I just received my FM9 (my first Fractal product) and have gone thru all the presets and have found the ones that I think would be useful for a live rig but can't figure out how to make that happen. I've read the manuals completely, searched the forums and watched numerous YouTube videos but can't wrap my brain around how to make this happen. My thought is to take the presets (along with the scene number) I like and assign them to different banks so that I can have one bank for cleans, one for rock and one for metal. I'm hoping for an easy solution since all the different terminology is very confusing to my old brain. Presets, scenes, per presets, banks, CCs, modifiers, blocks, etc. etc. Any help would be appreciated. I haven't tried using FM9 Edit yet but will try to connect today and see what happens.
I can help with some of what you said.
Yes, the terminology can be daunting at first, especially if this is your fist Fractal product (mine was too- Axe III.) But it is important to use the right words when describing something, obviously so people here can help you with your questions, and also so you can understand the videos/manuals.
So a
bank is a group of 128 presets.
Bank A is presets 0 thru 127, B is 128 thru 255, etc. An entire group of factory presets can be imported into your unit as a whole bank at one time, so if you wanted to keep all your own, self-made, presets in one bank, keep these numbers in mind. The factory presets occupy banks A,B,&C.
A
preset can have all sorts of tone combinations in just that one preset, so I wouldn't limit yourself to keeping cleans in one bank, and others in a different bank. You can easily keep them in the same preset, and design your presets around different sounds.
Each preset contains 8
scenes, and the easiest way I think of scenes is this: Imagine you have a guitar rig, with various pedals, an amp with more than one channel, and a couple different cabinets.
For any scene, you select which pedals you want "on", and which ones you want bypassed. Set up each pedal the way you want it to sound, and dial in a channel on the amp the way you want it to sound. Select your cabinet. That's one scene.
Now in that
same preset, you can turn on one or more pedals that were bypassed in the previous scene, turn
off one or more of the pedals, switch to a different channel on your amp, and even select a different cabinet. OR, you can
keep everything the same as it was in the first scene, but only change the settings. Or even a combination of those 2 previous sentences. If you only changed the
settings on a pedal that was on in the first scene, you'd now put that pedal on a new
channel of which there are 4 to choose from.
That's the basics, as clear as I can explain them. And in Fractal parlance, everything you place on the "grid" (where you create your virtual rig) is referred to as a
Block. Input blocks, Output blocks, Phaser/Delay/Flanger/Overdrive/etc. blocks, Mixer blocks, Send & Return blocks, Amp blocks, you get the picture.
You'll get the hang of it, assuming you want to. I'd recommend watching a few of the "basics" videos from either Leon Todd or Cooper Carter, and realize you may have to watch them a few times, but it should all start to make sense pretty quickly.
And after reading your post a 2nd time, I'd recommend you try to learn your way around the ecosystem so-to-speak, before you try to make your own presets by picking and choosing from parts/portions of factory presets. I think if you first gain a decent understanding of how the gear works, it'll take you further.
Like, if you've never done carpentry, and just wanted to build a plywood box, sure, I could show you how to do just that. But if I first explained some basics to you, like how to ensure your corners are cut square, how to read a tape measure, how to remember which side of the line to cut on, stuff like that..., yeah it'll take a little longer. But then when you want to build something a little more involved, you're now better equipped to do so.
Hope that helps, and welcome!
