MFC Strategies

Patzag

Patzag

Fractal Fanatic
There are probably as many ways to set up the MFC as there are individual players out there. And with the advent of Scenes, that number just got compounded.
I'm not happy with mine. It requires too much footwork.

Anyone care to share their successful strategies for the MFC?
 
I run mine in

10 presets and the rest IA - two BossFV 500 footcontroller - Volume - Wah. 2 footswitches Scene UP and Scene DOWN.

Very good when you are live.

AAEN
 
My button layout

- 1 Preset (doubles as scene 1)
- 4 additional scene buttons
- 11 AI's
- Two Boss FV's
- Two expression knobs
- 4 External switches
 
Five presets on the bottom row, rest are IA for individual FX.

"Reveal" turns the five preset buttons into five scene selects. So I get basically access to 25 presets with no more than two taps of the foot. Plenty for a gig and then some.. for me anyways...
 
I hope there are a lot of in-depth discussions in this thread. I have been contemplating this question since scenes came out, and I haven't changed yet... a combination of gigs that don't wait for me screwing up my controller, uncertainty about the best direction to go, and likely a fair dose of "it's already working" laziness.

Currently, I am using 5 presets, the rest IAs with the normal one each for tuner and tempo. I use one Mission SP-2 pedal for control of whatever two parameters I need for a given preset. It's mostly for wah and volume, but I do use it for pitch bending as well. It's workable, but I have considered going to 10 presets, as I find I rarely need more than 5 switchable effects (six, really, because the wahwah is on auto engage).

eda123 said:
"Reveal" turns the five preset buttons into five scene selects. So I get basically access to 25 presets with no more than two taps of the foot. Plenty for a gig and then some.. for me anyways...
Click to expand...
This sounds like a GREAT way to play with scenes, and I had not considered it at all prior to reading eda123's post. I think this will be a good way for me to get into scenes and retain my already-working layout. Thanks for the idea!
 
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1-5 presets (double tap for an alt preset similar to 1-5)
6-10 scenes
11-17 IA's for multidly, verb, delay, trem, drive, boost & tap
Reveal 1-5 less common used IA's such as wah, geq and a few others that might just go on and off once a twice a night.
 
I have a similar set up to Rick but I'm contemplating a set up like Redburst.
But how do I remember what the reveal reveals? What do you do? "burst?

Also, I use 11 and 12 for volume +1 and -1. I MUST be able to IA Amp x/y, Drive, CHO, Flanger, Rotary, Phase and Pitch.
Arghhh - I so want that MFC expansion!
 
All I can say is: if you have trouble with available switches or tapdancing, make use of thet Scene INC and Scene DEC commands. It may require some redundant copy&paste of scenes, but it's a really powerful thing, especially when combined with an easier-to-hit external footswitch. Plus it removes some unneccesary distractions created by thinking about what to hit next.
 
I am still puzzling what the best setup is in my case. Currently I've got 14 presets, 1 delay IA, and the tap tempo and tuner buttons as they were. Thing is, I use various sounds and effects, and switching back and forth with IAs is more work for me. For example, I'll go from a distortion patch to a light overdrive with chorus. My light overdrive is basically my clean with a drive engaged. So if I were to make this switch with IAs for the drive block and the chorus block I need to press 3 buttons, this way it's just one. However, in the same song I might also switch to my clean sound without chorus, but with a univibe engaged. Still more tapdancing involved than with my current 14 preset configuration.

At the moment this works fine though, it's very simple now that I've memorized where each preset is located. But, I might run into the 14-preset limit when I decide to want to pile on more effects. :p
 
10 active presets. The top 5 presets are IA to activate my most commonly used stomp boxes; wha, drive, chorus, delay, reverb.

Since the advent of scenes, I use the reveal .to uncover the bottom 5 scenes and the remaining ;comp, flange, phase, drive2, and delay 2. I learned this from Cooper's Tutorial on scenes. Very helpful.
My presets and scenes are ordered from left to right clean, crunch, chorus, drive, and solo, that way, I can easily remember where things are as I switch presets. I used to use about 5 presets per song, now I have incorporated them into one preset with scenes, and have named each preset that song name. Lots of fun as I am building a complete library of songs.
 
I've been giving this a lot of thought, as I pray that the MFCs will ship soon, and this seems like the perfect opportunity to ask for similar advice.

I'm in a wedding band and we play very diverse music. So, I have about 80 presets, of which I use 50 or so per gig. Most of a gig is driven by requests, so I can't order my presets against a predefined set list and therefore, have to tap my way to each preset. Once on a preset, I will sometimes switch an effect on or off, like a wah, drive, pitch, or delay but that varies from preset to preset. I also require a boost for solos on many presets.

For you experts out there, does this scenario suggest any particular strategy for setting up the MFC?
 
I use scenes like an amp-stylish way, a 4(5) channel amp.
Example)
Preset 1: Mesa Mark (amp1 x=Usa Clean1, amp1 y=Usa Rhythm, amp2 x=Usa Lead 1+, amp2 y=Usa Lead 2+)
Preset 2: Mesa Recto
Preset 3: 5150
...
Banksize 0, change preset up or down.

1-5: Scene 1-5: Clean/Crunch/Rhy/Lead/Extra (4 different amp, x/y)
6: Boost (nullfilter/enable delay1/enable reverb1) and turn off (delay2/rev2): "Solo mode" for Scene 1-5
7-17: Regular IA stomp
 
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guitarjim said:
...I have about 80 presets, of which I use 50 or so per gig. Most of a gig is driven by requests, so I can't order my presets against a predefined set list and therefore, have to tap my way to each preset. Once on a preset, I will sometimes switch an effect on or off, like a wah, drive, pitch, or delay but that varies from preset to preset

...does this scenario suggest any particular strategy for setting up the MFC?
Click to expand...
First scenario: make do with fewer presets. :) Seriously, 50 presets per gig suggests you're using a separate preset for each song. Unless you're playing 50 different genres, you could probably get my nicely by consolidating your presets into ten or twenty that are distictly different.

Either way, it's apparent you need quick access to a lot of presets. That suggests more buttons for presets. But you also need to change individual effects on the fly, which also demands a lot of buttons.

If you can make scenes work for you, it'll save you trouble and complexity. For instance, set up Scene 2 on every preset to be a lead tone with a boost and a different delay. Switching to lead mode will then be one stomp instead of three.

Or wait for Fractal to release an expansion to the MFC, 'cause you're gonna need a ton of footswitches. :)
 
redburst21 said:
1-5 presets (double tap for an alt preset similar to 1-5)
6-10 scenes
11-17 IA's for multidly, verb, delay, trem, drive, boost & tap
Reveal 1-5 less common used IA's such as wah, geq and a few others that might just go on and off once a twice a night.
Click to expand...
Same here, except I chose different IAs
 
After many hours of thinking, researching, and making excuses why I don't need scenes, I finally took the plunge and got to work tonight. I upgraded to v9.02, but put the amp modeling back at 8 because I have gigs this weekend and want to focus on medal arrangement. Here's what I have so far:

I use Reveal to get everything in IA mode.
IA's 1-3 are scene 1-3, respectively. These will serve as "Clean", "Crunch", and "High Gain" scenes.
IA 4: Delay 1
IA 5: "Solo" button. Turns on a +3db null filter boost and delay 2
IA 6 - 10: flanger, phaser, etc...
IA 11 - 14: Preset selection buttons. I have condensed everything to 4 "Master" presets and these buttons serve as direct access to each of those.
IA 15: random stompbox
IA 16: Tap Tempo
IA 17: Tuner
Expression 1: Wah (external 1)
Expression 2: Global output 1 volume

There are a couple challenges that I haven't figured out yet:

1.) I would like my patch selection to default to scene 3 (high gain) as when I'm switching between them, I ALWAYS go to a high gain scene (every preset has a clean scene). I suppose I could make that scene 1, but there should be a way to select Preset 1 scene 3 via IA.

2.) For some reason one of my preset selection buttons loads, makes sound, then drops out for second and loads again. It's like it's sending a second blast of midi commands and the dropout coincided perfectly with the MFC's screen. There's sound when it says "IA 14" then a small dropout when it switches to the patch name. One of my other presets was doing this, but after futzing with it, it stopped... I don't know what I did to fix it.

I'm sure some stuff I didn't think of will come up at Friday's gig, but if I can solve #1, I think I have it all figured out. I'm pretty damned happy right now with the MFC.

Edit: A couple hours later and I've figured out problem 2. I had the IA within the preset to be "On" so that I would get a lit LED. Well, what was happening is that I would switch to that patch, but that triggered the IA again, which would load the patch a 2nd time. Remove that and BOOM all good. This yielded some pretty comical results. For instance, in Preset 001, I had "IA 12 on", but IA 12 is setup to access preset #011.. so every time I would switch to Preset 001, it automatically took me to Preset 011. Now, if I could solve problem 1, I'll be golden... I think it's got something to do with internal CC's.
 
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I'm playing in a cover band, need a lot of presets, got something like 35 or more…
I run bottom row as 5 presets (from ultra clean to ultra high gain solo), the other 8 are IA for FX on/off + an addition of my expansion unit with 4 extra switches currently for VOL up and down, amp X/Y and reverb on/off.
After I will upgrade to v10.00 I'm planning to change the amp X/Y and reverb switches (external) to scene select 1 to 4.
Also I run 2 expression pedals.

Works great for me.
 
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