Liquid Foot Support is Still Alive and Well!!

G

GreenTea

Inspired
:D I’ve been using my LFJr live for more than a year. I use it to good effect. Love it. It’s power, SIZE, depth of function, durability, ease of live use has been awesome, even with my size 13 dogs. (Here’s a thread about how I use it http://www.fractalaudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=19116.)

Earlier this week, I ran into a functional issue. I’m pretty confident I needed LF support. I have been frustrated beyond belief trying to resolve the issue on my own – I am a midiot, but I do try to “get it.” At any rate, the issue = seems my green LED lights P1-P4 simply stopped working; the red LEDs P1-P4 do work. Red/green colors S1-S4 work fine.) Issue aside, no matter what I try, I could not resolve the malfunction.

Last night, I dropped Jeff a customer request for support and asked for help in resolving the issue. Got an instant reply within minutes… and helpful e-mail dialogue. Looks like I do have an issue. Jeff finally said that, if I “send the LFJr home, she will be returned quickly.” Says that if he doesn’t like something, he’ll “replace it w/ a new Board!”

I follow the Liquid Foot JR threads, as they’ve been immensely informative and helpful. So I wanted to share a positive experience. I am really glad to have this type of customer support and service ... and just wanted to share it with other users & readers. Will close the loop on how the issue is resolved. Thank you Jeff & Liquid Foot!!
 
Glad to hear that, but I still don't understand how LF support went almost completely dark for months on end. Has that been explained on the LF forums or anywhere else? Pretty much completely abandoning everybody/everything communication-wise for that amount of time just didn't make sense. Did he have a serious medical problem or something that prevented communication?
 
Don't know/wish I knew. I'm a little guy in a working band and just know that when I needed them, they were right there to support. Same experience when I made the initial purchase: Jeff was super to deal with... nothing but positive vibes with Liquid Foot.
 
I ordered a LFP back in December & got no reply. I ordered again in January & got no reply. I ordered again in February & got no reply.

OOPS! Lines down due to a storm!
March was more exciting as I received multiple e-mails about liquid tracks but still no confirmation of a LFP.
April offered some hope via an e-mail but....

All the while I had been reading the fractal forums about the MFC-101. I signed up for the wait list & was confirmed in 8 hours or less!

Then, present day, no more than 36 hours ago, I received an e-mail from, ...(yes I like lots of comma,s), Liquid foot.
I can now order my Liquid Foot Pro! Yay me!

I said "Remove me from the list please"!

I usually don't speak out but I've seen a lot of "Liquid Support" here as of late & I say pooey!!
Where was Liquid when I wanted one? Where was Liquid when I needed one? Where was Liquid when I had the money & patience to wait for one?

Now:
I'm older & wiser!
I got on the wait list for the MFC & I hope (within a month) I'll have one.

LF is a great product I'm sure but I'll wait for the MFC!

LF's only saving grace will be if he were enlisted to help the MFC.
If Fractal & LF actually had a partnership to complete the MFC then I say all is forgiven.
 
My experience with LF has not been a good one either. I ordered a jr. in December and was confirmed of the order within a few days. After that......almost no communication for months at a time. I think I emailed him around April to see if I was even still on the list to get one and I finally got a response from him and he said he still had my order. Now supposedly he has hired some people and straightened things out and is accepting new orders again. I have yet to be contacted by anybody about my order from last December. :(
 
That's "the way" with Liquid Controls.

Radio silence untils your unit is ready. Sad but true.
 
That's the interesting thing - I think a lot of people confused the radio silence related to orders with radio silence related to customer support. To me there's a very important distinction.

I think Jeff would help himself out with more communication for sure. Before I bought my LF, I was a little frustrated about not hearing about the status of my order for a few months. Like others, I almost went somewhere else. Incidentally, that somewhere else was with Axess. Right before I pulled the trigger on an FX-1, I got the email about the LF. Some time down the road, I had the equivalent of a power outage while updating the firware. Fried the LF. It was past the warranty period. It was also a month or two into the alleged no-Liquid-support period. I wrote Jeff frantically that night. He replied first thing in the morning. He called me on my lunch break so we could trouble shoot over the phone together. When he could see it would require service, he had me send it in. Despite being past the warranty period and the problem not being any fault of his, he fixed the unit free of charge and paid for return shipping out of his pocket.

I certainly don't want to sound like a cheerleader. But I have seen a ton of negativity toward Liquid Foot and just want to make sure that a fair sampling of experiences are considered by third parties before making any judgements.
 
Nice one.
While i have endured my fair share of fruatration over the last few months with the Liquid Foot 'situation'
i'm glad to hear that things are turning around.
Really glad.
It's good to restore some balance to the ledger.
 
metal190 said:
I think a lot of people confused the radio silence related to orders with radio silence related to customer support. To me there's a very important distinction.
Click to expand...

Good that you pointed it out :)
 
so...does that mean lf ordering is fully functional? what's the wait list like over there? i'm curious to see whether lf pro is ultimately the better vs. the mfc-101 for the axe.

i mean, one was designed to be the best for everything, but has been plagued by support & availability issues. the other doesn't have quite as many bells and whistles, but seems to be better-suited for the axe and has some things the lf pro doesn't. or am i wrong?

price-wise, the mfc seems to be more competitive, not to mention i'm a lot more confident about on-going support, esp. w/ firmware & axe compatibility.

right now i'm on the fence and thinking i'll stick w/ the gcp i have for the time being...

what're your thoughts everyone?
 
Hey Guys, I have had my LF Pro for quite a while. I needed to have an excellent foot controller and couldn't wait for MFC-101. I shelled out the cash and chose LF Pro over the Axess. I have NO complaints. I have had NO issues at all with the unit or with Jeff. Always great to work with, responded to me promptly, etc. The LF Pro does everything I need it to do.

That said, I will buy an MFC-101. I totally want to check it out and I am excited to see what Cliff has done with this, especially as it will be designed specifically for the Axe. However, after giving both a side by side, I will decide which one to use for gigs and keep the other as a back-up, most likely. The question about which is best, is not really a good question. Simply because it depends on YOUR specific needs. My needs may not reflect yours and vice versa. Plus, if it's all about money, than it doesn't matter which is best, it matters what you can afford.

I realized that my foot controller is a HUGELY important part of my rig. It is the thing I touch most often, besides my guitar. Think about that...it needs to do what you need it to, reliably and consistently, over and over again. That's the bottom line. Once I spent some time with the LF Pro, I got a better idea of what I wanted it to do and what it is capable of doing. Truthfully, I don't use ALL the features, there are many, yet there are some that I couldn't live without at this point. Plus, there have been firmware updates for free, thanks Jeff, as there are with the Axe.

Once I started using this level of gear, I began to expect my gear to function at this level. It would be difficult to go back now. I hope this is a bit helpful. Regardless, my advice is DON'T try to scrimp when it comes to your foot controller, it's important.

Rock On
 
I have both the mfc and lf pro. I like the size of mfc but I have found that for my needs the lf pro to be better suited
 
ckofahl said:
I have both the mfc and lf pro. I like the size of mfc but I have found that for my needs the lf pro to be better suited
Click to expand...

Could you elaborate on why the LF Pro is a better fit for you than the MFC? I'll have a decision to make when I step up from my LF Jr. probably sometime next year, and I'd be curious how you see the differences between the LF Pro and the MFC.
 
I have never owned an MFC (obviously). so I can't really speak to that. Comparing the manual though, it seems to fit somewhere between the LF Pro and the LF Junior in terms of power and functionality - although obviously much closer to the LF Pro.

For me what it would boil down to is:

Power
Price
Support

FWIW, it was a couple months on the wait list for me to get the LF Pro. Once all initial orders are fulfilled with the MFC I'll be interested to see how availability goes. Not really fair to compare yet since they're just rolling the product out.

Power - you can do more per button with the LF Pro, and you have access to a greater number of IA switches (both physical and virtual) however both products are extremely powerful, so it may be a moot point for some. If you don't even need the full 40 that the MFC offers, then you wouldn't care that the LF Pro offers 64. The LF Pro also holds a substantially more presets, although I can't remember the exact number the MFC holds (the LF holds 252).

In terms of other "power" or bells and whistles, the MFC still seems like a leaner offering although most people likely won't find it lacking anything they really "need". For lack of experience I can't speak to the speed with which the MFC loads and programs. But I can say that the LF Pro has performed far better than I'd have hoped. Having owned a GC Pro, a Rocktron All Access LTD and a few others, the LF Pro is super fast and super easy. Some people have said the LF is hard to program, but every foot controller I've owned has taken some time of sitting with the manual and controller in lap before I could take full advantage of it.

Price - The MFC is cheaper. Not much more to say there other than that both units are extremely competitively priced. So if it were me, I'd probably pick whichever unit serves my needs better and call it good.

Support - My experience with LF support has been top notch. Jeff has gone above and beyond for me. From what I can tell, most people's complaints were actually with lack of communication during ordering not during support. Either way, if I didn't have first hand experience telling me otherwise I would potentially feel nervous after hearing the negative buzz that was there for a while. That being said, both products offer frequent FW upgrades. LF's historically have been more frequent, but possibly not as substantial as Fractal's, and perhaps have been slightly premature in terms of bug testing. Fractal's track record does look extremely strong in terms of support, and you know that you've got a team of people working on it so you're not as dependent on one single person. Thus increased consistency. Anyway, in the end I'd actually rank these two extremely close in support. My personal experience has shown both to be exceptional.

Just my .02
 
@ metal190... nice overview.

Will also report that in the fwiw category my LFJr has returned and arrived today by post. Just Bumped the fw up to 2.09 and reprogammed everything. Works great. Nothing to report but excellent and super fast support and comms from Jeff. Have the LFJr configured like this:

MENU Button
• 1 click = toggle back & forth between 8P/8S modes
• 2 sec. hold = tuner linked to Axe-FX
• 3 sec. hold = jump 8 patches @ a time or to the main menu

MAGIC Button
• one click of the “Magic” button jumps between pages for fast access to all Axe-FX effects for any given patch.

Here are the pics for clarity http://liquidfoot.setbb.com/liquid-foot-axe-fx-f8/liquid-foot-axe-fx-t598.html
 
I own both, and have compared them side by side so for what it's worth, here's my observation (YMMV) The MFC is easier to program and the manual was much better laid out. Feature for feature the LFP does more, this could be solved at some point with firmware updates? Both will meet my needs, they each do it a bit different. One feature that is handy for me on the LFP, I'm somewhat color blind and have trouble with red/green led's and on the LFP, I can go into the menu and turn the red led's off so that the way that my pedal board is set up is the same for every patch and I don't need to know when the effect is off, I just need to look down at my pedal board and see what's on, no light it's off. I like the size of the MFC and have found a work around with it and the led's. The MFC seems to be a bit quicker in loading the patches as well as very responsive to how quick the IA's engage. On the LFP I could confuse it by stepping two quickly on a switch and it wouldn't respond, can't seem to fool the MFC it's quick. I like the construction of MFC better, very heavy duty and even though it's smaller, it weighs more. I' sure that the more I work with the MFC I'll discover more, but I'll keep both, I have 2 ultra's so it's a good thing. If I didn't have the issue with being a bit color blind, for my needs the MFC is a winner!
 
i liked the idea of the step-thru feature for the ia switches. sort of like mini-preset buttons, right? do you use that, @gtarlover?

also, imho, the edit software seems to be the next step for fractal if they intend to match the lf pro's support. they just released so i guess that's enough on their plate right now, but that's what i'd probably expect as the next couple months go by.

thanks @metal190 & greentea for further details & review.
 
ckofahl said:
the LFP I could confuse it by stepping two quickly on a switch and it wouldn't respond
Click to expand...
It's a feature: in Menu -> Global there's a button delay parameter.

I like the construction of MFC better, very heavy duty and even though it's smaller, it weighs more.
Click to expand...
The LF have been designed to bend, so it can resist to heavy mechanical shocks.
 
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