The DigiTech Control One midi pedal is the cockpit of my system. It is especially designed for the DigiTech GSP2101 and with it I control everything: channel switching of the Quad preamp, program change of the GSP210, effects on/off, volume boost, silent tuning, morphing and fade of EQs/volumes/fx parameters, mix levels, etc. It has 10 function switches (all numbered), a bank up and a bank down switch to go to a different banks of programs, built in expression pedal and I've connected a Ernie Ball Volume pedal to it as an additional programmable expression pedal.

I've programmed it that switch 1 to 5 (which are the closest to my feet) contain the 5 most important sounds. The top left 2 switches (6 & 7) have most of the time a synthesiser sound. Switch 8 & 9 are used if I want to turn specific fx on/off without changing the whole program. I use this most of the time to turn noise gates and delays on or off. Switch #0 is programmed for silent tuning. Right now I use 3 banks of 7 sounds for all my songs. The banks are pretty much the same but have some specific sounds for certain songs, but my main clean and lead sounds are the same on all banks.

Then I still have two expression pedals left. The one on the Control One is programmed most of the time to small and less important fades. But I've hooked an Ernie Ball Volume pedal to the Control One which functions as the external expression pedal and it works really nice. It's much smoother and responds better, the overall sweep as longer and therefor more acurate and the pedal is big which is nice cause I got some pretty big feet. With this pedal I do volume sweels morphing of clean sounds to freaked out synth sounds, fade in some detune, delay and extra volume for solo's, etc...

Anything is possible with the Control One. I can assign up to 10 different parameters to be changed realtime by the floorpedal and it's expression pedals, so that's more then enough........ Too bad it only works with DigiTech gear, cause if I want to replace the DigiTech GSP2101 with a TC Electronic G-Force I would need to search for a different pedal.

To give you an idea how it works: when I press for example on switch #1 (Jazz Clean) the GSP2101 sends a midi signal to the Nobels MS-8 to activate the right sound of my Mesa/Boogie Quad preamp + it opens the patch for the Jazz Clean of the GSP2101. So with just one press it goes to a clean sound + the reverb and graphic EQ of the Quad preamp and opens the right patch of the GSP2101 which contains some EQ, chorus, detune and delay. If I would press the switch #4 after that, it would instantly give me the Lead 1 mode of the Quad preamp + it's 5 band EQ + the corresponding patch of the GSP2101 which has some eq-ing and a noise gate.

The switching happens within a 10th of second and has no audio drop outs. It evens lets the delay of the Jazz Clean fade out while I start playing a heavy riff with the new patch. So no more tap-dancing between pedals and switches and god knows what.......just press the right button and instantly you have the sound with all the pre-programmed EQ and fx settings. That's the true advantage of a 19" rack setup.