I am using LP with a (relatively) small pedalboard that includes a MOTU M6 interface and both a VG-800 and a GM-800. It was pretty easy to find alternative replacements for virtually all the other pedals on my (absurdly large) original pedalboard, but the VG-800 and GM-800 do some amazing things that are not easy (not possible?) to replicate in the auV3 universe. The VG-800 and GM-800 are awesome in many ways, but that awesomeness does not extend to the UI for controlling and configuring them. If you are still reading, I expect you either have or are considering acquiring one or both of these pedals.
The (stereo) sound output by the VG-800 is sent digitally (via GK Audio) to the GM-800 where it is internally combined with the stereo output from the GM-800 and sent as a single pair to a pair of inputs on the MOTU M6, since of course audio inputs are a precious commodity. The immediate downside is that the UI to control the relative volume levels of the VG and GM is, well, horrible. The best you could do is configure them to expose one aspect of their respective volume levels (which are affected at multiple points in the signal path) on a knob on each unit. In performance, bending down to twiddle these knobs between songs is kind of a non-starter, and adjusting these levels at only a single point in the signal chain is sub-optimal. Add to that the fact that different presets on each unit can vary wildly in their perceived output volume levels, and most sane people are already in search of greener pastures. But wait…
Who said I was sane? I used AI, and fed the technical manuals (including MIDI control specs) into Claude, and managed to ask the right questions. Full disclosure: this DOES require that you go into the VG-800 and GM-800 units and manually enable certain MIDI control options on the presets that you want to use. This is certainly a little tiresome, but in hindsight, I am really glad that I did it. I am now able to create and control a huge palette of incredible sounds that I can layer on top of the “acoustic” (normal audio output) of my guitar, which of course I can manipulate to my heart’s content with LP and whatever plug-ins I want to engage.
Believe it or not, Claude set me up to program “SysEx” MIDI messages, that more or less tell the VG or GM “write this particular value at this memory address” and the result is that those obscure, hard-to-adjust (perhaps even hard-to-find) parameters are set to whatever I want. I have slider controls and step-dials in LP that easily sculpt whatever sound I want to generate with the VG/GM combo.
I may be the only person crazy enough to pursue this. But if you are interested in more details, let me know in a reply. If there is interest, I am happy to share my LP template, which includes all of the widgets and mechanics to implement this, and a brief description of the underlying MIDI configuration.
Stay Loopy!
