Behringer FCB1010 Reviews

Sturdy, does the job, worth it.

I use it to control a loopstation hands-free. Assigning midi Cc is not intuitive, but you'll find enough tutorials to solve that in 15 minutes. I don't see any other device to do that cheaper.

Excellent

Most probably the best midi controller on the market for it's price. Very good heavy duty construction with quite a lot of adjustment settings. A bit tricky on it's setup but when you figure it out everything runs smoothly. There are a lot of videos on youtube for setting this up so it won't be a problem!

Perfect only if you hack it

I have now set up my FCB1010 in the way I envisioned, and it took quite a lot of work, but now I'm very satisfied with it. Out of the box, it works as expected, but configuring it is unintuitive and laborsome, and you don't have that much flexibility for what the buttons can do. I ended up ordering a third-party non-official firmware which fixes the "software" part of this product, and with that I can now program the MIDI functions in a programming language. This was the definitive solution, and now my setup is very flexible, with features like "trigger" mode for the preset buttons, or "sustain", which as far as I understand are impossible with the official firmware. Regarding the hardware itself, I have two minor complaints: (1) in a silent room, you can hear a hum from the FCB1010 whenever it is turned on, (2) there seems to be some mild "glue" on the expression pedals such that you can feel some stickiness when the pedal is on the extreme bottom or the extreme top. All in all, not a perfect device, but definitely has opened a whole world of possibilities when performing live and when you're hands are busy with a musical instrument.

Good value for money

Good and reasonably robust MIDI pedal board. It has been around for about twenty years now, and shows it's age in that it uses five pin DIN connectors, and needs it's own power chord. Instead of using MIDI USB, and power over USB. Out of the box, if you want to program MIDI settings you have to use the built in interface, using the pedals and a numerical display and some status leds, which can seem a little clunky. The programming interface is sometimes nicknamed "The River Dance". It's actually not that bad, once you get the logic behind the interface. To make it an even better deal there are at least three different FCB1010 MIDI editor programs for Windows and Mac, plus one for iPad, that I know of. That makes it way easier, and also lets you save different setups for different uses. There is also a MAX4Live device for Ableton Live that does the assignment directly in Live, but translating the MIDI signals from the factory setup to the MIDI functions and values Live needs. That one works like a charm too. I'm really satisfied and would definitely buy it again.

the one

And only FCB, the legend. Even in it's stock form, it is a quite capable controller. Wish changing midi channels was an easier endeavor so I could integrate it in my synth setup.

not suitable for my setup

I wanted to control all my hardware synths and sequencers. But this unit does not have the ability to control more than one midi channel at one time. At least there is not any information on the internet about how to setup the unit for this usage.

Excellent (yet complex) controller

I got this to be able to change some plugin presets on the fly and after (a lot) of debugging and learning (I am new to MIDI) I was able to correctly configure the MIDI messages I wanted to send and properly tell the plugins what to do with them. It gets the job done, and the price is accessible.

There is no limitation on what you can do with this, basically you can configure each button (and the expression pedals) to send any MIDI message you want. I could change presets, configure amp settings, Volume, and many other effects just as I wanted. You have a lot of freedom when creating your own setup.

But getting started with it is pretty hard to do, since the only interface you have with it is a 2-digit 7 segment digital display. Luckily, there is a pretty big community online that can help a lot.

Powerful, but finnicky

Firstly, as many other reviewers have likely highlighted, it's built like a f**king tank. The chassis is nigh on invincible. The only weak spot in the construction is both of the expression pedals. Made of a very brittle feeling plastic that I think might not have great survivability.

The expression pedals are really holding the brunt of my irks with this device. They never quite seem to consistently return to max or min positions and they are very much NOT big fans of being reprogrammed to send a different CC signal than 27/28 in my experience. Now this could be user error as I still haven't gotten fully to reigns with the programming interface.

Overall, good tool with a long and possibly frustrating learning curve.

ALLTOGETHER NICE!

i bought it for my rc505mkii looper; after installing the custom chip everything works fine.

Great

Bought for multiple uses, and it works as required

Easy to use and program

Great bit of kit. Does what you expect it to do

I'm impressed by the endless customizations

Behringer made the holy grail of MIDI controllers and I'm happy that it's still available after all these years, identical to the original version.

Tons of buttons, two large expression pedals, unlimited options at your feet!

I use it for my home studio and I like the soft buttons since I don't wear shoes at home (I was curious for other MIDI controllers but they had those big metal true bypass buttons), the 10 buttons can be customised in many ways, from sending midi notes at each press to sending CC or PC commands as well.

On top of that you have 10 pages meaning you can have 100 discrete MIDI commands sent to any device you wish, with the two expression pedals changing for each one of them.

All this plus the third party custom roms will allow you to control anything with this non to tiny monster.

Great MIDI Controller

The Behringer FCB1010 is a great foot controller for any guitarist, but also for any live performer who needs to change any settings during a show/performance.

In the Studio ... the foot-controller pedal is basically a Foot-Mouse ... whereas normally you would click on a setting or make adjustment with your mouse, you can pre-program your setup to accept MIDI control.

I have used this pedal for Guitar work, where I control both my effects rack, and my Amp-Head settings, using MIDI cables. And, I have also used this pedal in the Studio to Start and Stop Recordings, rewind, fast-forward etc ... anything that accepts a MIDI signal can be controlled and programmed.

The 2 pedals are typically assigned to Expression, and Volume, but they can both be re-assigned should you wish.

This FCB1010 pedal 'does not' have any internal programable MIDI features ... it just sends MIDI notes, which you must tell the software what you want it to do. In Logic Pro, the MIDI Learn button is used to do this.

I would recommend this product.

A nice piece of equipment but not very user friendly

This piece has a very high learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, it seems there’s a lot you can do.

Great value for the price.

I needed a midi controller for my amp simulation software (e.g. Guitar Rig),

Pros :

- Feels durable.

- Tons of features.

- Low price.

- Almost all foot switches can be programmed to send midi signals. This is ideal if you want to use them with the "midi learn" feature from your DAW/virtual instrument.

Cons :

- Programming isn't easy. I would recommend looking for Youtube video tutorials.

- The expression pedals min & max midi values were slightly off initially. This can however be fixed using the builtin calibration mode.

- The foot switches have no "click" feedback.

Best bang for buck

The device is very versatile and well built. You can do anything MIDI related.

However, the programming software is far from plug and play. I tried figuring it out by myself and as a result I've ended up wasting a few hours and then, when finally finding the proper instructions on Youtube (do that, the documentation sucks) it still took me an additional 2-3 hours to setup.

It was a bit frustrating but I learned some more about MIDI... Overall pretty happy with the device.

Learn to harness it and its great

Its great, cheap, durable, programmable by software or hardware itself. It's super useful. There is even som ROM chip upgrades out there you can install to make it even better. ;)

Really tough and flexible floor controller

I bought this after having been let down by an eBayer over the purchase of an iRig controller for Amplitube 5 on my PC. There are some things that this cannot do with Amplitube, I still haven't got the looper working for example. I am controlling patch selection, stomps on and off, volume and wah. Download a suitable free utility to programme sysex files from your PC and this becomes an easy to configure work horse. I haven't yet configured it for BIAS FX2, but I am certain that this will be quite doable.

Like: It has weapons' grade construction - built like the proverbial tank. 100 presets. Really responsive expression pedals.

Meh: Takes a while to get your head around programming it, much easier with the mountain utilities app.

Dislike: None really, at this price it really is astonishing value. If it is your thing, upgrading the firmware can only be done by changing the chip. A UNO chip is less than €15, so fill your boots.

Overall, really enjoying using it. I have friend who is software engineer and electronics whizz who had bought one to try to turn it into a keyboard note controller. We'll see how that goes. It would be brilliant to be able to play strings with my feet too.

Works well

That's my second fcb1010 and works well. i use it with my axefx2xl. Programming is not so easy but once you do it, it's an affordable solution. Expression pedals are unnecesserily easy to move, i tried to tighten a little, now works good.

Very good

Excellent foot controller, reliable and durable. Would buy again in a heart beat

Unbeatable Value for Money. Period. You may need some time to get used to it

I own the FCB 1010 for several months now, and I use it to control my DAW in which I load many things. I run several instances of vst amps and a guitar to midi. It can handle perfectly many things and I have never had any problems on rehearsals or on live stages handling a violin, an el. guitar and a vst keys organ triggered by guitar to midi.

I have to say that handling this device requires somewhat deep knowledge of how midi and your DAW works. You have to figure out what you need precisely and which is the best way to do it, but I think the same applies to all the midi controllers of this type. Also, when you press 1 the light is lid and when you press 2 only the second light is lid, while 1 is not, which for me is not a problem. You can solve this with the installation of the UNO chip, which I don't have, so I don't have experience on that. I strongly recommend using FCB 1010 along with a software fcb1010 manager. The pedals feel a little cheap, but in general FCB1010 is built to last.