dear Lord, how can one listen to this stuff?
so whats the purpose of this touchpad anyways

still what does this touch pad do?

...black-rimmed screen at the base of the guitar: an X-Y MIDI controller pad, set up out of the box to use with both Korg's KP-3 Kaoss pad and DigiTech's Whammy pedal...

Plugging into a DigiTech Whammy pedal illustrates the potential. By moving your finger from treble to bass side on the screen (it only works on this one axis here) your finger effectively "moves" the pedal's treadle. Now, you could do that with your foot, but the interesting thing is that you have much more control. Tapping two fingers on the screen creates pitch effects you just can't get with your foot alone and for onstage show-offs you're not rooted to the position of your pedal, just the length of your MIDI lead.

The Korg Kaoss pad is well named. Designed to treat, effect, filter and sample virtually any kind of audio, it's an Aladdin's cave for the adventurous and a definite no-go area for the "a smattering of chorus is as far as I go" brigade. A couple of hours spent experimenting with the Kaoss pad left us slightly queasy. Some of its effects seem to work better than others with the control screen: LFO and filter patches (with a dollop of heavy gain and the Sustainer on) are obvious places to start - thankfully you can save at least some of your experiments. Less extreme uses would obviously include altering distortion gain and tone parameters, so long as your FX unit (or software) can be MIDI controlled...

You'd have to be a huge Bellamy fan, or very confident that you can use the sound manipulation potential it offers in your own musical landscapes, to get your money's worth. Otherwise there are cheaper ways to achieve similar results and, of course, you'll still need a Kaoss pad or MIDI FX to use all of the MB-1's features.

still what does this touch pad do?