First time it failed me...any ideas?

DrDeaf

Member
Hi guys,

After about 3 yrs of no malfunction whatsoever with my setup, last night at rehearsel I had non stop chrashes of the axe fx II.

This is my (normal) setup: Axe FX II, controlled via a Gordius little giant (on phantom power, so power supply in the back of the axe and a 7-pin midi cabel to the gordius). not relevant but to complete: I use a Matrix GFX1000 into a Matrix passive cab.

first sympthom after getting set up, was that the Gordius had no power. I checked all the plugs, everything was in firmly in place.

I removed the power supply from the back of the axe and plugged it directly into the Gordius. It powered up again.

There seemed to be normal midi communication with the Axe.

But after a few minutes and several patch switches, on switching from one patch to another the Axe became totally silent and unresponsive. Sometimes the screen on the Axe went blank, other times not.
I had to do a power off, power on to get things working again, only for this to repeat after a few minutes again.

Do you guys have any idea what this could be?
Faulty Midi cable? Axe hardware? Axe firmware? Gordius?

Axe runs on latest Quantum firmware (3.03?) and Gordius on latest available firmware aswel.

Thanks!
 
1. Make sure you know exactly what the Gordius is sending to the AxeFX.
2. Is this happening on multiple presets?
3. Get a spare cable (probably your issue...but guessing.)
 
I got a spare cable, but alas that did not help. I did make it clear hat the problem is. Seems the MIDI IN connector is faulty.

The new cable probably has bigger pins, so it does connect the phantom power to my footswitch. But a little wiggle and my footswitch is off.

Is this repaired easily? can I possibly do it myself?
 
Take foot controller out of equation first.
I second this recommendation. Disconnect the controller, along with its power input to the back of the AxeFX. See if the AxeFX is stable without it, and play for 30 minutes or so. Then, test the power supply for the Gordius by directly connecting it to the controller, but without it being connected to the AxeFX. Stomp around among your presets, to see if everything seems stable with just the controller in standalone mode. Then reconnect the MIDI cable to your AxeFX, but power the Gordius directly. Again, stomp through some presets. Finally, reconnect the Gordius power supply to the back of the unit, and power via MIDI. Hopefully, at some point in this troubleshooting, the issue will manifest itself and you'll be able to isolate it.

Based on your symptoms, I'd hazard a guess that the problem could be either / both of the MIDI connectors, or the cable.
 
Thanks guys.

I bought the spare cable brand new yesterday. So it's unlikely that one is faulty too. The new cable haso slightly fatter pins so with that I am able to phantom power the gordius. But wiggle the midi plug at the axe end interrupts the power
Wiggles at the gordius end have no effect.

Switching without playing works without fail.

I powered the gordius directly and then the freezing started. I have my axe on my cab, so I assume it's resonating with the sound of the speaker causing tiny interruptions. Enough to make the axe go crazy.
 
Yep ....... and not a good idea to keep using the phantom powering via MIDI cable until it's been checked over and repaired. You could be risking collateral damage to both AxeFX and the Midi controller.

If it was me I'd be switching to using a Cat5 cable or FASLink method (using the relevant FASLink adapters for your model of AxeFX/MFC) and power the Midi controller direct from it's power supply
 
Do you use an UPS? If not I think it would be better for you to insert one in your rack. Most of these problems are determined by power surges.
 
What I did so far is buy a MFC, connect it through ethercon. To rule out cable and controller. Worked as a charm.....until I connected my expression pedal to the MFC.

So that pedal seems to be the culprit.

Has anybody experience something similar?
 
Getting a bit confusing .....think you might need to clarify a few things now that you've changed some hardware....

First - list all your devices IE What model of Axe-FX (AF2 Mark 1, Mark 2, XL or XL+? What model of MFC did you get (Mk1, Mk2 or Mk3)?

You didn't mention an expression pedal in your original post ... was it present there too when using the Gordius controller? How was it connected ... direct to back of AxeFX or via the Gordius?

What make of exp pedal is it? Can you see it working in the Modifier screen of the block you have it assigned to?

Is the exact same original issue IE :
But after a few minutes and several patch switches, on switching from one patch to another the Axe became totally silent and unresponsive. Sometimes the screen on the Axe went blank, other times not.
I had to do a power off, power on to get things working again, only for this to repeat after a few minutes again.
still happening with the new MFC using ethernet cable and the expression pedal plugged into the MFC?

Does the exp pedal work at all? Or is just the presence of the pedal plugged in when you boot the system that causes an issue immediately?

If the exp pedal works as expected at boot up, is the issue then happening when using (or after using) the exp pedal or does it happen just on preset changing regardless of whether or not the exp pedal was used in the preset you are switching from?

Does the system work with no issues at all for a prolonged period without the exp pedal being connected?
 
To update you guys:

I switched the expression pedal for a volume pedal using ts-ts->trs, and it seems to work now.
So I guess the expression pedal was faulty.

Oddly Both the gordius and the mfc seemingly handled the pedal as expexted. Callibration was no problem, and pedal position was detected in correctly in the axe.

It's a mysteriy to me, how the pedal could make the axe hang, when not connected to the axe itself.....but i "solved" it for now.

Thanks guys.
 
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