Hey everyone, new guy trying to save presets!

Hi everyone. I'm a new owner of a GM36, I traded a Marshall JCM800 half stack for this head with 2x12" cabinet and midi controller. I could not be happier! I was struggling with playing at home since the 800 doesn't wake up until it's killing small animals, this H&K is the perfect solution, nice and quiet when needed with some of the best tone I have ever heard. I'm absolutely in love with this amp and at this point cannot imagine needing anything else.

I'm having a small issue with saving my settings. I've used POD's before so I know how to make and save "patches" and that seems to be working fine with the foot controller. I've got everything saved in there as I want it and all is well. The problem I am having is saving them into the amp. When I turn the knob to select the channel it reverts to whatever it wants to. I have disconnected the foot controller and held down the store button until it flashed but when I change the channel and went back it didn't save it as I had it set. All I'm trying to do is take my bank 1 presets from the foot controller and save them to the amp so that when I don't have the controller connected turning the selector knob will recall those 4 settings.

Any help very much appreciated, thank you!

First of all welcome to the world of H&K CP.  Do you prefer Phil, CP, or the whole hog Chiliphil?  (I'm with you on the Chili, virtually everything we cook chez Burton has chilis added from our own plants ).  Glad you find the amp is doing what it should for you, and that is exciting you enough to make you want to play your instrument.  You'll find us a friendly bunch here, though you will often find a number of different views on everything, just as it should be!

I think you may be mixing up what you are doing here.  When you set up a patch and save it on the amp, it is stored inside the amp not in the FSM432.  The FSM432 doesn't store the patch inside it, it only sends signals to tell the amp to select a particular patch from within the amp's own internal list.  When you manually select a different channel on the amp what you are then doing is restoring the amp to the full set of settings, (mostly), which were in force the last time that channel was selected.  It's different to selecting a stored patch.  As well as the stored patches each channel continuously holds its own "working" patch which you control manually and which is remembered as you change the channel manually.  As an experiment try this, select the Lead channel and turn on the Boost.  Now select the Crunch channel and make sure the Boost is off.  Then select the Lead channel again.  The Boost should switch back on because it was on when you last left the Lead channel.  When you select the Crunch channel again the Boost turns off for the same reason.  Now try the same channels with the Boost set the opposite way around.

Each control setting should act like that.  The tone control settings are remembered for each of the channels too even though their knobs will not be in corresponding positions as you flip between them.  When you move a knob the working setting for that channel becomes updated with the new value.  Try this.  Select the Crunch channel and set the tone controls to T-100%, M-0%, B-100%.  Play a little and remember the sound.  Select Clean and set them to T-0%, M-100%, B-0% which would give a very different sound and leave the tone controls in these positions.  Go back to the Crunch channel and you should have your original sound back.  The Treble is on 100% even though the position of the knob is now 0% which may seem crazy at first but it isn't, the knob positions are not important as they are just digital selectors!  Now move the knob just off the bottom and you should hear the sound jump instantly to a very low treble setting as the knob takes over again from the working setting of 100%.  The Crunch channel now has a new setting of Treble associated with it.  And also, as you rotate each knob you will see a short flash on the Store button when the knob position matches the current setting for the patch.  That can be useful in checking the current values in your patches on the fly.

Give that a go and see what you  make of it, then get back with your thoughts.  It's a sharp learning curve with this gear but it is incredibly easy to set up once you have got over a certaqin level.  And it all makes sense eventually!  

bordonbert wrote:First of all welcome to the world of H&K CP.  Do you prefer Phil, CP, or the whole hog Chiliphil?  (I'm with you on the Chili, virtually everything we cook chez Burton has chilis added from our own plants   ).  Glad you find the amp is doing what it should for you, and that is exciting you enough to make you want to play your instrument.  You'll find us a friendly bunch here, though you will often find a number of different views on everything, just as it should be!

I think you may be mixing up what you are doing here.  When you set up a patch and save it on the amp, it is stored inside the amp not in the FSM432.  The FSM432 doesn't store the patch inside it, it only sends signals to tell the amp to select a particular patch from within the amp's own internal list.  When you manually select a different channel on the amp what you are then doing is restoring the amp to the full set of settings, (mostly), which were in force the last time that channel was selected.  It's different to selecting a stored patch.  As well as the stored patches each channel continuously holds its own "working" patch which you control manually and which is remembered as you change the channel manually.  As an experiment try this, select the Lead channel and turn on the Boost.  Now select the Crunch channel and make sure the Boost is off.  Then select the Lead channel again.  The Boost should switch back on because it was on when you last left the Lead channel.  When you select the Crunch channel again the Boost turns off for the same reason.  Now try the same channels with the Boost set the opposite way around.

Each control setting should act like that.  The tone control settings are remembered for each of the channels too even though their knobs will not be in corresponding positions as you flip between them.  When you move a knob the working setting for that channel becomes updated with the new value.  Try this.  Select the Crunch channel and set the tone controls to T-100%, M-0%, B-100%.  Play a little and remember the sound.  Select Clean and set them to T-0%, M-100%, B-0% which would give a very different sound and leave the tone controls in these positions.  Go back to the Crunch channel and you should have your original sound back.  The Treble is on 100% even though the position of the knob is now 0% which may seem crazy at first but it isn't, the knob positions are not important as they are just digital selectors!  Now move the knob just off the bottom and you should hear the sound jump instantly to a very low treble setting as the knob takes over again from the working setting of 100%.  The Crunch channel now has a new setting of Treble associated with it.  And also, as you rotate each knob you will see a short flash on the Store button when the knob position matches the current setting for the patch.  That can be useful in checking the current values in your patches on the fly.

Give that a go and see what you  make of it, then get back with your thoughts.  It's a sharp learning curve with this gear but it is incredibly easy to set up once you have got over a certaqin level.  And it all makes sense eventually!  

Ok, cool. You just told me exactly what I needed to know! I had a Marshall JVM for a while and when you saved a preset it didn't matter if you selected it on the amp or foot controller it went back to that, I guess that's what I was expecting.. So, it makes perfect sense now. I'll bring up my patch on the foot controller, move the knobs to where they are saved, disconnect foot controller and flip from clean to crunch, etc. Then do it on all 4 channels and it should be my presets then correct? If it saves all 4 like that I would be happy as it gets. I can't seem to get a bad sound from it but I've got my main 4 sounds DIALED, so I would love to be able to make those work without the switch. Thank you again for the help and the welcome. Phil is fine with me also, not too much effort to type that out and I have definately been called worse.

Why not just set up each of the channels as you want them just as you said, then save them one by one to each of the 4 patches in one of the banks?  If you don't want to lose any of the original patches then set them high up the list, say into bank 32 where there is nothing exciting.  That way you can just set the FSM432 onto bank 32 and select each of them directly with one click.  You'll get the channel you want and the settings to make it sound as you want too.

It's an important step to take, seeing the foot controller as the main item for your playing and not the knobs on the amp, but it's a more powerful way of doing it.  Yes, it takes more setting up in the initial stages but it frees up your playing enormously.

bordonbert wrote:Why not just set up each of the channels as you want them just as you said, then save them one by one to each of the 4 patches in one of the banks?  If you don't want to lose any of the original patches then set them high up the list, say into bank 32 where there is nothing exciting.  That way you can just set the FSM432 onto bank 32 and select each of them directly with one click.  You'll get the channel you want and the settings to make it sound as you want too.

It's an important step to take, seeing the foot controller as the main item for your playing and not the knobs on the amp, but it's a more powerful way of doing it.  Yes, it takes more setting up in the initial stages but it frees up your playing enormously.

I have my patches set to the foot controller. That's not the issue. What I want to do is have the 4 patches that I like set as the default for the amp, so that if I just grab the amp and go somewhere but for whatever reason I don't take the foot controller the sounds coming from the amp will be the 4 patches which I have set on the controller, that's what I'm trying to do.

Gotcha!  Yes, I can see what you mean, that makes sense to me now.  (Heehee! Bet you end up in a couple of months taking the FSM432 everywhere with the amp.  One sound to each channel is SO restrictive once you get to grips with it.  Using the boost and effects alone as variants on even a single patch makes it useful.)

I've always thought it would be a great idea to have a case for the FSM432 which has the ability to tag securely onto the GM36 case.  It's not like the FSM432 is heavy or large.  It has never made sense to me to have the footswitch kept separate from the amp once you actually own them both.  Your problem highlights the reason for this.

bordonbert wrote:Gotcha!  Yes, I can see what you mean, that makes sense to me now.  (Heehee! Bet you end up in a couple of months taking the FSM432 everywhere with the amp.  One sound to each channel is SO restrictive once you get to grips with it.  Using the boost and effects alone as variants on even a single patch makes it useful.)

I've always thought it would be a great idea to have a case for the FSM432 which has the ability to tag securely onto the GM36 case.  It's not like the FSM432 is heavy or large.  It has never made sense to me to have the footswitch kept separate from the amp once you actually own them both.  Your problem highlights the reason for this.

That's a good idea. It would be nice to have a little (or big) pocket for the controller. Of course you've got the 30' cord also

Either way, thank you for your help on this. I went through and used my 1-4 patches (one on each channel) and I then moved all knobs to their actual location and then switched channels with the knob on the amp and it kept them all. Honestly, if I take it somewhere it's nice to just grab and go and also sometimes when I'm just playing at home I don't feel like hooking up the controller and dragging out the cable, so it's nice to just be able to plug in and go with the sound I want. I'm finding that I don't really use that many of the features, I have my 4 main sounds and I just stick with them. I do play around from time to time but I like where I have it set, if I were playing gig's I would feel differently about it.

If I had one wish with this rig it would be that the controller could be programmed. Marshall does this with the JVM controller, you can set it is patch or any button can control any function on the amp and you can mix and match. So for example I would have 4 tones I like, then a button just for the boost, another for the loop, etc. If I could do that it would be cool. I know I can use stompbox mode but it's not quite the same.. Either way, not much to complain about with this amp at all, definately what I've been looking for all along.

Hahaha! Amazing how this works out Phil. If you have available a standard type of FS1 footswitch you CAN do what you just said you would like to. The switch can be plugged into the FSM432 expression ports and the foot controller can easily be programmed to use it to switch any function, the Boost is a favourite one, the Loop is another possibility. And there are two of these sockets available on the FSM432 for your two chosen functions. Look at the bottom of Page 4 in the FSM432 manual, you will see a description and a connection diagram for this.

bordonbert wrote:Hahaha!  Amazing how this works out Phil.  If you have available a standard type of FS1 footswitch you CAN do what you just said you would like to.  The switch can be plugged into the FSM432 expression ports and the foot controller can easily be programmed to use it to switch any function, the Boost is a favourite one, the Loop is another possibility.  And there are two of these sockets available on the FSM432 for your two chosen functions.  Look at the bottom of Page 4 in the FSM432 manual, you will see a description and a connection diagram for this.

Sorry to take so long to get back on this. Thank you for the info here. I'm going to look into that FS1 option because it would be neat to switch the boost on and off. Currently I have created 2 sets of patches, both exactly the same except one with boost and one without, so I can switch from a boosted to non boosted tone but it takes a little more button pressing to do it.