What's your footswitch setup?

jonah

jonah

Inspired
I used to have an Ultra and the MFC, and I always had presets on the 5 footswitches in the lower row, and the rest of the switches were dedicated IA switches for effects.

Now, when using the AX8, I get a bit confused on how I would set the thing up for the best overall live setting.

My thoughts are that it would be best to have scenes on the lower row, and IA's on the upper, but I'm not used to be able to choose between scenes, presets, X/Y and all the new good stuff.

How do you guys set yours up for live playing?
Cheers!
- jonah
 
The beauty of the AX8 is that you could do whatever you want per preset. For my church playing I do one song per preset because in church music these days, there are a ton of dotted 8th delays and they are all at different tempos. I'm not a fan of hitting Tap tempo every time a song changes, especially when I only have about three seconds before the next song starts, and that I have space for a zillion presets (I know not a real number).

I have been using scenes like crazy lately. My favorite switch is scene 1/2. I split between two scenes for most songs, and I go to a third if its an ambient Bridge. Something else I didn't even know is that you could use other presets from the same bank, I'm not why I never saw that as an option, but I didn't think about it until I went over to AminorZmajors house last weekend.

I have my function F1 set to Preset +- since all I do is use function 2 to go up to the next song. It works great for me. I know this is not very helpful, but it's what I do none the less.

But for the record, I do what you do. Put the most use pedals on the first row and put the IA's on the second. I don't know about you but since I started using the AX8, I don't think I have ever used every switch. an AX4 would be nice. Same amount of effects but just using scenes to control everything. Plus add scribble type scripts to make all the Line6 fans mad...Just kidding. the only difference is you would have a function that let you scroll pages so you could have 8 switches or 16 with 4 pages. You get my point. It's all in the programming.
 
I'm very interested in this thread. Like you Jonah, for live shows Ive always had 5 preset switches on the bottom row of my MFC101 and the rest were IA switches for the effects. I just opened the box of my new AX8 that arrived yesterday and was thinking of putting 4 preset switches on the bottom row and 4 IA on the top. Assuming that can be done, I'll be spending most of the day figuring out how to best move forward. I have never used scenes before. But something tells me they will be a big part of my future with the AX8. I was also thinking that I would hook up a boss FS6 footswitch to the back of the AX8 to gain 2 more IA switches. I'll probably use the Fractal EV1 for volume and a Mission spring loaded for Wah. Good luck with your journey
 
I won't get my AX8 until next week, but I have a plan :).
I'm going to plug my FCB1010 into the midi input. I'll have 10 presets and two expression pedals on the FCB and I'll use some combo of the AX8 switches for scenes and effects. Fractal tones, great flexibility with a lot less gear than I'm lugging now.

PS: I also considered the tech21 midimoose which would give me 5 preset switches in a smaller package.
 
I select presets/songs via set list maker and usb on the iPad, and then I have scenes on the bottom row and IA on the top row. Ideally, I do not use the IAs, as everything is set up in scenes, but it is comforting to have the option.
 
I have 3 Scenes setup on bottom row with the 4th button being the next logical preset. I mostly use 2 presets, a high gain preset and a light gain preset for everything else. So my fourth button on the bottom row switches between these two. Top row is setup for various effects: chorus, phaser, drive pedal and null filter for boost. This gets me through 98% of our setlist, the rest I have a couple of individual presets for specific songs that require unique effects.
 
scottburrow said:
The beauty of the AX8 is that you could do whatever you want per preset.
Click to expand...

I have quickly fallen into a deep and profound love of this feature. I was worried it would make live work with the AX8 tricky and I'd end up setting up the same switch layout on every preset but nope! It's FANTASTIC. I have some UI tweaks to the pedal screen I'd love to see materialize, but otherwise the flexible switch layouts per-preset and the x/y switching on every switch are my favourite AX8 features.
 
Whoa, great information! This little gadget is really versatile!
I haven't tried out how easily I can see what effect goes to what switch, so I was thinking of getting Kicktags, but that would take away a bit of the versatility.
Great to get info on your thoughts, and it's obvious that the AX8 can please most wishes! :)

Cheers!
- jonah
 
I have scenes 1-4 (global) in the bottom row. upper row is Reverb, delay, Drive, and FXloop Cool thing is that if my preset doesn't have the correct reverb block (ie. X) it will not show as an option, which allows me to know I am doing something wrong. I hardly use the FX's switches though, scenes are my to go presses. I have the looper in f2 short press. Simple to use as well. other than that, everything is the same.

To select presets, I try to arrange all my songs for rehearsal in ONE bank. If more songs are needed I do it in the next bank. If I need to look for something, I use my netbook that is connected to search for the preset via ax8-edit.
 
Switch 1 is scene 1/2 (absolutely love this)
Switch 2 is scene 3
Switch 3 is scene 4
Switch h 4 is scene 5

That bottom row are all set same no matter the preset. So its clean, ambient, rhythm, crunch and lead. So no matter the preset those are global.

Switch 5 is drive 1
Switch 6 is delay 1
Switch 7 is either tremolo or rotary depending on preset
Switch 8 is filter boost

Every other effect change is handled via scenes. Absolutely love it.
 
My footswitch config varies per preset. I've got some generic amp/tone based presets, where all switches are IA effects or Amp XY.

I also do the one preset per song thing for church gigs. The bottom row is used for scenes, but I only set the scenes that will be used. For example if a song has two scenes, I'll have Scene 1 and Scene 2, and the other two bottom switches are blank. That helps me remember how many scenes are needed per song.

In the song presets, the four top switches are generally set to MultiDelay, Delay 2, Delay 1, and wildcard (Drive 1, Amp XY, Tremolo, etc). I don't actually use them, since I used scenes, but it is nice to have them available if I need to do something on-the-fly.

Personally I love that we can put the effects on any switch, because I'm used to pedal boards moving right to left. I kind a wish there was a way to reverse the entire grid flow In AX8-Edit. That's just me being weird and old school.
 
redburst21 said:
Switch 1 is scene 1/2 (absolutely love this)
Switch 2 is scene 3
Switch 3 is scene 4
Switch h 4 is scene 5

That bottom row are all set same no matter the preset. So its clean, ambient, rhythm, crunch and lead. So no matter the preset those are global.

Switch 5 is drive 1
Switch 6 is delay 1
Switch 7 is either tremolo or rotary depending on preset
Switch 8 is filter boost

Every other effect change is handled via scenes. Absolutely love it.
Click to expand...
That sounds like the setup I'm looking for!
What is the scene 1/2?
 
redburst21 said:
First tap is scene 1, press it again it's scene 2. So i use it for cleans and two has a little more ambient texture to it.
Click to expand...
Oh, so can you do this for all scenes?
Can I have 1/2, 2/3, 3/4 etc, so that every scene has a subscene?
 
redburst21 said:
Sorry Just 1/2.
Click to expand...

I have the ax8 but I have not try this set up but sounds interesting! Quick Question about your set up: first fs is scene 1/2, I am playing scene 1, switch it to scene 2, then I go to scene 4 (3rd footswitch), then I need to go back to scene 1. What happens when i press footswitch 1, does it go back to scene 2 (last one played) or defaults back to scene 1?
 
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