Really dont get it ! why the downsize when there is more options.

sirus1987 said:
Yeah, we have press and hold buttons on the mfc like hold for tuner or hold for looper and its obnoxious and not good for live use. I, and many others, would much prefer dedicated buttons like the mfc far more than the new switching. I feel like some people genuinely like the new idea, but A LOT of people are such fanboys that they refuse to be critical of any decision that fractal makes. I have talked to A LOT of people that are unhappy with the decision for a much smaller pedal and thats also apparent on this message board. They should have kept one that was the same size and then a smaller one, not a smaller one and then an even smaller one than that. It makes no sense.
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I disagree that it's useless for live... But that's my opinion. You are free to have your own.

I see pros and cons... I'm not a fan of changing "pages" live. I don't use MFC reveal mode. But I like short press and hold behavior, especially when I control button placement.
 
sirus1987 said:
I feel like some people genuinely like the new idea, but A LOT of people are such fanboys that they refuse to be critical of any decision that fractal makes.
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Not so much that people are fanboys, just that some would rather wait and see how something is going to work before getting riled up into a lather about it's apparent shortcomings.

Put me in the camp where my first thought was, not enough buttons, but after thinking about it a bit, an FC12 with an extra boss foot switch (already owned), and my two expression pedals, will probably be enough to do what I need. For example, why would I need a dedicated I/A for phaser in a preset that I don't use a phaser in. I use mostly scenes, and might assign one or two IAs within a preset to toggle on a certain effect to spice up what a scene has already called up. I'm interested in waiting to see what the new pedal is capable of before I make a judgement there.

I also won't speculate on price, as the closest anyone has come on that was when Cliff joked tree fiddy, and people got excited. He responded "maybe" the FC6 would be in that ballpark. Who knows at this point? I have seen people already complaining because they think it will be really expensive. I have enough to worry about without manufacturing complaints based on something I don't know enough about yet.
 
chris said:
how many is "A LOT"? 10 people?
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Go to the fractal facebook pages or other gear pages and see for yourself. Hundreds, maybe thousands. I know people are saying "wait and see", but I dont know what could possibly make this better besides just coming out with a bigger pedal board. We dont need to wait and see how it functions, we already know. All you have to do is read what's been written about its functionality from fractal and consciously think about it. Use your minds eye. The way the pedal operates is GREAT and a step up for sure. The significantly smaller size is a huge step down and was unneccesary. Im sure there were reasons for it, probably financial. Fractal has built a brand around not compromising or sparring any expense in the quest for a perfect rig, and this pedal feels like a compromise. It's just unfortunate.
 
sirus1987 said:
Go to the fractal facebook pages or other gear pages and see for yourself. Hundreds, maybe thousands.
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thousands of people are commenting as fanboys, and thousands of other people are unhappy? so there are at least 2000 comments regarding the FC on Facebook?

can you link to a discussion somewhere that has hundreds or thousands of people who said they're unhappy? even this forum doesn't have thousands of different people expressing an opinion on the FC.

or there are just thousands of people in the groups and forums, but not necessarily sharing their opinion via comment/post? just because there are "thousands" of people in a community, that doesn't mean their opinion is being shared. even "hundreds" sound way too much to me.

at minimum "hundreds" describes 200 people, and i'm not sure even 200 people here have expressed their opinion on the FC.
 
chris said:
thousands of people are commenting as fanboys, and thousands of people are unhappy? so there are at least 2000 comments regarding the FC on Facebook?

or there are just thousands of people in the groups and forums? can you link to a discussion somewhere that has hundreds or thousands of people who said they're unhappy?

even this forum doesn't have thousands of different people expressing an opinion on the FC.
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I like that you capitalized on that statement, but my main thought was "hundreds". I dont keep metrics or tallies on how many people do or do not like fractal products. Maybe its hundreds, maybe thousands. Do the research yourself(or maybe you have) but there are a lot of unhappy customers and, ultimately, EVERY company caters to customer wants and needs. Less of anything feels like a downgrade, and in this situation, it is. The pedal works better, but it requires precious seconds and movements in a live setting that many artists dont have. Again, personally, I like to dedicate 5 switches to scenes or "channels" and at least 10 buttons to effects to switch on and of in a scene. Many people prefer this, including Cooper Carter which is the person I learned that method from. Maybe he'll have something else to say about it, which isnt going to change my mind personally. That setup is about as perfect as you can get for a 1 preset live rig and the new pedal ruins that. It just sucks.
 
sirus1987 said:
I like that you capitalized on that statement, but my main thought was "hundreds". I dont keep metrics or tallies on how many people do or do not like fractal products. Maybe its hundreds, maybe thousands. Do the research yourself(or maybe you have) but there are a lot of unhappy customers and, ultimately, EVERY company caters to customer wants and needs. Less of anything feels like a downgrade, and in this situation, it is. The pedal works better, but it requires precious seconds and movements in a live setting that many artists dont have. Again, personally, I like to dedicate 5 switches to scenes or "channels" and at least 10 buttons to effects to switch on and of in a scene. Many people prefer this, including Cooper Carter which is the person I learned that method from. Maybe he'll have something else to say about it, which isnt going to change my mind personally. That setup is about as perfect as you can get for a 1 preset live rig and the new pedal ruins that. It just sucks.
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well you said "hundreds, maybe thousands" so i didn't capitalize on anything. i repeated what you said. to give the benefit of the doubt, i also mentioned that taking your lower amount of "hundreds" still means that roughly 200+ people are talking about this. i don't care about exact numbers either, but i just don't see "hundreds" of people being fanboys and "hundreds" of people unhappy.

i just want to point out the sensationalism and exaggeration of your statements. hundreds, maybe thousands of people are not expressing their opinion on the FCs. statements like that create a general sentiment for people who skim forums, and suddenly everyone is saying "oh man i saw that thousands of people hate the new FCs" when that just isn't true at all.

you don't like it. that's fine. but there aren't additional hundreds, maybe thousands of people who share your opinion currently.
 
There are as many opinions as people who hold them. I myself am a Fractal noob (Axe-FX II with MFC Mark III) and my opinion of the MFC III is that I actually could wish it was just a little bit bigger with more spacing between the foot switches because I don't exactly have dainty feet. No, I wear size 12 1/2 wide clodhoppers and I have to concentrate so as not to smash two or more switches at a time. When I actually got it in my hands I was a bit surprised that it was so small, relatively speaking. Most pedalboard with comparable numbers of pedals and buttons are substantially larger than the MFC.

In that respect, my Behringer FC1010 actually has better switch spacing though I think the MFC is a better and much more functional board.

If I were to upgrade to an Axe-FX III I'd certainly keep my existing MFC. I would not wish to go to one with a lower button count, in fact I could make an argument for a few more buttons.

An MFC upgrade I could get behind, though, would be to follow the example of the Mastermind and give every switch a dynamically programmed LCD display that indicates the current function of a given switch. But if that were to be done, I would suggest that there really isn't any reason NOT to implement it as a full color LCD with color graphics rather than a variable colored backlight behind a monochrome LCD as per the Mastermind. If you're going to try to follow the Mastermind, you might as well "one up" it, in style.
 
Well, to add flames to the other side of this argument, I know that many people (I didn't keep exact tallies,) myself included had been wishing, and hoping for a smaller MFC, since it came out.

For some of us, the giant pedal is just real estate we don't want, or can't afford, especially if we automate. All I need is a couple of buttons to handle my DAW, maybe a button for the tuner, and the rare button to turn on something weird, for messing around with between songs, and a few expression pedals. The giant pedal is just begging for me to hit the wrong thing, while I'm singing.
 
Odd that so few actually know what it's like to use one of these things, yet trash it. And those who say 'try it, or learn about it' are raked over as 'fanboi's'.

I'm curious about the new system. As an MFC user, I can say that 90% of the time, I use scenes. If I add stuff during a song, I RARELY touch more than rotary, phaser, or Delay.

It's like anything less than 42 buttons is going to trash your creativity beyond hope of repair.

The jump to the AxeFX (Standard, Ultral, II) forced many folks to expand their minds (many times painfully.) The Axe III (and foot controller) may be no less painful.

Be open to the change.

R
 
jasonmauer said:
Also the FCs are configurable per preset, which gives you much more specific control than the MFC. I started off with the MFC and ended up ditching it for a Mastermind GT for this very reason. Why have a Drive 2 button when half your presets don't even use 2 drives, for example?
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Did you read the MFC-101 manual, like, at all?
 
Cliff must have really thick skin.
So many people, hundres maybe thousands.... have asked for a smaller version of the MFC.
Now he made not 1 but 2, that can even be combined to pretty much what ever size you want from 6 to 48 buttons.
Even before people know the price or anyone have ever tried it out, people just have to come here and complain.....
I would honestly not blame Cliff if he packed his bags and said "Screw it, I quit". I hope he knows that the majority really apriciate his work.
 
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USMC_Trev said:
Did you read the MFC-101 manual, like, at all?
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Why yes I did, including the part about how IA switches work globally in Axe-FX mode, hence my Drive 2 example. Not a problem for the FC (or the Mastermind GT).

Anything else you'd like to know about me? My favorite color is purple, and if I could be any kind of animal I'd be a platypus.
 
FAS has a pretty impressive artist roster. I for one am excited to see what this paradigm shift brings to the table - knowing that FAS likely worked very closely with many of these artists to develop a controller that could be used by these industry pro's to take full advantage of what is arguably the most cutting edge technology the guitar industry has ever seen - The Axe-FX III.

I think the best slogan for any naysayers might be......

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - Henry Ford
 
Warrior said:
FAS has a pretty impressive artist roster. I for one am excited to see what this paradigm shift brings to the table - knowing that FAS likely worked very closely with many of these artists to develop a controller that could be used by these industry pro's to take full advantage of what is arguably the most cutting edge technology the guitar industry has ever seen - The Axe-FX III.

I think the best slogan for any naysayers might be......

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - Henry Ford
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If I remember correctly, Matt said somewhere that artists he worked with overwhelmingly prefer to use two rows of switches. The third row is either not used or simply duplicates the second one.

For those artists that do use behemoth controllers, there are options available.

But I would guess that FAS believe fewer switches would be more popular and useful.
 
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