Nektar Pacer USB MIDI Footswitch Controller with Nektar DAW Integration

Product Information

you can’t send start stop continue from Pacer, but if you enable MIDI clock in a DAW and transmit to Elektron, the start, stop and continue messages will be transmitted that way. The remaining two act as down and up switches, selecting the previous or next preset in Preset mode, and track numbers in the Track and Transport modes. Solution to this was to use the same Preset midi messages that you can send out when you switch to a particular Preset.

By contrast, I’ve hooked up the Pacer, updated the firmware, tried to run the configuration software for Logic Pro (Apple rejected it due to security concerns), played with some buttons, read enough of the manual to get frustrated (the second sentence in one paragraph is, “Sounds confusing? Nektar seemed to revel in doing things in the most complicated way possible, while still getting things to work. It's main competition is the Behringer FCB1010, but in a direct comparison we'd prefer the Pacer, just because it feels stronger in your hands and seems to be built tougher. Maybe just a bad apple from the first batch, in general there are not many reports about erroneous FCP pedals. The foot switches might be plastic, but they seem to have nice quality, and unlike the little, metal, old-school foot switches, they are comfortable to use when rehearsing with bare feet.The Nektar unit has the top and bottom row aligned, so for people with big feet like me, it pretty much rules this unit out. I expected to connect it up to GP with some default config, have some GP Widgets learn the default MIDI messages, and start playing around. Although guides exist today on how to setup the Nektar Pacer with a RC505, it took me quite a bit of time to accomplish a fairly simple task. However, some of Pacer’s functions don’t have a channel setting (Relays and MMC messages for example). Press Stomp Switch [C], then turn the Data encoder to select the CC value, which you would like to transmit for the second press of the selected Stomp Switch (or the Minimum value for expression pedals).

They claim iOS compatibility, but it’s worth finding out if the unit is programmable on the actual hardware, since there’s no app for it. Guitarists whose amp solutions are software-based will love that they can navigate Record Mode in their DAWs without moving their hands from their guitar strings. Although I was very impressed by the range of non-DAW-specific functionality that Nektar have managed to cram into the Pacer, it remains, at heart, a floorboard DAW control surface and excels in that role. The bottom row contains your trigger switches 1-5 that will be programmed to correspond to your RC505MKIIs switches. You can then have preset that you loaded on Pacer, setup to control parameters specific to the preset that was loaded on the target device/application.

The name of the current preset will appear in the 5-character display with the first character flashing. Your programming options are extensive: In the most basic state, a switch can send one MIDI message or change a relay state. Turn the Data Encoder to select the velocity value, which you would like to transmit when the Stomp Switch is pressed.