Why use Control Switches vs. Scenes

Glenn DeLaune said:
OK say you have a patch that has in Scene 1 a Clean sound. kinda a Country Spank sound. You use that for a song or two and you need a lead boost. You can use a Control switch to add a delay and an EQ boost for your Lead and assign them to switch 4 on the bottom row. So that's yous control switch. It's set up with a Lead Delay and an EQ to boost the db and give you a mid boost to cut through the mix on your leads.

Now lets say on that same patch, scene 2 might be a slightly over driven sound. You may want to have a lead section while using that scene. You would use your Control switch. Now let's say you're on scene 3 which is a really over driven high gain sound and you want a lead boost for that scene, you would use your Control switch. That's how I have my patches set up. That way I can play almost an entire set with just 1 patch. The switching is seamless and I have everything I need. 3 different sounds all with a lead boost that can be activated at any time.

That's just the bottom row. The top row 4 switches I use for effects toggle on and off. Like a Chorus, and extra drive pedal if I need, a Phaser and an extra delay for some spacial passages. I don't know if that makes any sense to you guys but it makes perfect sense to me. I only use about 2 or 3 patches for an entire 3 hour show this way. It's alot easier to dial them in too instead of using a different patch for every song. I know everybody has their own way of doing things but you asked so there ya go.
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I totally get the one patch approach. I just put together a patch the other day with the Hook 1A and that's the only patch I used at rehearsal all night. I use two drive blocks with different XY drives so I've got a lot of options for gain. Add a Univibe for some color. A little plate reverb and a tap tempo delay and I'm all set.

I don't use a control switch for lead boost though - I run an expression pedal attached to global output volume and the pedal minimum is my rhythm volume and from there I have a variable boost up to full volume. This is nice when you want just a little something extra in between rhythm and solo levels.

I don't think I could ever do the patch per song thing. I'd go nuts. And our drummer really likes to count off the next tune quick - sometime I haven't even had a chance to look at the set list to see what's next lol
 
Georgy said:
Lol.. I still don't quite get it but I'll try your patch Glenn over the next day or two.. hopefully I'll have a light bulb 'Aaaahh, that's what he meant' moment..
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Me thinks you're overthinking this. Using a control switch is just like having any other effect switch setup on your board. The difference is that assigning an effect to a switch simply turns that effect on and off whereas a control switch can be used to change the setting of anything that can be controlled by a modifier - so you can use it turn multiple things on and off together since multiple things can use the same controller at the same time. The manual has a good section on modifiers and AX8 Edit makes it pretty easy to experiment with them.
 
I like this tip, and I stole @Glenn DeLaune 's idea for the CS lead boost + ducking delay.

Aside from turning blocks on and off, is there anything else the CS functionality can do?
 
Thanks, I had read that but I was wondering about any more real world examples. Like, can you increase reverb mix levels by 5%?
 
Read the wiki and it is slowly making sense. If I were to use it to control delay bypass state I can't assign delay to an ia right?
 
Yes, you can. Attach the Control Switch to the Delay's Bypass Mode parameter.
 
So, here's what I want to do.

Preset with drive/chorus/delay/whatever thats capable of at least two primary tones, IE crunch/high-gain or clean/crunch. I would have each FX on a FS for regular on/off & x/y. Then I'd want to use these control switches to switch the primary tones. So basically, I can turn on delay and reverb, then switch from crunch to high-gain and leave delay and reverb on. Its not feasible with scenes because of the number of possibilities, but these control switches seem like they might make it happen....am I right?

The big limitation I think will be the lack of X/Y, but I guess as long as I can set up the primary tones by using drive pedals and stuff it should be OK? I would love to figure out how to mash in a clean/crunch/high-gain, but I'm not a big fan of my primary high-gain tone coming from a clean amp with a drive pedal. I play mostly metal so that high-gain is the most important part of my sound. But, it should be fine for me to just use two presets, clean/break-up and then crunchy/blistering.

Exciting times.
 
Georgy said:
Lol.. I still don't quite get it but I'll try your patch Glenn over the next day or two.. hopefully I'll have a light bulb 'Aaaahh, that's what he meant' moment..
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I believe the benefit in Glenn's example is if you have 3 different types of sounds set up in scenes, 1 control switch can function as a boost within each individual scene achieving in 4 switches what would take 6 switches to do with dedicated rhythm and lead sounds for each scene and now your top row is completely free to set up any way you choose.
 
Here are ten things I do with control switches in my AX8 presets:

1. Change the key of a harmonizer
2. Turn on Delay or Reverb HOLD switches.
3. Toggle a DRIVE and an EQ at the same time.
4. Momentarily trigger a whammy, or rotary speed, or... anything.
5. Start and stop the sequencer and the LFOs at precisely the same time.
6. Flip pan on the AMP to address two different IRs without changing a stereo cab block to Y
7. RAMP gain levels from driven to searing over 1 full second (damping)
8. Ad Hoc wah pedal (with damping) when no expression pedal is available
9. MUTE switch between songs/sets/etc.
10. Add a morphed third state to an effect where X and Y have already been used.

And more...
 
Admin M@ said:
Here are ten things I do with control switches in my AX8 presets:

1. Change the key of a harmonizer
2. Turn on Delay or Reverb HOLD switches.
3. Toggle a DRIVE and an EQ at the same time.
4. Momentarily trigger a whammy, or rotary speed, or... anything.
5. Start and stop the sequencer and the LFOs at precisely the same time.
6. Flip pan on the AMP to address two different IRs without changing a stereo cab block to Y
7. RAMP gain levels from driven to searing over 1 full second (damping)
8. Ad Hoc wah pedal (with damping) when no expression pedal is available
9. MUTE switch between songs/sets/etc.
10. Add a morphed third state to an effect where X and Y have already been used.

And more...
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... you can also do all of this with scenes controlling the control switch. i use "scene controllers" for things that need to be continually variable (like selecting 3 or more different scales in a pitch shifter) and control switches for things that need only 2 states (amp block saturation on/off, songs with exactly two scales in the pitch shifter, chorus @ 50% in clean but 20% in crunch, etc)
 
ChainOfThought said:
So, here's what I want to do.

Preset with drive/chorus/delay/whatever thats capable of at least two primary tones, IE crunch/high-gain or clean/crunch. I would have each FX on a FS for regular on/off & x/y. Then I'd want to use these control switches to switch the primary tones. So basically, I can turn on delay and reverb, then switch from crunch to high-gain and leave delay and reverb on. Its not feasible with scenes because of the number of possibilities, but these control switches seem like they might make it happen....am I right?

The big limitation I think will be the lack of X/Y, but I guess as long as I can set up the primary tones by using drive pedals and stuff it should be OK? I would love to figure out how to mash in a clean/crunch/high-gain, but I'm not a big fan of my primary high-gain tone coming from a clean amp with a drive pedal. I play mostly metal so that high-gain is the most important part of my sound. But, it should be fine for me to just use two presets, clean/break-up and then crunchy/blistering.

Exciting times.
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On top of drive pedals, you could also attach the control switch to input trim, input gain and master volume of an amp. Here's my video on how you make a three channel amp using scene controllers. You can do exactly the same with a control switch although that well only give you a two channel amp.



If you set up a stereo cab you can even have different cabs for your clean and drive sounds, if you also control the amp block balance parameter with your control switch.
 
Smittefar said:
On top of drive pedals, you could also attach the control switch to input trim, input gain and master volume of an amp. Here's my video on how you make a three channel amp using scene controllers. You can do exactly the same with a control switch although that well only give you a two channel amp.



If you set up a stereo cab you can even have different cabs for your clean and drive sounds, if you also control the amp block balance parameter with your control switch.
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Well, I'm not too concerned about cabs as I run through a traditional rig. I'll use ir's for recording but I'll do that part by part and can use dedicated single tone presets.

The problem with trying to adjust gain and trim and things for my clean tone is that I run amps like the engl savage or 5150 variants.... They don't clean up too well. I have found some delicious clean into crunch amps, and a few that do crunch into high gain well... But none so far that I really like the clean into high gain transition.

I've only had my rig set up for a week or two now though, so I'm still transitioning into it after using the ax8 though monitors and such since it's release.
 
ChainOfThought said:
The problem with trying to adjust gain and trim and things for my clean tone is that I run amps like the engl savage or 5150 variants.... They don't clean up too well. I have found some delicious clean into crunch amps, and a few that do crunch into high gain well... But none so far that I really like the clean into high gain transition.
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Don't be afraid to try some extreme settings for Input Trim.

Look up some of @clarky 's morphing threads. He does some pretty radical stuff going between clean and scream with the gain-monster models.
 
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If you run out of options in the cab block, you can always add filter blocks

Here is 5153 Red going from Clean (Scene 1) (with my Les Paul Standard) to Mean (Scene 2). It is the 5153 Stock preset that I modified (a lot). I use both scene controllers and filter blocks in front of and after the amp.
 

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Glenn's preset sparked my interest in using the CS in my own presets a week ago. Great feature. Thanks M@ for pointing out some other uses as well.
The more I learn about this unit , the more I realize how much more there is to learn about it. :confused:
 
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