Peavey's range of MIDI products now extends from flagship synths and world-beating master keyboards to more mundane but welcome MIDI tools. Paul Ireson makes friends with the new PC1600 MIDI Controller.

Peavey are showing a surprising and most welcome trend towards covering the hi-tech music field as well as they do that of traditional rock'n'roll instruments. Not content with merely producing excellent synths, master keyboards and effects processors, they also know that there's a market for some basic if rather less glamorous tools.

The PC1600 is just such a device — a MIDI fader box that allows you to transmit continuous controller data, SysEx, and just about anything else you can send down a MIDI cable. Though it's not as exciting as a new effects processor — which you could easily buy for the £330 or so that the PCI600 costs — it's a very useful device which, once tried, you won't want to be without.

It's not the first of its kind, of course. Lexicon, Kawai, QuasiMIDI and US MIDI widget specialist J.L. Cooper are among those to have produced similar fader boxes, but Peavey's effort stacks up rather well.

HARDWARE

The PC1600 comes in a reassuringly heavy metal case — handy, because the weight on the unit's solid rubber feet makes it less likely that it will move as you waggle its faders. The faders, 16 of them, have a 60mm throw and are moderately stiff, a good compromise between being too easy to move accidentally and being too stiff to move easily. Below each of the faders is a button, and to the right of the row of faders and buttons is a control panel housing a weighted data entry dial, LCD, cursor buttons, and Edit, Copy, Enter, Utility, Scene and Exit buttons. Round the back are MIDI In and Out sockets, and two jacks to accept inputs from control voltage footpedals.

What the PC1600 does is pretty simple. It contains 50 Presets, each of which recalls a particular setup defining what MIDI messages are sent by the 16 faders and buttons, the CV pedals, and the continuous data wheel. A simple application would be as a MIDI mixer, transmitting MIDI volume (Controller 7) messages for all 16 channels — on the other hand, the SysEx capabilities permit the PC1600 to act as a hardware editor for any synth or effects unit that allows SysEx editing.

As well as using faders to give dynamic control over parameters, you can also store and recall Scenes — a Scene is a snapshot of all current fader positions. When you recall a Scene the PC1600 transmits all MIDI data appropriate to the stored fader positions in whatever Preset was selected when the Scene was stored. There is room for 100 Scenes in memory.

PRESETS & PROGRAMMING

The PC1600 comes shipped from the factory with 50 Presets, but programming your own is very easy, thanks to a 2-line LCD which keeps to minimum the number of cryptic abbreviations you have to deal with, and also to a user's manual that makes the whole process very clear. Each fader can be assigned No Message (in which case it does nothing), a Continuous Controller, a MIDI String, or function as a Master Fader.

You can specify minimum and maximum values for continuous controller data, and also assign the fader's button to work as a mute or a solo button. In the former mode the button sends a minimum value for the fader's controller the first time you press it, and the current fader value when you press it a second time. Solo does exactly the same for every fader except the one with which it is associated. When a fader is designated as a Master Fader, it can control several other faders simultaneously — a handy way of setting up 'subgroups' with MIDI volume.

When programming MIDI data strings into faders, I found the PC1600 to be a good deal more flexible than the J.L. Cooper Fadermaster I normally use. The string can be as long as you like — you just go on adding as many bytes as you wish — and the unit offers a wide choice of formats for transmitting the fader-defined parameter that will make up part of your string. For example, some SysEx implementations require that parameter values are sent as a single byte (this is the most common), others that the value is sent as two separate bytes that represent respectively the tens and the units parts of a parameter whose range runs from 0-99. There are other formats, but it so happens that the Korg Wavestation requires the latter format, and the Fadermaster will only send the former (though this restriction applies only to user-programmed Fadermaster presets). The PC1600, however, caters for every possible parameter format.

The buttons can be programmed to transmit the following: No Message; Note On/Off (with velocity either pre-defined or set by the fader position); a MIDI string when pressed; a MIDI string when pressed and a second when released; or to switch between sending two different MIDI strings on alternate presses. They can also send program changes, or be used as mute or solo buttons, as described above.

A final aspect of Presets is that you can specify a series of MIDI messages to be sent on selection of each PC1600 Preset. These cover MIDI volume, bank select and program changes for each channel, plus a user string.

As shipped from the factory, the PC1600 comes with Presets that include several MIDI volume configurations, plus editors for synths and effects units from Peavey, Yamaha and Emu. Also featured is a Preset which acts as a Cubase remote control — the faders aren't used in this, so you can modify it to use the faders however you want.

Going beyond Scenes and Presets, the Peavey PC1600 will also filter data arriving at its MIDI In and combine it with internally generated data before it is sent to the MIDI Out, which may considerably ease the process of plumbing it into your MIDI system. You can filter or pass all of the following: Notes; Mod Wheel; Footpedal; Volume; Sustain; Reset Controllers; All Notes Off; Program Change; Polyphonic Aftertouch; Channel Aftertouch; Pitch Bend; System Exclusive; System Common; System Real-time.

CONCLUSION

There's really very little more one can say about the PC1600. A MIDI fader box is not the kind of thing to send reviewers into transports of delight, but I was about as impressed by the PC1600 as I think I could be. Excellent build quality aside, it does everything that it needs to be able to do and more — typical Peavey thoroughness.

Further Information

£329 inc VAT.

Peavey UK, (Contact Details).