Perhaps the oldest and most storied genre of entrant in this list, MIDI foot pedals have existed in some form or another since the final days of the hair metal era. A traditional setup involves a rack mounted switcher, which has five or more loops in which a guitar tech would place an analog pedal like a Tube Screamer or a Big Muff. The rack lurks in the shadows of the stage behind the wall of amps, untouched by the guitarist. Said guitarist then stomps on a foot controller up front to send MIDI Program Change (PC) messages to the switcher, telling it which loops to engage and disengage. One button enables or disables an infinite number of effects, making it much easier to focus on more important tasks like playing guitar, chugging Jack Daniels, or glaring menacingly at your guitar tech.
MIDI foot pedals have experienced a significant glow-up in the past five years. Out is your weird uncle’s clunky metallic box with a buggy alarm clock-esque display, an arcane programming workflow, and an unwieldy, proprietary power supply. Coming in hot is a new generation of svelte and sturdy boxes with modern connectivity and low-current power options that work with USB-C or traditional 9-volt pedal power. Morningstar was the earliest entrant in this renaissance with their MC series, which was the first such pedal to directly address the needs of modern guitarists with spiffy updates like a simple web-based programming interface and 1/4-inch TRS MIDI outputs for newfangled pedal brands like Chase Bliss, Meris, and Jackson Audio.
While we recognize that Morningstar walked so others could sprint, our official pick in this genre is the Luminite Graviton M2. When stacked against the MC6 Pro it clocks in at over $100 less; it has built-in WIDI and Wi-Fi, and is a breeze to program via the onboard touchscreen; and its constellation of optional add-ons—like a pair of knobs or buttons you can stick to your guitar to send Control Change (CC) messages while away from your pedals—feel light-years ahead of the clunky MS DOS vibes that most Morningstar fans complain about. The MC6 gets a slight edge with the number of MIDI messages it can send per button (32 versus the M2’s 16), but everything else about the M2 is abundantly more user-friendly than the MC6.
It took less than 10 minutes to pair the Graviton M2 with my iPad via WIDI, map its buttons to some macro controls in Loopy Pro, and stage an extensive solo jam session that was controlled solely by the M2. I skipped reading the manual and was able to figure out 90 percent of its basic functionality from within the editor on the device itself, which is not something I ever thought would be possible back when I was spending hours programming my Rocktron All Access during the dark ages of the “Indie Sleaze” era.