To you MIDI newbies, I suggest *NOT* hooking everything all together up all at once until you're familiar with how the various components work.
The Axe has MIDI In, Out and Thru jacks.
MIDI Thru jacks re-send the data that is received at the MIDI In jack.
The FCB has a MIDI In jack. It also has another jack that does double duty for MIDI Out or MIDI Out + MIDI Thru simultaneously, but this is set via programming. The FCB is very tricky to program manually, but this feature isn't too hard if you read the manual. Still, I suggest getting the iFCB editor.
Assuming that your FCB is brand new and set to the factory defaults....
Start by simply hooking up the Axe and the FCB.
MIDI Out from the FCB goes to MIDI In on the Axe.
The FCB default is probably set to broadcast on MIDI Channel 1. Set the Axe to receive on MIDI Channel 1 also.
You should now be able to change Presets on the Axe by selecting them on the FCB. If the FCB Patch numbers are off by 1 from the Axe's Preset numbers then set the MIDI offset inside the Axe to +1.
If you can't change Presets on the Axe, then your FCB is probably set to some other MIDI Channel. At this point, rather than re-programming the FCB, try changing the receiving Channel on the Axe. If this still doesn't work then someone's probably programmed your FCB in some sort of a non-standard way.
My advice is then to hook up the FCB to your computer and use the iFCB application to see what's going on in there, and correct it.
Hookup of FCB to computer, with no Axe involved:
MIDI Interface Out to FCB In. Interface In to FCB Out.
In iFCB's Preferences you'll have to choose the Port on your MIDI interface that is actually connected to the FCB. If there are no Ports listed in iFCB's Prefs then you may need to re-install the drivers for your interface on your computer.
In iFCB - If you see a way to re-set the FCB to its factory defaults then do that first.
Now, set the FCB to Bank mode rather than Direct Select mode.
Set it at first so that there is a one-to-one mapping of FCB "Patch" Numbers to Axe Preset numbers.
[The FCB's defaults for the two Exp Pedals are CC#7 for the outer pedal and CC#27 for the inner pedal. Later on you might want to set the Axe up so that #7 handles a volume parameter somewhere in your Layouts and #27 handles the Wah.]
Leave anything else you involving CC numbers or IA switches off for now.
Set the FCB's MIDI Channel to the same receive channel you have set up on the Axe.
Set the MIDI Out jack to also operate as MIDI Thru. *This* will later allow you to hook-up the FCB and the Axe both to the computer at the same time (see below).
Don't forget to send all of these changes to the FCB.
Assuming everything above went well, re-hook your FCB up again to the Axe and try it out.
If it's not working now, then at the risk of making it more complicated, let's try hooking up both the Axe and the FCB at the same time to the computer.
FCB MIDI Out goes to Axe's MIDI In.
Axe's MIDI Thru goes to Computer's MIDI In.
Computer's MIDI Out goes to FCB's MIDI In.
You should now be able to try things out in iFCB, send them to the FCB, and immediately see their results on the Axe.
To hook up the Axe, sans FCB, to the computer it's Axe Out to 'puter In and Axe In to 'puter Out.
Don't try either of the Axe editors. They're buggy and confusing at this point and you may destroy your Axe Presets. Let's try using a sysex librarian like the ones recommend at Fractal's support page. SysEx Librarian, for Mac, and MIDIOx for PC.
In your librarian's prefs set the MIDI port to the port that the Axe is connected to.
Set your librarian to receive a message. From the Axe's Utility pages select Dump Bank A and hit enter.
The librarian should show you that it is receiving and recording a stream of sysex messages from the Axe.
When it's done, try this: Change one of the parameters of one of your Axe Presets and Store it to memory.
Now use the librarian to send your original Bank A back to the Axe. All you need to do is to select the bank file on the librarian and click on Play. When it's done, your axe Preset should show the original parameter for the Preset that you altered.
[Note: If you've already programmed functions for CC control of Volume or Wah sweep in the Axe via the FCB's Exp Pedals, then when you disconnect the FCB from the Axe you may not hear anything coming out of the Axe anymore. If this happens then go to the Axe's I/O pages and set these 2 controllers to Pedal 2, or bypass the offending Effects Blocks in the Layout.]
If none of the stuff in the above paragraph is working at all for you and you can not seem to get any communication between the computer and the Axe, or if it's glitchy, then you may need to use a different MIDI interface. For some reason the Axe is very finicky about MIDI interfaces and you may find that an interface that was fine with one version of the Axe firmware stops working when another firmware version is loaded in the Axe. IMO This is a real drag and I wish that Cliff could make it so this didn't happen so much.
Although I don't recommend doing it, here's how to set it up so that you should be able to use the librarian (or an editor) with the Axe and the FCB at the same time. But you won't be able to use iFCB with the FCB.
FCB Out/Thru to Axe In.
Computer Out to FCB In.
Axe Out to Computer In.
If that *does* work, then I don't recommend that you use it that way *when using an editor for the Axe* because usually you'll want the editor to be completely in control of the Axe or you run into the danger that the editor will be saving things to Presets that you didn't intend it too.
Hope that helps.
