Agreed! I wish I could take credit for it but I found it in a forum post a couple of years ago. It’s simple yet brilliant. Thanks to whoever came up with it and shared it. To me, this is the sort of thing the forum does best. Hopefully MIDI work-arounds won’t be needed much longer.
Please add full midi implementation! Every single feature of a digital pedal should be midi assignable and controllable.
Im still amazed that this is still not done on their side.
I do the same and have the mix assigned to an expression, so I turn off the delay by mixing it to 0.
It’s funny that, after this many years, the QC is such an advanced device in many ways, but down-right primitive in other ways.
I have analog pedals that have thorough midi implementation (i love you Chase Bliss). I never understood fancy digital pedals lacking this (old Strymonand UA).
You could say that about each of the modellers I’ve had. They are all in constant development with strong and weak points.
Picking Pete: Well, there’s only one that I use and it goes like this…say I’m in Preset mode, so the QS’s onboard foot switches select the 8 presets in a particular bank, but I also want to turn different FX blocks off and on. I have two Hotone MIDI controllers giving me a total of 8 more footswitches. In Stomp mode, I assign the 8 onboard FSs (foot switches) to turn different blocks off and on. I set up each of the Hotone FSs to send three commands, a command to put the QC in Stomp mode, then send a command to trigger a specific FS on the QC, then third command to return the QC to Preset mode. When I press a Hotone FS, the 3 commands are all sent very quickly (less than 300ms?) so I don’t even notice any delay. If you want to access a different feature, for instance, change Scenes from Stomp mode, you only need to change the first and third commands from your MIDI controller. You can even have different banks on your controller for different functions. I hope this all makes sense.
I wish I could take credit for this hack but I stumbled onto it in a forum post a couple of years back. Concerning other MIDI hacks, figure out what you want to accomplish and search the forum or post a question about that specific task.
This is still one of the best midi hacks on the QC…! I really hope for a soon full implementation of midi…
I agree. Though, it would truly be an easy fix if they would add direct midi control over stomp like they do with scene as opposed to just footswitch activation. I have an MC4 Pro on my board with the QC and quickly ran into the limitations of Scene mode. Now I am using hybrid mode, but the MC4 can’t do as much because I can’t do the scene/stomp/scene flip around anymore.
To add on this. We have been using the QC with 2 guitars, for the last year in our LA jam nights, twice a month, controlling it using Midi Captain for Guitar 1 (using 4 buttons to swap scenes that have specific effects, and then 4 more in stomp mode to control 2 overdrives, delay, booster), and Airstep for Guitar 2 (in stomp mode 2 overdrives, delay, booster). Works great BUT it was quiet a setup.
We have been asking for this for years, but for some reason, it seems to be low on their list of priorities—or maybe it is hard to implement. In my opinion, this is the one area where the QC is behind everyone else.
100% agree about that. People have been requesting this for years, seems crazy that a new smaller hardware iteration existed before this, not really a good look.
Bump bump bump!
It’s the single reason that I switched to FM9. QC form factor and UX are great, tones are good, effects adequate and improving. But not enough foot control to gig with. The FM9 patch I use on every gig could not be reproduced on QC or Helix Stadium, mostly because of channel switching in the blocks, and flexibility of control using the foot controllers.
MIDI gives you 128 CC numbers per channel, 0–127. Even if Neural reserves roughly 15–20 of them for fixed QC functions, that still leaves well over 100 CC numbers potentially available for user assignments.
That makes the current limitation feel more artificial than technical. The QC already understands MIDI CC, already has fixed CC mappings, and already has blocks with bypass states. The missing layer is simply a user-facing assignment system.
A sensible implementation would be: fixed Neural functions keep their reserved CCs, everything else is available to MIDI Learn, duplicate assignments get a conflict warning, and reserved CCs get a “MIDI function reserved” message. That would immediately make the QC much more capable with external controllers without breaking any existing rigs.
It might actually be a software limitation to however they programmed the operating system. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t have opened the midi aside from an actual limitation to their software or however everything is programmed. The QC has been out for nearly 6 years at this point
Designing the QC with a limitation like that would really be a massive oversight. Its current state really causes users to look elsewhere, especially while all other major platforms have block midi learn, even line 6 has had that for over 20 years.
I know this request has been asked since basically day one. If it’s not possible, Neural really should publicly mention it’s a hardware limitation rather than users waiting years for something that will never happen.
I’m not speculating it was on purpose. I feel like it wasn’t programmed that way on purpose, but more so something they realized has a limitation and haven’t been able to fix within the software or hardware
And you could have the QC operate under multiple midi channels, up to 16.
My band uses 3 QCs with independent channels for automation, preset, vocal throws and drive through the QC, video and lighting all on dedicated midi channels. Having came from Axe FxIII, HX Stomp, and POD HD ProX, I’ve had to completely reconfigure midi usage when we all went QC based. So many more presets have became necessary with how limited the midi input control of the QC actually is.