MIDI Amp Channel Switcher

carlsoncoder

New member
I wanted to be able to change the channels/voicing on my Blackstar HT Club 50 amp via MIDI. I know there are probably some "pre-built" solutions out there, but figured I would try to roll my own.

The amp has two channels (Clean and OD), and each channel has 2 separate voicings. In examining the included footswitch, I was able to see it's just a simple TRS cable - for example, when Tip/Sleeve have continuity it's one channel, and if you remove that continuity, it changes the channel...and vice versa with the Ring/Sleeve. This was being done with two footswitches.

What I ended up doing was building something out with an Arduino clone (Adafruit Trinket) and some relays. The Arduino reads in MIDI commands, and based on the PC # that I send it, it activates/deactivates the appropriate relay, which either makes T/S or R/S have continuity or not. I got the code and wiring all working on a breadboard before moving it over to veroboard...was very happy when it fired up and worked properly on the first try after putting it together!

The outside is pretty boring - since there's no need to interact with this pedal, I'm just going to mount it underneath my board.

Was a pretty fun build to make a circuit "from scratch" and write some code to make it do exactly what I want!

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