Can You Change Amp Channels and FX bypass with the Same External Controller

lwknives

lwknives

Power User
Can you use an external controller (a pedal connected to the FC-12) to simultaneously change the amp blocks channel and engage a drive block?
 
lwknives said:
Can you use an external controller (a pedal connected to the FC-12) to simultaneously change the amp blocks channel and engage a drive block?
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you can use an external switch to change scenes, which would be able to simultaneously change amp block channel and engage the drive block.
 
You can use a controller pedal to run the gain up on two things at once, but not to change channels on more than one item at a time. There are 3 different wish list items near the top of the list related to this idea, actually.
 
You might be able to do a handful of controller switches set as a mutually exclusive group and use them to poke amp gain and/or tone and change status of boosts/drives.
 
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On the Ax8 I can set an external pedal to switch x/y state of a block.
Like this...
5692C2C1-2BB0-40FD-AC7F-BE28FB41108E.jpeg


Is that possible for channels on the iii?
 
He specifically suggested channel switching the amp and the cab tracking it, but someone else suggested expanding that capability to all blocks being able to follow another block's channel selection, which could cover your drive/gain switching scenario nicely....
 
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On the 3, we ave the ability to play with the channels, but assigning a switch to that means that's all that switch will do. You can bypass an effect, select a particular channel, toggle between two channels, or loop through incrementally or decrementally a list of 2, 3, or 4 channels:
Screen%20Shot%202019-08-06%20at%208.23.10%20PM.png


This shows toggling a channel in a block on the TAP function:
Screen%20Shot%202019-08-06%20at%208.24.23%20PM.png


This shows looping around all 4 on the HOLD function:
Screen%20Shot%202019-08-06%20at%208.24.14%20PM.png



By itself, this looping method could get you all 4 amp channels on one button, with increment on TAP and decrement on HOLD, or two buttons with increment and decrement both on TAP, and ignore the HOLD like the middle pic or use the HOLD for some other thing.

But, that still doesn't let you do the drive at the same time with the same switch.

A Controller, on a pedal instead of a switch, could increase your gain on the amp and tweak the tone controls, and theoretically, above a certain range in the pedal's sweep, could turn on your drive and could also play with any/all of its params. Check out this guy's video and see what he does to get three distinct sounds out of one Modifier pedal as he sweeps it across its range: https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/one-expression-pedal-can-do-it-all.152828/#post-1818561 He's a bloody genius!
 
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Another thing that could get you there is to use the looping through channels idea on one switch, and have the drive on an adjacent switch.

The FC pedal switches are close enough together to tap two at once for my run-of-the-mill, average, size 9 feet, so you could hit [Channel +1], then [Channel +1], then [Channel +1] AND [Channel +1] together, then [Channel +1] a final time, or some combination of things that gets you the things you want switched switched.

Also, the amps all have built-in "boost" that can be any number of different flavors. The CC Boost was just added, and is really nice, and you can switch it on with a Controller on a switch. I also like the "Mid Boost" one, and the TS808 one is always a good standby for kicking your amp in the nose. :) An "amp boost" combined with your drive pedal, switched on via two different Controller switches, could get you 4 distinct sounds before even touching your amp's other settings: OFF, A, B, A+B.
 
lwknives said:
The idea is to use 5 external switches to access 5 levels of gain but still leave my time based FX on “stomp mode “.
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If using an FC12, assign switches 1-5 to scenes for the 5 levels of gain you want and you still have 5 (or 7) switches that can be stomp switches. Just because you're on a scene layout doesn't mean all the switches have to be scene switches.
 
brianv4 said:
If using an FC12, assign switches 1-5 to scenes for the 5 levels of gain you want and you still have 5 (or 7) switches that can be stomp switches. Just because you're on a scene layout doesn't mean all the switches have to be scene switches.
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You could also use a variation of the trick I used on my scenes layout for the two FC6es in my rig.

4 scene buttons, scenes 1-4 on tap, scenes 5-8 on hold, and each has the layout link set up to switch views (in your case, layouts) to a duplicate layout where tap and hold switches are reversed, and layout lik on hold to switch back. That leaves 8 switches open for whatever else you might want to do.
 
brianv4 said:
If using an FC12, assign switches 1-5 to scenes for the 5 levels of gain you want and you still have 5 (or 7) switches that can be stomp switches. Just because you're on a scene layout doesn't mean all the switches have to be scene switches.
Click to expand...
Scenes aren’t powerful enough to do what I need because they save the channel and bypass of every block in the preset. I could easily make this work if I only used 8 sounds but I use way more than 8.
For scenes to work I would need like 32 of them or have the ability to make certain blocks ignore scene changes. Or have “scene channels” implemented.
Scenes work great if you are using one preset per song but they are pretty weak for kitchen sink presets.
 
Joe Bfstplk said:
You could also use a variation of the trick I used on my scenes layout for the two FC6es in my rig.

4 scene buttons, scenes 1-4 on tap, scenes 5-8 on hold, and each has the layout link set up to switch views (in your case, layouts) to a duplicate layout where tap and hold switches are reversed, and layout lik on hold to switch back. That leaves 8 switches open for whatever else you might want to do.
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Works great if you are using scenes but scenes aren’t flexible enough for my situation.
 
Btw. I figured out a way to use control switches to give my 5 levels of gain, compression and amp can combinations a while ago. I created a thread about it. It works pretty well but is very complicated and uses up a ton of CPU.
 
You can flip this around and use scenes, but have your time based FX set using control switches.
Using the 'last' setting for your control switches you can have the time fx state persist across scenes changes.
 
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