COMPADRE Controller App – Quick Start

Connections

Option 1: Wired connection - Lightning to USB Adapter & USB to MIDI Connector

Also known as an iPhone camera adapter.

You can use an official Apple one or a cheap clone works just as well.

You also need a way of connecting USB to MIDI – a cheap adapter like this works ok.

Option 2: Wireless connection - Wireless Bluetooth MIDI

You can connect from the app wirelessly to a WIDI Master for a Bluetooth MIDI connection.

In either case you need to connect MIDI to Compadre

The Compadre has a ¼” TRS jack for MIDI input so you need to find a way of converting the MIDI 5-pin connector to a ¼” jack. For example, you can use an Empress midibox2 which has MDI 5-pin input and 4 x jacks out. Chase Bliss Midibox is another similar product.

Compadre Controller Firmware

Make sure you have up to date firmware installed. Use the Strymon Update App on a PC or MAC to do this. If you do a factory reset, then update the firmware to the latest version.

The Compadre Controller App has been tested with version: 1.05

The Compadre Controller App

All connected? Right here we go…

Here’s the Home Screen

NOTE: Loading up the app and majority of functions will not change anything on your pedal. If you already have patches on the pedal, they will not be changed – unless you sync them.

The app starts off preloaded with the example patches from the Compadre manual.

The patches are colour coded:

WHITE – Unedited.

YELLOW – Edited. The patch is setup on the phone but is not saved in the pedal.

GREEN – Settings in the App have been sent and saved to the pedal. When patches are green, then you can use any MIDI controller to simply send a Program Change to recall the state.

At the top of the screen, in red, it says: Not connected to pedal

Let’s get connected…

Connect the App to the Pedal

Go to the Settings Screen:

If using a MIDI connection, you may see something like ‘USB MIDI Interface’. Here we have selected a MIDI Bluetooth connection. Select what you think is appropriate (or all if you are in doubt).

Next pick the MIDI Channel your pedal is setup for.

Compadre by default is on MIDI Channel 1.

Then go to MIDI Connection Test

Test the connection by pressing where indicated. If you are properly connected, then you should see the red COMP light go on and off as you press. If that happens then great! If not then check your connections, MIDI Channel.

If the test switched the pedal on/off then select the confirmation box. The “Not Connected to pedal” banner will disappear.

NOTE: Do not cheat! Only confirm the connection is OK if you actually have a connection. Unfortunately, Strymon does not give any information out about how to read anything from the pedal so this relies on you making sure that you only confirm when all is good.

Edit a Patch

Go to the Edit Screen and click on the middle area of a patch. (The white bit of patch 6.)

Patch 6 was selected. You now see all of the available settings. Move the sliders. As you do, you should hear the changes from the pedal. For more accuracy, slide to the general value you want, then tap on the label to the left to move down 1 step, tap on the value to the right to move up 1 step.

This is effectively tweaking the knobs on the actual pedal.

Don’t forget to scroll down the screen to see all available settings including Patch Name and Details.

At this point nothing is saved in the pedal. If you are happy with the settings, then press

If you look at the pedal, you should see the BOOST button flashing red and then Blue as it saves the patch. At the end of it you’ll see the state Synced on pedal in Green.

When you go back to the Home Screen you will see it Green too.

All good to go… Now if you press patch 6, then it will send a Program Change to the pedal.

Any patches that are YELLOW have been edited in the app, but not saved to the pedal. From this screen, if you press say patch 2, it will send ALL of the settings individually to the pedal. You may hear a burst of noise as they all get sent. The sound of the pedal will reflect the settings in the app for patch 2 but nothing will be saved in the pedal. If you send a Program Change 2 via a MIDI controller it will recall what is in the pedal not what you have just sent.

Just try it all out. It is difficult to mess things up up the pedal unintentionally. The App only ever saves to the pedal when you press sync to pedal. Pressing any of the patches on the home screen will never save anything in the pedal.

You are always warned if you are about to make permanent changes to a patch. Try stuff in higher patch number out of the way at first.

Help Manual

The full manual is in the App. Just go to the … Screen and see it there.

Bonus Top Tip

As has been said before, there is no way to read any existing patch data from the pedal. Strymon do not provide that information. I have asked them. Why don’t you ask them as well?

It is actually pretty quick to get existing patches into the App…

First go to Settings and in Patch Edit Slide Values select ‘Display as Clock times’

Now when you go to Patch Editor you will see the values ranging from 8:00 through 12:00 to 4:00. Now look at your pedal see where the pointers are and just set the app the same.

For example:

Support

Contacting us:

Checkout the Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/groups/mezzotone

If you have any queries, please email: support@mezzotone.com