Best Practices: Preset Ordering

claxor said:
What if you have a Y state that requires an outside effect device? In this case, X would be standard pitch, Y would be the same preset but with 2.5 step downward on a Whammy Droptune connected to the Midi out of the axefx, and into the midi in of the whammy dt?

Can X/Y's control outside effects in a rack?
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You'd have to set the IA switch up to also send program changes that put the Whammy DT in the state you want. That will require changing the switch to a general use IA (Axe-FX funciton = NONE) and putting the Axe & Whammy on different channels.
 
With the Gordius Little Giant footswitch, I have instant random access to any preset so it doesn't matter how they're organized.
 
Bakerman said:
You'd have to set the IA switch up to also send program changes that put the Whammy DT in the state you want. That will require changing the switch to a general use IA (Axe-FX funciton = NONE) and putting the Axe & Whammy on different channels.
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Wait... so if I'm using the MFC and AxeFx in "AxeFx mode", I can't assign a IA switch to work with another midi device on another midi channel?
 
claxor said:
Wait... so if I'm using the MFC and AxeFx in "AxeFx mode", I can't assign a IA switch to work with another midi device on another midi channel?
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You can; the Axe-FX function of that switch just has to be set to "none". Then you'd set up the CCs and PCs at the menu detailed in MFC manual section 5.2.
 
Mine are simply based on a specific guitars and is set up for gigs.

First Band of 5 is for my Les Pauls with various shades from kinda clean to cranked (I rarely do true clean). I use X/Y amp settings for lead shades on amps (i.e more gain perhaps a bit more master volume, adjustments in high and presence). I have quite a few different rhythm and lead tones depending on what fits the tune we're doing. (although I'm very Vox and Marshall oriented with a Robben Fordish blues thing thrown in)

Second Band of 5.. Currently.. an acoustic sounding preset for my les paul neck pickup (that alternates into bank for a lead or marshall rhythm sound). Currently I only use this preset for two songs.

a preset for my piezo equipped guitar for true acoustic gigs (so it just sits on that preset when I've done acoustic gigs) and 3 presets for my Tele (which I haven't used yet in a gig, but plan to in the future).

I have a 335 and a strat that eventually I'll set up (they were on my Ultra), but I haven't played a gig with those in quite a while so they are low priority (in terms of the Axe-Fx). I play them both quite a bit, but I'm one of those weird people that practice without anything plugged on. I practice the guitar, not the amp. .if that makes sense.

I dont use any of the presets that came with the Axe, so I just write over them.
 
claxor said:
I thought X/Y is designed to toggle between two different states of a given effect. One effect at a time. You can x/y toggle and make multiple effect changes in the same preset?
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That is how I use it (I think). For example, for Incubus's Wish you were Here. For the intro, my X is set to clean amp w/ phaser and delay. Then for the distorted part, I hit the Y which which changes the amp, lowers the phaser, and changes the delay to 0% mix which is basically bypassing. It allows me to bypass an effect with out having to assign the Delay bypass CC to that of the amp x/y. Im new to this so there probably is a much better way to approach things, that is why I tend to read everyone's posts to learn instead of steering other people in the wrong direction...haha.
 
Smooth Operator!

clarky said:
my presets are laid out specifically for playing live
ordering / grouping / cataloging would interfere with that..

I use 10 presets live

switches 1 / 2 are main main two riffing tones
switches 6 / 7 are variants of 1 / 2
switch 3 is my clean and 8 is a clean variant
switches 4 / 5 and 8 / 9 are special tones for individual songs

I have a couple of banks with this layout
1 to 9 is for practice
10 to 19 is for live
20 to 29 is experimental

the rest are not used
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Hey clarky,

Your Axe-FX II live-bank (10 - 19) is exactly the "bank-of-ten" idea I was alluding to also! Glad to see others thinking that way too!

BTW, you and my bassist share a lot of the same preset-philosophies regarding "staying-in-a-preset/patch" as-long/as-much as possible via extensive IA's and realtime-controller usage (for "morphing" between sounds & effects!) With the Axe-FX II I find myself going more and more in that direction, because it makes a lot of sense AND it generally makes for much smoother (read: "less-choppy!") sound & effects transitions...

Bill
 
0-20. Acoustic
21-40 alt/90s
41-60. Metallica
61-80 70s / 80s
128-256 Default amps and tweaked amps
257- experimental/ambience

My default amp models all start with * in the name so i can sort quickly. I start with these base amp models and save them to the other slots.
 
I use "Song Mode" on the MFC to lay out my personal banks that I actually use. So the preset 'order' has no bearing; but the result is somewhat similar to the topic subject (and logical (to me)).

I have three banks of 5 presets.

Bank 1
Acoustic, Shiva (Clean/Dirty via X/Y), Trainwreck, Cameron, Bogner XTC Red

Bank 2
Acoustic, Fender Twin, AC/30 (Matchless on Y), JCM800, Recto

Bank 3
Acoustic, USA Clean2, Divided/13, Dirty Shirley, Soldano SLO


The "Acoustic" is the same preset on the 1 button on all the banks by design. I have various X/Y (highlights called out, but most have another amp/cab on the X/Y) and the essential template/effects are all on/off via the rest of the MFC per preset.

NOTE: I am working with V7 beta and the Divided/13 and Dirty Shirley are two of my all time favorite tones on earth already. Holy crap do I like them.
 
I do it the old-fashioned way - with a couple twists:

- create preset in Axe-Edit

- tweak and save to the next patch up by pressing 'save' on Axe face, and use scroll wheel to put it above (or below, if I've already got patches above) original patch

Occasionally, I use the 'save to another location' in Axe-Edit, but it's more work when doing a bunch of them.

When I get enough patches to where I'm not making any ground, I consolidate to a few variants (maybe only one). After doing this with several amp types, I've taken up thirty or forty patch spaces, and then I consolidate further, down to two or three amp types. During this, I rename the junked patches to 'null'. Then, as I did a bunch last night, I manually move each patch down by going to the first one in Axe-Edit, pressing save on the panel, scrolling down with the wheel, and pressing save to finalize. Then, in Axe-Edit, I rename the old patch place to 'null', press the save button on the screen, and press the 'up patch' button to begin the process over again.

Axe-Edit stays on the patch it's displaying, despite manual (from the unit face) change on the Axe; whereas the Axe will reflect real-time changes from Axe-Edit; so they kind of overlap.

I'd love if there were drag-and-drop, and shift and ctrl grouping functions in Axe-Edit (like in Explorer), as I could move a patch(es) around within the patch selection window without all the above work. Also, I could copy selected bits of a signal chain and paste them to another patch.


** Note that I play mostly high gain, so cleans are far fewer and will ultimately be down to one or two. Names I haven't gotten much past the amp model names, because I still have too many. I may end up having the same amp type for different guitars, but each will likely be slightly different. Ultimately, I hope to have one clean amp type, and one or two gain amp types.
 
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billmeedog said:
Hey clarky,

Your Axe-FX II live-bank (10 - 19) is exactly the "bank-of-ten" idea I was alluding to also! Glad to see others thinking that way too!

BTW, you and my bassist share a lot of the same preset-philosophies regarding "staying-in-a-preset/patch" as-long/as-much as possible via extensive IA's and realtime-controller usage (for "morphing" between sounds & effects!) With the Axe-FX II I find myself going more and more in that direction, because it makes a lot of sense AND it generally makes for much smoother (read: "less-choppy!") sound & effects transitions...

Bill
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totally..

my MFC is set up 10 preset / 5 IA [which I never use]
I want to stick to the 'bank of 10" structure in the hope that some day FAS with develop a means to bring the IA's to the front and have the preset switches to the rear..
then I can have 5 front row IA's and 10 rear preset switches [which is I think the perfect set up for me]
so.. 'till then, I'll use the 'bank of 10' config and use external switches [XS1 thru XS4]

the 'preset per song type' and 'preset per song' strategy works best for me
I love the seemless and immediate tonal transitions
I don't think in terms of effects like individual stomps, more like 'tone types'..
so you hit one switch to make a bunch of things change config and / or state to head for a given 'tone type' [solo, riff, clean]

I know it's not for everyone, but it makes the most sense to me personally
 
I have 5 presets per bank and the rest are IA switches

Presets are the following:

Clean--crunch--rhythm--lead 1---lead 2

Each bank is set up for a specific guitar. Ie. les Paul, strat, prs, tele, suhr

So for example, my first 3 banks are les Paul presets, next 3 banks are strat presets

THEN.... Each preset has an AMP XY SETUP. so basically I have two different gain levels per preset.

Clean preset one X then Y is slightly more gain to get a pushed sound.

I use this setup for every preset.

Finally I have a standard drive pedal (ts808) setup for each preset to use as a boost or additional gain stack structure.

And I have have a filter set for each preset for a 3 db boost.
 
[QUOTE=Tubed to Life;703990

I'd love if there were drag-and-drop, and shift and ctrl grouping functions in Axe-Edit (like in Explorer), as I could move a patch(es) around within the patch selection window without all the above work. Also, I could copy selected bits of a signal chain and paste them to another patch.

This +1000. I'd like to see this and the ability to select multiple preset locations and drag and drop either a complete template of a signal chain or a part of a signal chain into multiple preset locations.
 
I'm very visual and since the MFC has three rows I have the bottom row variations of cleans, the second row variations of crunchy / dirty rhythms, and the top row is lead tones. The next bank up repeats, with either a different set of rows or the same set tweaked for a particular guitar.
 
I like to put mine in 200-250 range which is Bank B.
So I can load The New Bank A File with all the New Presets with the New Firmware.
 
My bank size is 10, I am using 5 different presets live. So presets 1 to 5 are my main presets (1: rhythm, 2: clean, 3: crunch, 4: lead, 5: effect sound for special song), presets 6 to 10 are the same but adjusted for different guitars (I am using Les Pauls with EMGs and Suhr Doug aldrich pickups). Presets 11 to 20 are presets for recording, all the rest is for having fun.
 
For "regular" presets, I go from cleaner to dirtier by amp type. ie, 001 is a super reverb, and 012 is a rectifier (which I rarely use...)

After that I have my "interesting" presets: synths, ambient noise stuff, swelly stuff and after those I've got a few set up for my acoustic, mandolin and banjo.

I think in banks of three since I'm using an LF+ controller. I don't need to I suppose, but that makes it convenient with the 4x2 switch grid.
 
I am set up for live use
- bank size 10
- first row are cleans with 4 scenes each, the last adding crunch
- second row are leads and various high gain patches
- bank 2 has oddball patches that are rareley used

I also use the global preset to quickly jump to my favorite lead patch.

I probably use no more than 10 sounds on any given night and 80% of a gig using 5 or 6
 
billmeedog said:
I believe that one should be able do a whole gig in one bank of ten (10) patches/presets. That isn't manadatory (obviously,) but I think it's less stressfull to know that in any current bank (say of 10-presets) you can get to any one of your core sounds. Then the differences in the banks themselves might be genre-specific (I.E: a Metal-bank; Prog-Rock-Bank; Classic-Rock Bank; G-B/Wedding-Bank - (I know...don't throw stuff at me - LOL!) Acoustic-Duo bank; Funk/R&B/Blues-Bank; Original-band Bank; etc. So you show up to a gig, you determine the genre, and you use that genre's bank (I suppose certain "sonic-intensive genres" like prog-rock or avante-garde/experimental trance/mood-music might require multiple-banks, and that's OK too!

Does that make sense to anybody out there???

Bill
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Please allow me to make a case for the other side of the spectrum... I use over 50 presets to play the 80+ cover songs our wedding/dance band does. Of course, I "could" do a gig with 10 patches/presets, but my attitude is "why?". For me, half the fun of having the Axe is to see how close I can come to the original guitar player's tone. It's both fun and it helps me to learn to be better with the Axe. Instead of compromising between, say...., two lead tones that sound fairly close, I try to nail each one in a separate patch. I realize that 99.9% of the audience doesn't have a clue, but it's a great learning tool and it often makes me smile at gigs when I can hear that I really nailed a patch and it sounds like the original.

Any strategy that works for the player is great. Just wanted to provide one reason why some players might use a lot of patches.

In response to the original question, I order them chronologically as well and keep a song list handy so I know where to go. Most of our song selection is by request so I just check the list to see what patch I need to click to. I was thinking about keeping a list on an iPad attached to a mic stand and triggering the MFC through a midi cable by selecting the song on the iPad, but I haven't had a chance to get that set up yet.
 
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