My GT/22 Setup for the Axe-Fx III

iaresee

Well-Known Member
FEB 2023 UPDATE! There's a newer version of this setup further down in the thread here. It addresses a bug @David Barrow and @Alexander found!

Soooo...I guess Brett Kingman liked my setup and did a little video to show off how awesome the GT/22 is for controlling the Axe-Fx III. That led to some people asking for my configuration. Happy to share. Figured sharing plus some explanation might help someone pick it up and run with it.


For the impatient, here's the SysEx file you can sent to your GT/22 to get my setup: http://j.mp/2FlXcs3 -- this file is current as of Jan 2, 2020 and was created with FW 4.4.1.

On to the pages and buttons...

The Tuner button is a global. And if I hold it down it brings me back to a sane location on the Axe-Fx III. I use that get back to "home" when I'm playing out live.

The Tap button is also a global.

Presets >> Scenes immediately to the right of the main display is also a global switch and brings up a preset selection screen on tap and a scene selection screen on hold. I love that I can have 18 presets displayed on preset mode. Makes navigating across large leaps of presets really easy and quick. I don't use the hold-for-Scenes very much on this switch and I'll explain why in a second.

I can quickly toggle between the Main and Special pages using the switch immediately to the left of the main display in row 4. If I hold down that switch it'll bring up the page selection screen and I can jump to the less-used pages from there. It's not a global, but it's set up very nearly the same for all the pages.

Pages 1 and 2 cover everything I use in every AFIII preset I work with live. With the most common stuff I use on Page 1, Main, and the less common stuff on Page 2, Special.

On the Main page there are 6 scene selection switches along the bottom row. Holding down on any of those switches drops you into scene selection mode so you can also reach scenes 7 and 8. It's nice to have 6 switches all do the same thing on hold here. Makes it easy to get to scene selection mode live, without having to hit a switch at the top row.

Rows 2 and 3 all have standard effect on/off switches and if you hold any of them down they'll bring up the channel selection screen for that effect block.
Screen Shot 2019-05-30 at 10.57.25 PM.png
The Special page is almost entirely IAs for effect on/off selection. It maps to effects I use far less like the higher numbered delay blocks, Plex delay and Mega Tap. It also lets me switch channels on the two amp blocks. The Amp EQ switch is assigned to CC #25 which in turn maps to External Controller 15 on my Axe-Fx III and is always mapped to the Amp EQ on/off parameter in AMP1 on my own presets. The EXT 16 is a wildcard external that don't use that often in any preset.

The Volume Pedal switch on this scene is pretty cool. Tap mode simply bypasses or engages the VOL1 block. But hold mode lets me select between channel A or B on the block and I have custom channel names set up to show on the GT when I drop into channel select mode. Channel A is named Pedal (the VOL1 block is controlled by a pedal attached to the GT) and Channel B is named Swell (the VOL1 block is setup in Auto-Swell mode. I love that I can name channels like this. For custom presets when I'm consistently using VOL1 the same way with the same configuration this works extremely well.

Screen Shot 2019-05-30 at 10.57.33 PM.png
Page 3, Utilities, has some stuff mapped to make working with the GT/22 a little easier. I can dive into set and song menus, refresh presets on the GT/22, select pages and the OUT1 - and OUT1 + switches let increment or decrement the OUT1 block's level and store the preset with one press of a switch. For these two switches to work you'll need to go to the MIDI menu on the AFIII and under the Other page set Output 1 Volume Increment to CC# 1 and Output 1 Volume Decrement to CC# 3.

Screen Shot 2019-05-30 at 10.57.40 PM.png
Page 4 controllers the Looper and should be fairly self-explanatory. You don't need to make an CC assignments for Looper controls in the AFIII -- leave them all set to NONE there.

Screen Shot 2019-05-30 at 10.57.43 PM.png

Page 5 is setup for working specifically with Austin Buddy's Naked Amp TonePack. This is a gem of pack and I think it's money well-spent. Row 3 maps to some minimal effect blocks that show up in presets in this pack and then AMP1 and AMP2 so you can toggle them and change their channels. There are 8 scene selection switches. And then DRV1-3 IAs. The red "SC Boost" switch toggles a single coil boost block he puts in some presets to juice the single into the amp for single coil guitars to make them play nicer with the amp settings.

Screen Shot 2019-05-30 at 10.57.45 PM.png
And that's it. Nothing too special. Just some trial and error iteration to get it to the point where it's working well for me.

If you happen to use this and build some alternatives off it that are pretty cool report back? I'd love to learn from others and see where they take this thing.
 
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Thx for sharing mate! Great work and great utilization of the capabilities of the GT22 in combination with the AXEFX3.

Regards
W.
 
Really cool Ian, thanks for sharing! I have setup my GT22 similarly over the last couple of months; it's funny how guitarists tend to come to the same workflow.

I recently shared Brett's video for someone on the Fractal forum as they were asking how to get their GT22 to work like the video, so I'm sure that guy will be stoked to read this.

Thanks again!

EDIT: I've just seen you have replied to that thread in the Fractal forum too! :cool:
 
It's interesting to see you have removed the IA Mode button. I was trying to work out if I really needed it because similarly to you I also have Page 2 with access to a bunch of effects (and my most common are on Page 1). Over the last few months I have never touched IA Mode, but I have used Page 2 - it seems like the same thing except you cannot use the IA Store functionality (which would be too complex for me when playing live).

I love your idea of having a paged dedicated to Austin Buddy's Naked Amp Tonepack. I spend hours noodling through them and always have Axe-Edit open so I can access all the options - I don't know why I didn't think of just making a dedicated page for this! Genius!
 
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the IS Store functionality
Maybe I’m misunderstanding IA store on the GT but I don’t want IA state in the GT preset to ever be different from the IA state in the scene on the AFIII. This can lead to weird behavior where a preset loads and the GT changes block state shortly after loading causing the sound to change abruptly or audio artifacts to occur.
 
@iaresee ok, I need to know more about this Out1 - Out1+ and how this saves a preset. I have been trying to sniff Sysex traffic from the editor to find the command to save a preset. How does this work in the physical world? Do you just press Out1 - to save the preset or do you need to press both at the same time. Is there something in the AxeFx3 manual on this topic that I missed?

This would be a game changer for me.

thank you in advance.
 
@iaresee ok, I need to know more about this Out1 - Out1+ and how this saves a preset. I have been trying to sniff Sysex traffic from the editor to find the command to save a preset. How does this work in the physical world? Do you just press Out1 - to save the preset or do you need to press both at the same time. Is there something in the AxeFx3 manual on this topic that I missed?

This would be a game changer for me.

thank you in advance.
This is a built-in action in the III that you can address with a CC. It's available for each output. It increments the output by 1.0 dB every time you send the value 127 on the CC assigned to the action and it automatically saves the preset. That means any changed IA state, etc. will also be saved along with the volume change. It's super handy when you're leveling presets, live, for the first time with the band.

The feature is described on p. 167 in the Axe-Fx III manual:

Screen Shot 2019-05-31 at 11.55.16 AM.png

Getting this to work wasn't hard but it wasn't super straight-forward either. I had to use some lower number CCs otherwise it just wouldn't function. The discussion around setting this up for the first time occurred in this thread if you want the details: Axe-Fx III Output 1 Volume Increment/Decrement?
 
Just created a GT16 layout based on this with some modifications for my use and to make the most of the real estate on the GT-16 (example tap and tuner on the same button etc.). I also like the songs feature on the RJM which groups a set of 16 presets - and I like to have access to a different set of 16 depending on the gig - rock / pop / jamming with the band etc.
I'll post another GT16 specific thread with some more detail and screenshots like iarsee above (which was so helpful and was the reason I went for the MMGT instead of the FC).
 
What's the best way to download this file? i get the weird screen no matter what browser I use..
 

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What's the best way to download this file? i get the weird screen no matter what browser I use..

See attached. Iaresee is using dropbox. There should be a button on the upper right side and choose download. Use a better browser :) . Hope this helps.
 

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Update time!

Things haven't changed that much. But as I've played with this setup, live, I've refined it so it works better for me during performances for the main pages. And then I've got a new page that's mainly for home use and you'll see why.

Page 1: Main

The major changes from the v1 release are along the top row and the bottom. On the top I've double-stacked some things. The Tempo >> Tuner button does tap tempo and hold-to-tune now. That freed up the upper left hand corner button. It's now used to get me to the looper page with one tap. I'm using the looper more and more with my band so this was handy. And hold for "Safe" gets me back to my main preset if I wander too far from home.

Along the bottom row, every scene button is now hold-to-bring-up-scene-selection. Any of them. Hold it down and you'll get the scene selection screen which is easier than reaching up to the top row. It's so much easier to hit literally any of those bottom row switches and hold it down to get to scenes 7 and 8 when I'm playing live.

Screen Shot 2019-08-16 at 8.55.30 PM.png

Page 2: Special

Just some rearrangement and effect swaps on this page. Amp EQ toggles CC#15 on/off. I just always use that CC# for AMP EQ and it makes sense. Volume Pedal is a neat switch. Hold mode brings up channel selection for the VOL1 block and it names channel 1 "Pedal" (because it expects that channel to be tied to an expression pedal) and channel 2 is "Swell" (because it expects that channel to be set up in autoswell mode). That's pretty neat.

Screen Shot 2019-08-16 at 8.55.33 PM.png

Page 3: Looper

Looper controls along the bottom should be self-explanatory. The row above the looper controls is setup for performance. Those are common blocks I like to toggle on/off when I'm looping with the band. And then the row above that one is setup for auditioning amp and cab settings. I can quickly turn amp blocks off/on and switch the cab block channels to try out different sounds while a loop block setup in front of all of them loops a lick. Upper left hand corner switch on this page gets me to the Main page.

Screen Shot 2019-08-16 at 8.55.35 PM.png

Page 4: Buddy

This page is optimized for working with Buddy Gill's preset pack. I love that pack. It follows his recommendations for how to configure an FC-12 for use with his pack. The switches are named to follow the function of the block as Buddy intended it to function in his presets. For example, SC Boost engages a boost Buddy intended people with single coil guitars to use on presets that were dialed in with his humbucker-equipped SG.

Screen Shot 2019-08-16 at 8.55.37 PM.png

Page 5: Utilities

All the stuff I need to maintain the GT-22 when I'm away from the editor. The Out + and Out - buttons increment/decrement OUT1's output level and save the changes. Careful using them. If you've tweaked the preset and use one of those switches you'll commit the changes along with the volume change. While I'm here I'll reiterate my request to @rjmmusic for a "get preset names and scenes from current preset" function I can assign to a switch that just updates the current preset in the GT-22 from the current preset in the Axe-Fx III. :)

Screen Shot 2019-08-16 at 8.55.39 PM.png
You can grab the updated rjs file here: http://j.mp/2FlXcs3

That's it for now. Hope everyone is having a good summer making music!
 
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