EVH 5150 iii 50w, MIDI channel changing, and Axe Scenes

Hey folks,

So here's what I'm thinking about for my rig:

Axe-fx II four cable method into a 5150 iii 50w. I would like to, using my Ground Control Pro, I control both scenes in the axe and channel switching in the 5150. Is there a function in the axe 2 that covers this, or would it be better to get a splitter?

It would be particularly awesome if I could assign different scenes to initiate different states in the amp per preset in the ground control pro. Any thoughts?
 
As far as the midi, you should be able to just connect the midi thru jack on the Axe Fx to the midi input on the amp.

Doing scenes on the GCP is not trivial. You can do it with preset mapping on the Axe Fx, or there is another method that somebody posted a couple years ago that I believe uses some of the GCP's ability to integrate with the GCX.

However, are you wanting scene changes to be sending channel changes to the amp? I'm not aware of any way to do that.

You might be able to have the GCP switches send the scene change to Axe Fx on one midi channel and also send the channel changes to the amp on a different channel. I know you can send to multiple devices at the sane time.
 
Yeah I have setup scenes on my rig. It was a bit crazy at first but once I got the hang of it it all made sense.

The gcp works with amp switching in the same way I've set it up for scenes. The four bottom buttons control scenes. Similarly, the bottom four can be used to send channel changes to the evh. Very easy to program the changes on the 5153.

I could get a midi splitter and just piggy back the switches to the same buttons I use for the scenes. What I'm not sure about is if I can double up or of the gcp works preset to preset. Is button two ALWAYS going to put the amp to channel two, or is it preset by preset? Suppose I should have a chat with fender and voodoo labs...
 
But what are you wanting to use a splitter for? A splitter will send the same signal to both devices, which will likely not accomplish what you want...

You can define multiple "devices" (I think that's what the GCP calls them), each on it's own channel, and send instructions to each on it's own midi channel.

So, for example, put your Axe Fx on midi channel 1 and your amp on midi channel 2, then configure the GCP to use those channels for each device.

Connect your midi out from the GCP to the midi in on the Axe Fx, then connect the midi thru on the Axe Fx to the midi in on the amp.

When you send midi for the amp on channel 2, the Axe Fx will ignore them and they will pass out the midi thru jack to the amp. Same goes the other way, the amp will ignore midi in except on channel 2.

It's been some time since I had a GCP (or even the original Ground Control) but I think you can have each button send commands to (up to) 4 or 6 devices.

I think the buttons are per GCP preset, but it's been too long :)
 
That makes total sense when you explain it that way. Pretty sure axe communicates on channel 1, and the evh manual said any channel will work.

Now I have a Mark 1, so should I expect much noise even with humbuster cables involved?
 
The Axe Fx can communicate on any midi channel... There is a setting in the I/O menu, midi tab, I think. But I believe channel 1 is default.

As far as noise, I can't comment. I have no experience with 4CM...
 
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I wanted to give an update on this thread. I figured out what I'm going to have to do to make this work.

The 5150 is automatically set up to accept MIDI messages on channel 01. It can be overridden by simply sending it a program change on any other channel. I'll have to initialize the GCP and create a "dumb" setup, so I can send a program change message on channel 02. Then it's simply a matter of setting up which program changes I want to correlate with each channel (ie PC 01 for green channel, PC 02 for blue, PC 03 for red).

At that point, I can initialize the GCP again. Since both the Axe-fx II "Scenes" and the 5150 MIDI channel switching both use the 4 Presests/Bank function, I can assign Device number 1 to the Axe-fx II, sending out VCA messages to change scenes but not using any MIDI channel information for the bottom four rows. I can then set up device number 2 on Channel 02, sending out whichever program change on the button corresponding with whichever scene I want to access. This way I can use all 8 scenes in the Axe-fx II and apply them to whichever channel I want to.

For example: Button 1 can give me the green channel with all effects bypassed, button 2 can be green channel with effects, button 3 can be another dry channel on blue, but with the gate increased and also the scene volume pulled down a bit to compensate for the volume jump. I can go about this up to eight different scenes per preset so I very much doubt I'll run out of tonal variety to choose from.

Now I just have to test whether or not I'm going to have any extenuating signal to noise issues and I'll be off and running. Super cool.
 
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