I don't know how many pedals it has to have to be considered "full-sized". Or is the size of the individual pedal you're concerned with?

This has 17 pedals for less than half the price.

http://www.studiologic.net/mp-117.html

That's all I could think of. And I'm like you ... wondering how someone could charge $1300 for something so simple.

Interesting. I'd guess that most of the units sold come with these big church organ packages and that there's not much demand for separate units. So it's a specialty unit (no competition) that has to be built like a tank. There is no way you could get it down to the $100 cost of a synth action key controller even if there was a lot of competition.

Thank you for the responses. I believe a full-sized organ pedalboard is 32 keys. Here is a link to one I've been looking at:

http://www.organworks.com/Web/products/products.asp?productid=25&categoryid=17&category=MIDI%20Works

If anyone might know where I can find an old used organ pedalboard I might be able to convert it to MIDI myself. Thank you for the help.

Have to say that the one you linked to looks like about $1300 worth of musical instrument to me. Probably your best bet to save money is the one you suggested: find a salvage pedalboard and convert to midi. Still, it's a time/money tradeoff. You might end up wishing you had paid the $1300.

If your looking for something very basic, you want to look for a Roland FC-200, which by the way is not made anymore.

They are a simple midi foot controller that work as a midi note foot controller as well.

I myself wanted something to trigger midi for live performances a while back. I decided later it was not what I really wanted in my show.

Check the used gear market on the web.

BobRogers wrote: Have to say that the one you linked to looks like about $1300 worth of musical instrument to me. Probably your best bet to save money is the one you suggested: find a salvage pedalboard and convert to midi. Still, it's a time/money tradeoff. You might end up wishing you had paid the $1300.

Yeah, the pedalboard in the link I posted is actually $1700. I just posted that one cause I couldn't find the other one. I was just trying to show kind of what I was looking for. I just can't believe they don't make a 32 key pedalboard for less than $1300. Guess I'll try my luck with making one.

If you have any DIY in your veins, check this guy out. After thinking about your post, I was thinking I would build one if I needed a MIDI pedal board, since there's nothing special about the contacts in a basic keyboard - just a series of momentary switches. I did a quick search and found the link below to the exact same project start to finish. Like you, this guy also wanted a full 32 pedals to MIDI. Hats off to him, he worked it through to completion.

http://orchetect.com/resources/midi-organ-pedals.php

dvdhawk wrote: If you have any DIY in your veins, check this guy out. After thinking about your post, I was thinking I would build one if I needed a MIDI pedal board, since there's nothing special about the contacts in a basic keyboard - just a series of momentary switches. I did a quick search and found the link below to the exact same project start to finish. Like you, this guy also wanted a full 32 pedals to MIDI. Hats off to him, he worked it through to completion.

http://orchetect.com/resources/midi-organ-pedals.php

Okay, I understand how he connected the tiny keyboard chips to the pedals, but how did he end up hooking the pedals up to his manual keyboard? And even then, would the pedals be able to read a different synth voice such as an organ if the voicing wasn't programmed into the tiny keyboard chips?

I hope that made sense...

I think I understand your question(s).

Here's my take on it. He didn't use any of the internal tone generator capability of the sacrificed keyboard. I don't think he had any interest in the voices from the cheap keyboard All he was interested in was the MIDI output. The scope of his project was just to use the keyboard's de-multiplexer to turn simple contact switches into the MIDI note data. The pedals don't read any voices, they send MIDI data which has nothing to do with the sounds. There is only note-on / note-off data at the MIDI output. You need a MIDI sound module to take that keystroke data and generate the sound. If your keyboard has MIDI inputs you're off to the races. In his case he's got other MIDI keyboards that may make the sound (voices). But my guess would be, as you can see from the finished picture - his computer recording software supports MIDI information and probably has software to make the earthshaking pipe organ sounds out of the ones and zeros that make up the MIDI signal.

I hope that answers your question. ( and makes sense )

Yeah, thank you, that makes sense, but I still don't understand where the output to his keyboard or computer is.

In that picture it looks to me like the black cable at the top is his power cable, the green cable is his ground, and all the others are connecting the pedals to the tiny keyboard chips. Is that little gray cable next to the power his output? I can't tell, I can barely see it. Or does it really matter since it would vary depending on what type of tiny keyboard or other means you would use to connect them.

There are 2 black cables at the top of the picture. The small one on the right of the circuitboard is the power supply and the larger connector a couple inches to the left is the MIDI cable. Physical location of the MIDI jack would be different depending on the cheapo keyboard you sacrificed. It is still soldered to the original circuitboard. I would probably try to put a wooden lid on the whole thing and surface mount my power and MIDI plus to the outside of the box somewhere.

Awesome, thank you so much. I can't wait to try this out.