PX350/360 with SP33 half damper function

[Stevetuc]

It's been mentioned in another thread that the px350 only supports half and not continuous pedal over midi with sp33, although Mike Martin thought it was sending continuous data to the internal sound generator.

Charles, here's link and quote from Mike Martin, Casio Marketing, concerning their SP22 & SP33 sustain pedals:

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1968403/13.html

The SP32 and SP33 BOTH support a "progressive half-pedaling." It is a variable controller from 0-127 in MIDI values. Not an on/off switch. The SP33 is actually velocity sensitive. The force at which you press the pedal also impacts the volume of the "damper sound". You can hear the dampers lifting off the strings and this will be either very subtle or more noticeable based on the how quickly you stomp on the damper pedal.

So a couple of questions, maybe Mike can confirm:

Was this ever resolved? Does the SP33 have a continuous damper ie is it a potentiometer ( but is converted to 3 midi levels by the px350)?

Is the px360 situation identical to above?

Thanks in advance

Steve

[cpcohen]

I've watched the MIDI data stream _out_ of the PX-350 with the SP-33, and it _doesn't_ have continuous half-pedalling -- three values come out:

 

. . . Pedal up

. . . half-pedal (the MIDI value is settable in the menu system);

. . . Pedal down..

 

I have sent MIDI streams with "continuous half-pedal" messages _into_ the PX-350, and its sound generator _does_ respond properly to them, with slowly-increasing sustain times as the MIDI value changes.

 

I haven't checked -- pin-to-pin on the connector -- whether the "sustain" pedal is actually a continuous controller.  But I'd bet that it isn't.

 

Check for some messages by Mike Martin on "Pianoworld" in 2014-2015; I think he finally agreed with me.   But I can't find them now.

 

It would take an incredibly short-sighted engineering department to have a continuous pedal, and a sound generator that responded to "continuous half-pedal" MIDI messages, and _not_ send the pedal data straight to the sound generator.

 

.    Charles

[swistak]

I did the same thing with my PX-560 and SP-33. The midi stream in Pianoteq clearly shows that the sustain pedal sends a full range (0-127) of values. It appears to be well spread over the physical movement of the pedal. The other two pedals are on/off.

 

While SP-33 is clearly capable of producing continuous pedaling, it might be the PX-350 that fiddles with the values and alters the data on MIDI out. Maybe it's something that was fixed in PX-x60 series?

[Stevetuc]

I did the same thing with my PX-560 and SP-33. The midi stream in Pianoteq clearly shows that the sustain pedal sends a full range (0-127) of values. It appears to be well spread over the physical movement of the pedal. The other two pedals are on/off.

While SP-33 is clearly capable of producing continuous pedaling, it might be the PX-350 that fiddles with the values and alters the data on MIDI out. Maybe it's something that was fixed in PX-x60 series?

[Stevetuc]

That's interesting, so the SP-33 damper is continuous. I'll need to test this on the PX-360. As you say , perhaps it was fixed in the PX-x60 series.

I purchased a Roland RPU-3 which I was going to interface with an Arduino to generate midi out for all 3 pedals, but it's possible that it may be able to interface directly to the PX-360 pedal connector and generate continuous damper if it behaves as you reported for the PX-560. Fingers crossed!

[Stevetuc]

I've verified that the PX-360 sustain pedal sends a full range of midi (0-127) . I did this using a variable resistor connected to the pedal port pins and monitoring using midi-ox

I used the connector diagram shown here http://joflaherty.org/PianoPedal/Pedals.pdf

With wiper of pot connected to long_sustain , and ends connected to common and short_sustain( short_sustain on PX-120 for half pedal , but 3 volts on PX-360)

midi 127 corresponds to 3 Volts on long_sustain

midi 0 to 0.4 volts or less

The PX-360 also responds to the continuous pedal when playing.

Very pleased this is the case!

[cpcohen]

I did the same thing with my PX-560 and SP-33. The midi stream in Pianoteq clearly shows that the sustain pedal sends a full range (0-127) of values. It appears to be well spread over the physical movement of the pedal. The other two pedals are on/off.

 

While SP-33 is clearly capable of producing continuous pedaling, it might be the PX-350 that fiddles with the values and alters the data on MIDI out. Maybe it's something that was fixed in PX-x60 series?

 

Yes -- based on those results, it's the PX-350 (not the SP-33) that is too "dumb" to do proper translation of the SP-33 position to a MIDI value.

 

. . . I learn something new every day!

 

And congratulations to the PX-360 owners who have "continuous pedalling"!

 

.     Charles (a PX-350 owner)

 

PS -- thanks to the testers!