Alternative to replace Helix Control?

[stratblue]

Hi.

 

It seems that my Helix Control is not up to the rigours of life on the carpeted floor of my home studio and has gradually decayed after 3 or 4 years of very easy use, the foot switches are unreliable and the power flickers on and off depending on the position of the cable. I'm not going to buy a secondhand one that might just end up the same way in a year or two and new ones are over £400, for this sort of money it seems like there are a lot of of options and since all of the functions I use respond to midi commands, should I consider something else?

 

The Voodoo Labs thing looks good and there is even this which looks very cool as well as doing way more than the Control.

 

Any opinions or experience will be welcome. (I'll only be using it in the home studio).

 

Thanks.

[DunedinDragon]

I rarely use my Helix Floor footswitches as I can get everything I need from my Morningstar MC8.  I've had this unit since 2015 and I can't say it's been as problematic as yours but some buttons always needed some attention to keep functioning well, and it's just as easy and more reliable to do everything over MIDI.

[theElevators]

The footswitches are fine, the microswitches are the absolute plastic .01c -per-switch cheap garbage!  How is it that I got Pod Go, and within several months one of the footswitches stopped working reliably?  And after I played exactly one gig on it....

 

But good news! 

 

But you can open it up and clean them out with Liquid DeoxIT.  As I found out (thanks to this forum), you cannot do it externally, you need to open it up. 

 

I have had very good results with my Pod Go and Helix LT.  Liquid DeoxIT cleans out the corrosion and lubricates the microswitches, so you won't have any issue for the next couple of years.

 

As for what MIDI controller to use, there are lots of options.  As long as the controller can send Program Changes and CC messages, you're all good.  I am also kind-of curious if I could get myself a MIDI controller, but all the ones I've seen either have too few buttons, or are a mammoth with way too many.  I wish there were a simple 10 button MIDI controller with an expression pedal you could plug in.