This thread's a little old, but I'm about to order the Jr+. At first when I looked at the LF line, I didn't think it'd work for me, even with the 12, until the 24 came out. I'm used to a 18 button controller with 2 expression pedals with toe switches on my L6 Vetta, and the Axe has way more block types than the Vetta. After playing around with the editor and talking back and forth with Jeff, I've actually concluded the Jr+ will probably work great for me. Once it finally clicked for me how pages and dual function buttons work, I realized 8 on this controller is a lot more buttons than it appears!
WARNING: Long post ahead.
What I'm anticipating doing is having several different pages setup. One button does tap/tuner. One button does preset up/down. And a 3rd button will be setup to jump to a preset page on short press, and (if needed) a second IA page on the long press. More on those other pages in a bit. This leaves me with 5 buttons to place 10 IAs. 5 with a quick press, 5 with a long press. I can create several different versions of this page, and associate whichever one best suits a given preset to come up when that preset is activated. So one patch might be focused on several different levels of drive, and put those on the 5 quick press buttons, with lesser used functions on the 5 long press actions. Another patch might be more about delays and modulations, and put those on the 5 buttons.
If I need more than that on a preset (doubtful!), I can create a second page, tied to the long press of the preset/page 2 button I mentioned. That page could have up to 15 functions (with the 16th reserved to jump back to the last page). Or of course I could repeat some (like preset up/down or tap/tempo) if I wanted them globally available. But basically that's 5 IAs on a short press, 5 more IAs on a long press, 7-8 on a short press after jumping to page 2, 7-8 on a long press after jumping to page 2. That's a lot of IAs! And a 3rd page is even possible. And I can create as many sets of these pages as I want, up to 49 (1 reserved for the preset page).
For presets, when I need to jump non-sequentially or change songs in song mode, one quick tap on the preset button that I've put on each IA page can jump me right to a page that has Context (Bank or Song, depending on mode) up/down, a "last page" button to jump out of preset switching mode back to the IA page, and I can set my bank size to as many as TWELVE in that scenario (6 buttons * 2 per button). So I can jump around presets with bank up/down much faster than I could with just 4-5 reserved for presets on other controllers. I'd set the presets to jump to their IA page when activated, so once I pick a preset, I'm back to a page that gives me my tap/tempo, 10 IAs, and sequential preset scrolling, with a button to jump back to this preset page again if needed.
The LCDs on each button are what make that all managable. Without those, it'd be too easy to get lost. It is true that I'm adding a few taps to get to certain things, so it'll require anticipating that need by a second or two. But I don't think that will be a big deal. And it will require a little more programming than the "set it and forget it" model that the MFC and other controllers have. But on those, once you run out of IAs, you're out. And I think Jeff has made the programming as easy as it possibly could be with something this flexible, and the editor works very well.
If all things were equal, yes, I'd prefer the 12. I could do all of that but have 4 more physical options (8 total functions) to work with before I have to switch pages. But for $300 in savings, I don't know if I need it. Plus, the smaller size and weight (6 lbs difference) is nice to have too. It's less to haul around and a smaller footprint on the floor. And thanks to
this thread, I only need 1 expression pedal and one button to control up to 4 different parameters within a preset. So this could be a very small and light rig!!!
Worst case scenario, if I find myself missing the physical buttons, is that I get a 12+ or a second JR+ as an expander, or just get a 12+ and sell the Jr+. My hunch is that what i've described here will work very well for me. I'll report back once I find out! Thanks for reading, if you made it this far.