Setting up your Presets for Practice/Gigs - What do you do?

Orbm1

Orbm1

Inspired
I am new to the Axe-Fx II world and I am still trying to fully understand the full POWER of this wonderful unit.

Something is clear, I am SOOOO confused in how to set it up for practice/gigs...

I am in a neighborhood band and we do a LOT of covers. Pink Floyd, the Cars, Fleetwood Mac, Blondie, Radiohead, Elton John, etc... So not a particular style. I am using the Plexi as my GO-TO preset (5 scene from Fremen) as the sound is great but I am, little by little, developing sounds for each cover so I sound close to original (will never be exact, but having the power of the Axe-Fx, I want to use it as much as possible).

I did ERASE all the presets and I am building my banks little by little. It was overwhelming to see ALL those presets!

So now I have 10 presets for different songs. Another 20 I am working on and toying with. In my Firehawk FX, I would have them saved in my favorites and select them in random order for practice and set them in presets (incrementing) based on the set list.

What do you do? What are best practices? Any tips?

Thanks!

Omar
 
Put them in whatever order suits you best. Be sure to back them up. You can use Axe-Manage (in Axe-Edit) to rewrite them in any order you want. If you have an MFC-101, you can use set lists and song lists to reorganize them.
 
Rex said:
Put them in whatever order suits you best. Be sure to back them up. You can use Axe-Manage (in Axe-Edit) to rewrite them in any order you want. If you have an MFC-101, you can use set lists and song lists to reorganize them.
Click to expand...

I am using Axe-Edit and Axe-Manage.... I do have a MFC 101 mark 2, HOW do I use setlist and song lists with it?

Thank you

Omar
 
Hi there

I was just about were you are now 8 month ago :)

Just a few tips, from me to get you of at the right foot.

I play in a Dire straits cover band, and I am trying to nail the exact sound from the different DS records (which changed a lot over the years they played and recorded)

I think what I did wrong was just taking it song by song at first... the sound was great but matching the presets in volume and EQ was a nightmare (to me anyway) at first.
What I did at the end was, choosing the 4-5 amps that was the base line of the different presets. Made them global amps, and from those 5 baselines I build my 30 presets, and then adding the different delays, some chorus, different compressors, a drive boost here and there etc etc. It made it so much more easy to match the volume and EQ across the 30 presets because when I am adjusting the EQ on the eg. the Vibrolux amp once (used across 10 presets or so) I fixed all 10 it was used across. I hope you get the idea. Now that I'm about happy I released them from being global amps again, to make fine tuned adjustments of drive etc on the different presets. Word of advise, I used an evening alone in the rehearsal room to do some fine tuning at gig volume, and that was time well spent (and appreciated by my band mates :p )

So Now I have 30 presets, each with 5 scenes, since some songs I use one scene in the intro, another for the verses, lead 1 and lead 2 (with some drive added for instance) etc etc

Also, I programmed 2 IA switches on my MFC to Vol- up and Vol down. Then you can adjust the volume on the fly at rehearsals. Doing that, it auto saves the vol in each scene/presets. Then when it is OK, I just check my presets in Axe edit at home (the output bar at the far right in th elayout grid) and if a scene is for instance +3db, I up the level in that scene in the Axe edit and lower it again in the output block. Then little by little it is now fine tuned and ready for gigs :)

Last thing is, use the VU to make sure you are not clipping, then lower the overall output 2-3 db to create some headroom for the before mentioned vol fine tuning.

Also finally the overall EQ is your best friend at gigs going straight to FOH, I lower the lows and the highs so I have a mid scoope, that brings the guitar sound in the mix at the right place.

Maybe, there are some gurus here on the Forum that have a way smarter way, but this is how I have done it at the end (doing a lot of rookie mistakes before getting to this point) and I hope you can use some of it?

Happy programming ;)
 
I tend to be pretty simple in my approach. I cover a bunch of songs and I use 3 banks so a total of 15 presets. And most of the time I use less than 10 on any given night. The school of thought being that I don't want my overall tone to get to confusing for people listening. I tend to build my patches and I stick to maybe 4 IR's that are similar so my sound stays pretty true to itself. Most of the time I have 2 clean patches, 3 Fenderish tones and a about 6 Marshall type sounds ( I use x/y) for amps. And I have 3 acoustic patches that have different effects or EQ settings. This lets me cover about 100 or so songs.
 
Orbm1 said:
I am using Axe-Edit and Axe-Manage.... I do have a MFC 101 mark 2, HOW do I use setlist and song lists with it?
Click to expand...
To be honest, I always found it easier to arrange the presets in the Axe itself. You can swap presets by hitting "save" and then moving the curser to "swap".
I always prepare my presets in order for every gig just by swapping. It works great and doubles as a setlist reminder on a (barely lit) stage (remember the recall feature that lets you see a whole list of presets?).

The only drawback from this technique over actual setlist/songs via the MFC is that it breaks custom "map from" "map to" settings of the Axe. For example if you use it to set a default scene for each preset.
 
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i do a preset for each song, scenes set up for sections, arranged in Axe Manage. i used global blocks and cabs and can cover most anything with two amps. I also have templates saved for each genre, so I can recall that, tweak fx to taste and roll. i can build a new preset in 5 minutes, easy.
 
When I used a MPX-R1 midi pedal, I would put the presets in order in the axe II. Since switching to a liquid foot jr+, I don't bother moving presets around...I set up set lists in the midi pedal. I do have specific presets for certain songs, but at the same time, I find that I can use the same preset in many of the same style song.
 
I mostly do a preset for each song for same reason: It nails the song vs. being a generic sound used on multiple songs.

That said, I have a few presets that are shared between songs because the guitar for those songs is either nearly identical, or so generic and similar that one preset works.
 
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