If you’re having trouble getting your Behringer FCB1010 pedal board to work properly with Overloud’s TH-U and Ableton, here’s what you need to know:

  1. DON’T use the VST3 version of TH-U. It comes with a VST2 version and that’s what you’ll need to use. The reason for this is that VST3, in Ableton at least, cannot receive MIDI program changes. VST2 can.
  2. You will need to use an extra MIDI track in your project to funnel your incoming MIDI commands to the track that has Overloud’s TH-U on it. (See image)
  3. I suggest using this free software to program your FCB1010.

Sending incoming MIDI signals to an audio track with TH-U on it.

Sample FCB1010 Programming for OverLoud THU in Ableton

Here is a sample programming of Bank 1 on the FCB1010 using the free software from Mountain Utilities. In this example, I’m using foot switches 1-5 to send program changes to THU. These program changes select presets in TH-U that correspond to the program change number within the active bank. Pedals 6-10 are sending notes which are used to turn effects pedals on and off in THU. Expression pedal A is set to send MIDI CC 27 and expression pedal B is sending on channel 100.

Some Buggy Behavior

I did run into some strange behavior from TH-U and I’ll mention it here in case it happens to someone else.

Expected behavior is that when “Program changes recall presets in current bank” is checked under TH-U’s MIDI settings panel, program changes sent to the TH-U will change to the preset that corresponds to the program change number.

However, whenever I sent a program change to TH-U, it would automatically switch to the numbered preset in the “TH-U Essentials” bank. This was happening no matter where the TH-U Essentials bank was in the bank list. For some reason though, this behavior just stopped after about an hour. Now, everything works as expected. The program changes coming from the FCB1010 correctly change TH-U presets within the current bank.