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I just put the final touches on my rebuilt FM3 board. Here's the list of ingredients:
- PedalTrain Classic Jr Pedalboard
- BestTronics (BTPA) Patch Panel
- D-Panel Connectors for Power, 1/4 Inch Audio, XLR, USB
- 2 LED Strips
- FM3 (just updated to FW8!)
- Cioks DC7 Power Supply
- 2 Fractal Audio EV-2 Controllers
- DMC Micro.Pro MIDI Controller
- 2-Button Footswitch (self-built)
- DS Engineering Chronograph
- Sonic Research Turbo Tuner
- Xotic Effects EP Booster
Cabling is all custom-length. I use George L cables for audio. I do like their connectors and use them where possible, but I had a tight fit in this layout so I needed to solder squareplug low-profile 1/4 inch TS plugs in some cases. For the EV-2 pedals and the dual footswitch, I used 2-conductor shielded console cable with squareplug low-profile 1/4 inch TRS plugs. I shortened the USB cables for the FM3 and Micro.Pro. The power supply cables for the pedals are all custom-length; the feed for the EP Booster is running at 18v. The LED strips are just there because I like knowing where the pedalboard's edges are; most of our stage are dark, so this looks neat and keeps me from tripping over the stupid thing.
I use the tuner pedal because (1) I had it in my pedal collection and (2) it's a handy way to easily mute to tune. The EP Booster is there because (1) I had in my pedal collection and (2) I like how it warms up my guitar sound on the way into the FM3. Yes, I can do that same thing with the boost in the drive block, but this saves me using a drive block (along with the CPU associated with that block). The DS Chronograph is super handy; it's a clock and timer with an internal battery backup. I love knowing what time it is when we're playing, and occasionally use the countdown feature when we have a hard cutoff time.
The two-button footswitch is connected to the FM3 and acts as stand-in switches. They're assigned to increment / decrement scenes within a preset.
The DMC Micro.Pro does a couple of handy things. The two switches are programmed to increment / decrement presets. I connected one of the EV-2 pedals to it, and assigned it to control the FM3 output block volume.
With those things set up, I have the FM3 programmed to select presets within a given bank of 3. Holding buttons 1 or 2 increments / decrements the bank. Holding button 3 goes to another view with some handy functions including tap tempo. Holding button 3 returns to the previous view. This functionality gives me a lot of flexibility for stage work. I use a dedicated Preset for each song, and organize my scenes in the order of use for that song; sometimes I need to switch among scenes without incrementing / decrementing, and I have a layout to make that easier. But for 90% of my work, this setup lets me move pretty fast. I usually know my set lists in advance, so I just copy the presets into slots starting with #1.
