I'm just become a big boy now but I need help with settings!

  Hahaha!  Old habits die hard.  Just posted this in the Tubemeister forum before realising.  Isn't "mental degradation due to advancing years" an amusing thing when you find it happening in yourself?  


Well, the experiences of the last 6 months and what I've learned over that time have taken their toll. The TM has impressed me so much I've bitten the bullet and gone for a GM36. Don't know what to do with the TM at the moment, I have a spare in my Valvetronix AD120VT which I love, but that's a great problem to have I suppose. Incidentally, the GM seems to be a perfect match for the Greenbacks just as the TM is. It also fits in with my home made fan base unit perfectly of course so it's a straight swap into my setup.

First thoughts are that the GM is a fabulous amp of course, and I can already see the broader tonal capability it offers. The Presence and Resonance is interesting, and the channels seem to be voiced a little differently. The tonally selective Boost option is clever. I still find the tone controls a little narrow and strangely interactive but that's a tiny eccentricity.

I'm using the H&K FSM432 Mk3 so everything is in house and predictable. The midi side of things is going to take some setting up now the full range of control is available and, being mildly OCD (according to my wife, my wife, my wife, there I've said it three times!), I am looking for a good logical system to adopt right from the start so selection of settings is quick and as intuitive as possible.

I am not the player to have a different voice for every number so won't be filling up the 128 slots too quickly. I tend to have a few sounds that I go to as default, but that may not last as I now have more choice of course. Does anyone have a system they use to save and select their voices according to the 32 x 4 voice pedal setup, so it can be remembered easily and accessed without too many stomps? Or have you just found that there is no way to systemise this area?

I bought the amp to sort of give me the flexibility of a modeler with the tone of a valve amp so fully expected to use loads of presets.
I had totally forgotten though that when I last extensively used a modeler (Line 6 XT Live) I'd bought all the feature packs etc. and only ever used four or possibly five sounds. And TBH it's pretty much the same here, I left the first 64 factory presets alone and started at 100. And I've basically got five banks with four or five presets in each as that's the way my modded Behringher FCB1010 is laid out. The presets I have though aren't particularly different per bank, it's more to do with whether the FX loop is enabled or not and whether I'm playing the amp straight into a speaker cab or into a dummy load and slaved through my FX & power amp setup.

I can totally relate. I come from a long background in modelers and floor-based multi-fx boards (Boss, Line 6, etc), and I always found that despite having dozens of amp models to choose from, I would always end up with only 3 basic tones: clean, crunch, and lead. I'd copy them as 1 - 2 - 3 onto multiple banks. The only difference from bank to bank would be fx settings to suit various songs, but the basic clean-crunch-lead tones are identical from bank to bank. For live work, IMO it's not necessary to go nuts with 97 different amp tones, you'll just drive yourself crazy.

I too went with the GM36 to get that happy marriage between a multi-fx board and a real tube amp. I'm so happy with it. And I'm approaching the preset layout as before - on every bank, 1 is clean, 2 is crunch, 3 is lead. Those 3 presets are identical on every bank, with the exception of fx settings (which vary quite a bit from bank to bank, to suit certain songs). I only occasionally use preset #4 on each bank, that's where I store some specialty one-off presets (IE, a weird effect) that I need but don't often use.

When playing live, I do need to remember which # bank is needed for which song, but it's not difficult, as I've been using the same strategy for the past 20+ years, so I guess I have it down to a science ... Also I'm only using about 6 banks total throughout a 3-4 hr live show.

Interesting thoughts guys, and I would guess most people are going to say the same. I found it with my AD120VT, you may have a dozen amp models to choose from and end up using 2, maybe 3 at a push. We all have our perfect sound in our head and as soon as we get near to it we stop looking further.

The idea of a bank of 4 with A-Clean, B-Crunch, C-Lead and D-What the Hell is the way I would have viewed it. I just wondered if there was something more useful I was missing.

I will say I am having withdrawal symptoms for my TM36 footswitches. The ability to change channels on the fly is a good thing to have. Is there any way that you can have a midi setup, maybe via the midi in of the FSM432, which offers control of individual functions in real time rather than just resetting the whole amp? (I wonder if there is a Raspberry Pi or Arduino moment coming on here!)

Ok, off to do some test programming and storing.

The approach I've adopted, being someone who likes simplicity while playing is as follows. I've set up a couple of banks for each guitar type I use. For instance, two banks for LP's, one where I have more flexibility with the guitars volume control, and one where it's pretty much as I need it with the guitar's  volume set close to max. The reason for two is mostly due to the fact that on lead and ultra channels, the guitar's volume knob doesn't really lower the output volume a whole lot, where as on clean it does. So one bank where the four channels have a very similar output with the volume set high on the instrument, using the tone control to tweak as required. One bank set so volume and tone can alter the saturation and dynamics more.

Then a similar pair of banks for Strats and so on. Also a couple of banks for effect enhanced options which are compromise which works quite well for a range of guitars, while being really good with my regular players.  

I don't play a lot of covers so I'm not too fussed with copying someone else's tone, though to be fair this configuration I'm using puts me in the ball park with most tones I can think of played on a lot of well known tracks, maybe with a few tweaks on the guitar for some.

Having a number of banks purposefully set in this way also allows for some interbreeding between guitars and respective banks, say, using a Strat on the LP channels which gives me eight more options which are tonally different to the eight dedicated Strat channels.

I want as little contact with amp controls as possible while playing, using the banks and the knobs on the guitar is as complicated as I personally want life to be post sound-check. A creamy over-driven lead, kind of speaks most languages beyond clean using the guitar tone and volume to have it cutting through in a variety of tonal circumstances.

[quote="bordonbert"]  Is there any way that you can have a midi setup, maybe via the midi in of the FSM432, which offers control of individual functions in real time rather than just resetting the whole amp?  (I wonder if there is a Raspberry Pi or Arduino moment coming on here!)

Assuming you're thinking of an external MIDI controller configured to just send the correct CCs to switch the channels, first you should check whether the MIDI IN of the FSM432 will send that incoming data to the MIDI OUT. If that's true than you should be fine.

However it's my understanding that when you change to a different channel e.g. clean to crunch, it doesn't simply change to the crunch channel and leave all the settings you're currently running, it changes to the settings that the crunch channel was last set to so you might get a surprise

Hi PM.  I play in a covers band but one where we try to find obscure tracks by known people and play them our own way.  So, like you, I'm not looking to necessarily recreate an original sound.  A bank for the LP Trad, a bank for the LP Jnr Sp DC with P90s, and a bank for slide with a 335 or a Dillion LPJ DC copy should keep me sweet to start with.

I want as little contact with amp controls as possible while playing, using the banks and the knobs on the guitar is as complicated as I personally want life to be post sound-check.

That describes my own feelings perfectly.  I did find with the TM36 that, with the LEDs lit up in the dark the knobs are impossible to see anyway, and no matter how hard I try I can't seem to set things up just by ear without a reference point!

I think it will be a case of setting up what I find I want then optimising how it is arranged afterwards.  If you use the iPad app, does it allow for rearrangement of the voices off the amp then uploading the full set?  Guess I'd better have a closer look at it now.

3.2 MIDI In:-  The "MIDI In" of the MFS-432 MK III is necessary for the use of GrandMeister 36 in combination with the GrandMeister iPad™ app and a MIDI interface. Connect the MIDI In of your FSM-432 with the MIDI output of the interface and the MIDI Out of the FSM-432 with the amp’s MIDI input. The amp’s MIDI output should be connected with the interface’s MIDI input. Learn more about this feature in the manual of the GrandMeister iPad™ app. You can also use the MIDI In to connect other MIDI devices that can send program changes. In this case, the FSM-432 serves as a true MIDI merger forwarding the MIDI information from MIDI In to MIDI Out.

Sounds promising Norm(an?)



EDIT:  Duuuhhhh!  First sentence:

With the latest version of this free iPad App, the possibilities have expanded even further. You can now save and import presets and organize them within libraries held on your iPad. This is great for backing up your sounds, exchanging them with your friends, and downloading presets created by others.

For me, it was more than just setting up a couple of sounds and done. My Legacy 3 did that amazingly well. On the other hand, I don`t need the amp itself to have 95 different sounds. The biggest obstacle for me was the fact that my six string (my main and unquestionably primary guitar) sounds drastically different from my 7 string, and the amp requires completely different EQ and gain settings. As a minor side note, I wanted to be able to integrate with my Eventide H9, if possible. I also use the FCB1010. Now that I~ve got the correct software, hardware, and familiarity with it all my rig is getting a little bit more in depth with controls, but for the most part it`s like this : Bank one, Presets 1- 10 are set up for the six string. Bank two is for the 7 string. It`s basically two clean sounds, two crunch sounds, a heavier metal sound, and then a batch of lead tones that utilize various H9 effects (different harmonizer or whammy functions, for the most part). The more quirky sounds are set up on bank 3. I have the left CC pedal set up to globally control volume on the GM (and it actually works like a champ, contrary to some experiences I~ve read about).