The 'Preset per song' trap. Yuck.

[JiveTurkey]

Decided to add an old country song (the first mistake) to the setlist that requires a bagpipe section in the intro. With the help of an old thread on the FAS forum; I got a bagpipe drone in D going with a swiftness.

Which brought me to the thread title. I HATE managing multiple presets. I don't even do a kitchen sink; I just create what I would do with a real amp and some pre and post FX as needed and call it good for the whole night with that. Now I'm going to have to blow up my footswitch config and enable switch between presets and blahblahblah. I feel like once you go down that rabbit hole; you are screwed. Way too much time curating a bunch of nonsense.




This probably belongs in the 'Not Worth It's Own Thread'...thread

 

[Digital Igloo]

Wait. You want a single preset to cover all your songs? Are you in a Ramones or Motörhead cover band?

In this case, couldn't you save it as a different preset and change only what needs to be different? Should be minimal footswitch config mess.

 

[AFKAEjay(retired)]

Drone curtesy of the bassplayer and play the melody part with one of your usual sounds?

 

[aerial7]

I think this deserves discussion...because I'm totally burnt out on the idea of a "preset". They're simply un-natural, and because you wind up with so many, they become unwieldy.

Surely someone is up to the design challenge of obviating presets in favor of something better?

 

[AFKAEjay(retired)]

I think this deserves discussion...because I'm totally burnt out on the idea of a "preset". They're simply un-natural, and because you wind up with so many, they become unwieldy.

Surely someone is up to the design challenge of obviating presets in favor of something better?

That would be kitchen sinks with scenes and a few stomps right?
Add a few expression pedals for wet/dry, maybe pre gain

 

[ian_dissonance]

Preset per song would be obnoxious. Using 2-3 presets in a gig is no biggy unless you only have like 3 buttons to work with.

 

[metropolis_4]

Gapless switching and songs/setlists completely eliminates the need for preset-per-song IMO.

If you’ve got a specialty sound like that make that sound its own preset, add it to a song, and then set up one of your footswitches to switch to that sound and then toggle back to your normal settings. Just like turning an effect on/off

 

[JiveTurkey]

Gapless switching and songs/setlists completely eliminates the need for preset-per-song IMO.

If you’ve got a specialty sound like that make that sound its own preset, add it to a song, and then set up one of your footswitches to switch to that sound and then toggle back to your normal settings. Just like turning an effect on/off

We do everything from Shania to KC to Tone Loc to Neil Diamond to Iron Maiden (once in a great while). I just use the JVM for everything

If anything; this is more about me being lazy and not wanting to change anything with how I switch the FAS stuff as it ends up being some drive me nuts rabbit hole. It's always a 'me thing' more than anything else. I always think for about 5 seconds I should look into songs/setlists but footswitch setup on FAS is instant jump off a bridge fuel

 

[Enchilada Jones]

Copperhead Road! Fuck yea!

 

[EOengineer]

I’ve been a preset per song guy for years but it’s because the band plays to a click and we have a bunch of tempo locked FX happening and I’m using Helix snapshots to simplify switching, usually set up for different sections of the song.

I’m not opposed to kitchen sink presets but it’s hard with my workflow right now.

 

[FuzzyAce]

You lost me at bagpipe section.
No offense to you bagpipers out there.

 

[itchyfingers]

Leave it to JT to make his guitar rig sound like bagpipes. Bravo sir, bravo.

 

[JiveTurkey]

Copperhead Road! Fuck yea!

Up next; Bootscoot Boogie

 

[metropolis_4]

We do everything from Shania to KC to Tone Loc to Neil Diamond to Iron Maiden (once in a great while). I just use the JVM for everything

If anything; this is more about me being lazy and not wanting to change anything with how I switch the FAS stuff as it ends up being some drive me nuts rabbit hole. It's always a 'me thing' more than anything else. I always think for about 5 seconds I should look into songs/setlists but footswitch setup on FAS is instant jump off a bridge fuel

This kind of thinking is what has been pushing me more and more back to amps and pedals.

The ability to create so many sounds with digital is a double edged sword. On one hand it’s really cool that you can create and use so many different sounds. On the other hand it means more complexity and time spent programming and configuring the ability to switch between sounds in a show.

Sometimes I feel like I spend more time programming than playing the music

 

[Rock Chalk]

What am I missing here......one preset for bagpipes, one for everything else, right?

 

[JiveTurkey]

Sometimes I feel like I spend more time programming than playing the music

What am I missing here......one preset for bagpipes, one for everything else, right?

Nothing really. I'm just grumbling about nothing

 

[newpedals]

Decided to add an old country song (the first mistake) to the setlist that requires a bagpipe section in the intro. With the help of an old thread on the FAS forum; I got a bagpipe drone in D going with a swiftness.

Which brought me to the thread title. I HATE managing multiple presets. I don't even do a kitchen sink; I just create what I would do with a real amp and some pre and post FX as needed and call it good for the whole night with that. Now I'm going to have to blow up my footswitch config and enable switch between presets and blahblahblah. I feel like once you go down that rabbit hole; you are screwed. Way too much time curating a bunch of nonsense.




This probably belongs in the 'Not Worth It's Own Thread'...thread

Screens and menu diving make me dizzy. One way to simplify it would be to imagine that you have individual effect pedals and assign footswitches to turn these virtual "pedals" on and off.

Something like

OD1 (lower gain) > OD2 (higher gain) > Slapback delay > Reverb/ Digital delay

You will have 3 overdrive options and 2 delays which would be sufficient to start with.

 

[FuzzyAce]

 

[gonzoknife]

I use as few presets as possible. I can't do one but too many and it gets hard to keep them in sync for tone and volume. I've tried it and it's a lot of work. Change one preset sometimes you have to change all the rest to match.

If my life was playing the same setlist over and over, preset per song could be more practical.

 

[JiveTurkey]

This is my current FM9 layout. Expression pedal engages the synth. 1 & 3 are scene toggles and rest are either basic fx on/off or control switches for oddball functions. The Special FX switch currently engages flanger in one instance but would be what I would toggle different things (such as the bag pipes) on these per song one-offs.