Any tips for organizing the footswitches?

henryrobinett

Fractal Fanatic
I did a fish out of water gig for me last night. I played in a Steely Dan Tribute band, for the first time. Helping out a friend who needed the time off. Normally I do my jazz-ish gigs so I don't need super elaborate changes. There were some challenges. For example, I had a cool preset for the solo on Kid Charlemagne, but I couldn't get the clean, clean enough with that preset. I thought I had it worked out, but no. So I had to dance through different presets. The footswitch dance is challenging well beyond playing, and since this was the gig with no rehearsal, it was like, WTF?

Do you guys just practice dancing through presets with your feet? How do you organize your AX8? One had a volume issue. Not loud enough. I label them by the song title, or write the preset on the sheet music, (I had to write charts out for myself - I read music. No other way I could have done this!). On the AX8, if you go from a super clean preset to a totally overdriven, how do you manage that? On my Axe Fx IIXL+ I can put two amps so that's not so much of a problem. I suppose, with more time, I could have assigned an expression pedal to control the drive of an amp. Folks with super elaborate set ups. I'm curious. I hope to get another few of these gigs!
 
I use scenes and scene modifiers and controllers to go from clean to dirty. I assign a scene modifier to the amps input gain and master volume and use those to go from clean to dirty. As far as footswitches I use the bottom row as scenes 1-4 and the top row is usually footswitch 5 is Scene 5 and 6-8 are flanger, delay and volume boost. Scene 1 is always my rhythm, scene 3 is always my clean and scene 4 is always my lead. Scene 2 is a specialty sound of needed in the song and scene 5 is used if there is a secondary lead sound needed in the song. I have about 24 presets I use for our entire set and use around 16 or so for a gig. Some of my presets can cover a few songs but others are song specific.
 
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My present AX8 approach is fairly similar to Bishop5150's.
For solid-body electric gigs (as opposed to archtop jazz gigs, or flattop acoustic gigs) I mainly use 2 presets... a clean one based on the Carr Rambler, the other based on the CA OD2. I've got around 6 scenes for each preset.
The 1st scene of the Carr preset has a lot of controllers, and goes from fairly dry, skanky rhythm to fairly wet, Knopfler-like slightly hairy lead, all based on 1 expression pedal. That 1st scene is extremely versatile, and with the addition of a footswitch dedicated to Volume Boost, I can play complete tunes (assuming they don't call for a screaming, singing lead). The 2nd scene is a somewhat drier version of the "Heel-down" rhythm sound of Scene 1, for Jimmy Nolen-style funk rhythm. Scene 3 introduces a bit of chorus, Scene 4 introduces vibrato, Scene 5 is Chorus+Vibrato, and Scene 6 has a Drive pedal.
The 1st scene of the OD2 preset also has a lot of controllers, and goes from fairly dry, skanky rhythm to fairly heavily delayed, Santana-like lead, and everything in-between, all based on the 1 expression pedal. For a bluesy/jazzy tune, I can play chordal rhythm with complex chords in the "Heel-down" position, while moving towards the "toe-down" position not only increases the amp gain, but also mixes in some of the Drive pedal... so it's really a clean-to-mean scene...;) This preset also has a footswitch dedicated to Volume Boost, for solos.
The trickiest thing for me has been getting all the various levels just right, so that the 1 expression pedal can serve as both a volume pedal, AND a clean-to-scream pan, all-in-one. When I get it right, it's amazingly versatile!
 
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Between Input Drive, Input Trim and Master Volume, you can clean up even the gainiest amp sims. Tie those to scene controllers, and you have one-stomp switching between the two.

On the flip side of that coin, a Drive block can nasty up even the cleanest of the amp sims.

And don't forget X/Y on the Amp block. :)


If you're doing one preset per song, scenes are your friend.
 
Scenes are where it's at. I actually just use one preset for my band's entire live set. I have a universal scene order in my head.

4. Always my solo tone
3. My dirty rhythm tone
2. Various oddball clean or effected rhythm preset
1. Always my clean

I usually don't use the top buttons for live work unless it's a tone that I start with and don't have to go back to (I'm clumsy).

You get way too much lag switching from one preset to another for live use.
 
You get way too much lag switching from one preset to another for live use.

I use scene changes, more than preset changes, as I mentioned above. But my experience has been different than yours.

For me (and I suspect, for Henry in a Steely Dan setting) switching from rhythm to lead using presets is quite workable. The secret for me is ensuring that the most important scene in each preset is Scene 1... because that's what you land on when the preset switch happens.
 
I haven't really settled on how I want it yet, but I did just reorganize the other night and I'm liking it so far. I think I'm in the minority though... I basically set my AX8 up to be a similar scenario as having a 3-4 channel amp + some FX. I'm on the fence for one of two ways right now... Method 1 has 3 different presets, clean, high-gain 1 and high-gain 2. Each preset also has a crunch tone in the amp Y slot. So for footswitches I do: Preset 1--1:s1/2, 2:p2, 3:p2, 4:A-X/Y. Preset 2--1:s1/2, 2:p1, 3:p3, 4:A-X/Y. Preset 3--1:s1/2, 2:p1, 3:p2, 4:A-X/Y. S1 on each preset is the main tone, no FX. S2 is Amp-Y with reverb (i.e. my low-gain or crunch tone...I always like reverb on that). Along the top row I have Drive, Chorus, Reverb, Delay. I like having the amp x/y button so I can always switch over to a clean or gain without killing my verb/delay if they're on.

Method 2 would be almost the same, except no AX/Y button. I would instead make a 4th preset solely for the crunch tone and add that in to the switching method. If I ever settle on the high-gain tone (Debating between Engl and Splawn right now) then I'll use method 1 but it'll be clean/crunch/high-gain rather than 2 high gain channels.

I feel like this is way too wordy and there's a better way to explain it...but thats pretty much what I do. Visualize like, 'amp footswitch' along the bottom row and, 'pedalboard fx' along the top row. I don't gig or play covers though, so that helps with keeping mine simple.
 
As a new AX8 convert I try to organize them like I would my pedal board... Only difference is I have scenes.

So what I typically try to do is:
Scene 1 Foot switch 1- Clean
Scene 2 Foot switch 2 - Dirty
Scene 3 - Foot switch 3 - Heavy or a Solo / Volume Boost / EQ
Foot switch 4 Overdrive
Foot switch 5 Reverb
Foot switch 6 Delay
Foot switch 7 Delay or Swirly
Foot switch 8 Compressor / Wah or whatever else

~ss
 
As a new AX8 convert I try to organize them like I would my pedal board... Only difference is I have scenes.

So what I typically try to do is:
Scene 1 Foot switch 1- Clean
Scene 2 Foot switch 2 - Dirty
Scene 3 - Foot switch 3 - Heavy or a Solo / Volume Boost / EQ
Foot switch 4 Overdrive
Foot switch 5 Reverb
Foot switch 6 Delay
Foot switch 7 Delay or Swirly
Foot switch 8 Compressor / Wah or whatever else

~ss
Consider Autoengage for you wah. No need for a footswitch.
 
I am old school. I have footswitches 1 and 5 set for clean amps (both Vox AC30 with #5 drenched in reverb. #'s 2 and 6 are slight breakup amps with 2 set for a Lonestar and 6 set for a Carr. #'s 3 and 7 are Plexis with 3 for a 100w Plexi and 7 assigned to a 50w Plexi. #'s 4 and 8 are my lead tones with #4 assigned to the Brit Pre Lead (modified) and #8 set to the Tucana. Within each preset I have the switches assigned as #1 = Drive1, #2 = Drive 2 (cleaner drive), #3 = delay, #4 = boost, #5 = compressor, #6 = chorus, #7 = reverb. I set up all of my present like that. I just call up the amp that works for the song, and use my guitar volume and tone knobs to control the amp.

I should say Henry, that I really do not try to mimic any recording when I am playing covers. I certainly do try to keep within the context of the original recording (play a clean lead if a clean lead was used on the original) but prefer to add my own style and voice, so if you are trying to capture every nuance of the original, then my approach may not work very well for you. For many years I performed and toured with just 1 kind of amp at a time, so I am used to using just 1 amp. With the AX8, now I have 8 amps at my feet. It is perfect for me. I try to keep my focus on what the other musicians are playing so I can add my guitar's voice to what they are playing. I find the pedal dance is a huge distraction from that. I have been tweaking my guitar volume and tone on the fly for so long that I do not even think about that. My approach may not be good for other players, but it works for me.
 
Consider Autoengage for you wah. No need for a footswitch.

Especially with auto engage I like to have a footswitch assigned to the wah block in order see on the display that it's really off. I know that I should be able to hear that it's off, but depending on the band context, it might take me some time to figure out that it's not. I'm a controll freak... :rolleyes:
 
Especially with auto engage I like to have a footswitch assigned to the wah block in order see on the display that it's really off. I know that I should be able to hear that it's off, but depending on the band context, it might take me some time to figure out that it's not. I'm a controll freak... :rolleyes:
Use what works. :)
 
Was searching for any post talking about lead boost and this one was at the top of the list. Same thing as above, big difference live gigging as opposed to just messing. Trying to find the best way to run the AX8 live. Always have set it with bottom row scene with different gain structure and top row pedals. I am interested in how you guys do the lead boost on the scene? I have some patches that use Control Switches and I do like that setup. I do run a drive pedal at low to zero gain and adjust tone and output.

I will add, my setup is a lot like @Geezerjohn There are 8 different amps at my disposal almost all the time and each patch is setup the same way. Never really liked the thought of adding per song patches, but it may be the best way.
 
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