Effect controler?

[cheifitj]

Okay,
I have never figured this out. When you see videos of (often) pro players and they have this giant black controller with a boat load of buttons that seem to control stuff in the rack, what is that? Are they all custom, hand made? How do they work?
Seems that they often turn on entire chains of pedals, either rack mount or stomp box style.

Whats up with those?

[Adamixoye]

I pretty sure those boards are just sending MIDI signals to the rack effects? There are lots of boards that can do this---you don't need a custom one.

[SonOfDelorian]

I asked a similar question about my board now I have 15 pedals and most of my tones has 2/3 up to 5 pedals on at a time to get a tone. You can get a board that controls the pedals and then a midi bank that takes in what pedals need to be turned on so you can have setting 1 turn on x & y pedal setting 2 turn on y/z/a pedals then the board you have on stage has the different settings but on a midi board allowing multiple pedals to be turned on at once. Chris Wolstenholme from MUSE uses one all the time so does the singer Matt Bellamy.

[rnarrington1]

My lead guitarist uses a voodoo labs ground control to run all his effects in his rack. They do this so they can have one pedal running a multitude of pedals and processors. He uses the ground control to run his six pedals, tc electronics effects unit, mesa tri axis, and his mesa power amp. Makes things much easier to control, and you can turn on multiple effects with one button, pretty cool setup.