Reddit reviews Yamaha FC5 Compact Sustain Pedal for Portable Keyboards, black

These LED bulbs in red are dirt cheap, work in any standard lamp r clip-light fixture, and don't fog paper; 2 or 3 of them and your darkroom is nice and bright. Old-school safelights just suck compared to modern LEDs.

For burning cards, get duplex paper - white on one side, black on the other - or spray-mount printer paper to black poster board. Cut the hole you need, and use it white-side up - you can see the neg on the white side and do very specific burns that way.

Keep a spool of florist wire handy to make dodging tools.

An repeating audible timer is the shit; if you have an exposure of 12 seconds but want to dodge something for 3, you can count off the beeps. it allows you to do a couple different dodge/burns with just one exposure cycle.

A footswitch for your timer is awesome if you dodge/burn a lot - keeps your hands free and ready at the baseboard. If your enlarger has an old-fashioned footswitch jack, you can re-wire it or make a jumper that connects your timer to a cheap musician's foot switch.

Learn to properly test fixer and developer before printing with them; learn about 2-bath fixing.

You can make your own hypo clear with sodium sulphite (cheap by the pound, not really dangerous as it's used in food preservation). About a half film vial to a liter of water. Tray life is a couple hours, make and dump. A gallon jug with 1/4 cup salt (I use canning/pickling salt, salt's cheap) is handy, use it as the water when you mix hypo clear, the salt boosts the power of the HCA.

For test strips, rigging up something with black card, where you slide the paper under a slot for each strip exposure, allows you to make test strips of the main subject area of the neg. Can save some time.

Enlarging lenses are like camera lenses - they have a range of optimal apertures, they can be soft or lower-contrast wide open, and they suffer from diffraction when stopped down. Test your EL lenses.

When exposure times are too short, don't stop down into diffraction range - stick a sheet of ND lighting gel in the contrast filter slot. It's cheap and you can stack it. No slot? Use a camera ND filter under the lens.

Printing big? Enlarger alignment is as important as lens quality. A mis-aligned enlarger will give poor prints from even the best lens.

Watch Craigs List for a used dry mount press... you'll fall in love with the thing.

Printing fiber up to 11x14? Those canvas flip-flop dryers are great. But grab a used one, take off the canvas and wash it. Nice flat prints that dry quickly.

I could go on all day...

When shopping for one make sure the pedal actuates the proper electrical contact function you need. For all intents and purposes a pedal is a on/ and off switch. Some pedals are always "on", (Electronically Closed) and when you push them they turn off (opening the connection). Some are the opposite.

My first go around I had some trouble when I purchased a Yamaha FC5 Sustain Pedal, its normally on. I was trying to use it with a simple RTS 301 Belt pack but it was doing the opposite of what I needed, Opens the mic when I plug it in, then kills it when I press and hold, Not all that desirable.

I did some more shopping and for a Hosa Dual- Channel foot switch It features 2 latching contacts that you could use between A and B channel Comm systems. The switches were "normally open" and when you press and latch it closes the connection and turns on the mic.

Sorry for the long post explaining Normally Open , Normally Closed foot pedals.

I use a sustain pedal like this one as a gate trigger regularly and it works as a gate trigger on my CV equipment, a sustain pedal on my synth, and punch-in/punch-out on my sequencer. I think you should be fine, I've only seen this one type of foot switch so I think everything will use the same signal.

Thx, I really appreciate the detailed response :)

I wouldn't be changing the effects all too much, and I would definitely set them up as presets so that I'm ready to go when I need them.

As far as the pedal goes, I know this other streamer I watch uses the Behringer I mentioned above, along with this Yamaha sustain pedal --> https://amzn.com/B00005ML71

That pedal wouldn't work for this, it HAS to be the expression type? Just checking.

Also, since I'm only really using this for Twitch streams, is there any other reason I should be looking into full on mixers like the Behringer mentioned above? Or should I be fine just connecting the XLR Mic (heavily considering the Audio-Technica AT2035) to this Roland effects mixer, and then that to the PC via USB.

You need a [sustain pedal](https://www.amazon.com/Yamaha-FC5-Compact-Portable-Keyboards/dp/B00005ML71/ref=mp_s_a_1_1_sspa?crid=1RPAGV15V6VN4&keywords=sustain+pedal&qid=1556220454&s=gateway&sprefix=sustain&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1) that plugs into your keyboard. I have the one in the link and it works pretty well for the price. You might want a piano style (rasied pedal) for a few more bucks tho. Just make sure your keyboard has a port somewhere that says sustain, most do

Lots of people are suggesting that you learn to play on something cheaper first. That's how I started a few years ago, and it's definitely a good choice. If you do decide to go that path, the most cost effective solution would be to buy a midi controller.

Midi controllers cost less than ordinary keyboards of the same quality because they don't come with on-board sounds; you'll have to plug it in to a computer or laptop to play anything. Fortunately any software you'd need can be found for free, and I know of a couple of free piano programs that have better sound quality than most entry level keyboards in that price range.

The midi controllers I linked have 61 keys, rather than 88. That's more than enough room starting out though. In terms of feel, real piano keys are weighted and harder to push down. This controller has semi-weighted keys, for about 50$ more than the others which should make transitioning to heavier keys easier. I had a really crappy keyboard, and it only took me a week or so to comfortably play weighted keys so this isn't all that necessary.

You also need a sustain pedal which might not be included, but they're cheap.

All in all, it should only cost $150-$200 for something that would normally be $500.

If you don't have a computer, or it's more than six or seven years old, this might not be the best solution. Otherwise, though, it could save you a couple hundred bucks in the long run.

Any sustain pedal should hook up to it just fine. I'd recommend this $20 one from M-Audio. It's what I use now, and I think it's pretty good. Getting any of the piano style action ones helps, but I wouldn't say it hindered my progress when I had one of these pedals and it worked just fine. I think an expression pedal would would work fine, though, since it's basically an on-and-off switch controlled by your feet for the digital effects of the piano.