then trigger the midi send to update the X-Touch (and vice versa). However now that I've set it all up once, the track can be saved as a Track Template and easily reused.

Now that it's done it's really awesome having these LED rings update automatically when I change presets or Amp A/B. And never having to worry about jumps in the sound or soft takeover etc.

What was a nice outcome was the X-Touch's two layers are labeled as A and B, which fits with Amp A and B. My plugin also sends the required midi message to change the Layer automatically when Amp A/B changes in S-Gear. I'm also using the transport forward/rewind as preset up/down, using the same CC numbers as my foot controller for preset up/down.

If anyone else picks one of these up and uses Reaper, I'd be happy to share.

I use a pair of JBL EON610s as my live FRFR. I don’t love them, but they’re ok. They’re light, reliable, flexible routing, and sound fine. There’s plenty of low end for guitar, I still use low cuts in my patches. My only issue is the high end is a bit brittle. The Class D amp and horn might be contributing to this.

I use a Helix for live gigging - its convenient and sounds great. My backup is an Apogee GiO and Helix Native in a MacBook Pro that we use to run the PA (an X32-Core). I have a MainStage setup built around S-Gear with Helix Native filling in the front of the amp effects. I prefer this for overall tone, but its not enough of an improvement in tone to justify the extra complexity and inconsistent patches.

Part of the reason for the Helix is I make pretty good use of a JTV-69S Variax. I put really nice SVL Daytona pickups in that guitar (inspired by Matt Schofield’s tone and playing) and that made a huge difference in the magnetic tones. Its now a pretty nice, and very flexible guitar that works well with Helix.

I still use S-Gear for any recordings because the tones and after the amp effects are just better to my ears.

Speaking of ears, I got hearing aids a few weeks ago, and just last week got the program adjusted for music. Now I’m thinking I waited too long to do this. Its like a blanket has been taken off the world.