Yes, with the current feature set and in combination with Scenes you can build up a patch per song and then use Scenes to populate the individual parts. This will probably be the way I will go when my QC arrives :-).You just need some patience to get one.
But it’s just not the perfect solution. I just don’t understand why you still have to deal with the same bank/preset system that my Digitech GSP21 had in the 90s. The Multi-FX today have so much processing power and large displays that it is not understandable that there is still almost no really perfect solution in the actual operating concept.
I am primarily concerned with live performances.
Yes, with 8 buttons I have a lot of space. In the rehearsal room and at home in the living room, it’s all great. You’re relaxed and have plenty of time to figure out what to press next. But if you’re like me and you’re a meter or two away from the device at a gig, you’ve probably noticed that when you have to move quickly, you’re not 100% sure that you’re pressing the right button. As I said, who has ever turned on the solo sound in the quiet acoustic passage in front of a few hundred people will understand it :-).
It’s just that technically it’s not a problem to implement one-button operation. At the moment it seems to me that most high-quality Multi-FX behave like a Teslar that is still driven with clutch and gear shift. Yes, you can then certainly decide for yourself in certain passages how high the speed should be, but in 99% of the driven distance this is simply unnecessary. Why concentrate on pushing buttons when all you really want to do is play the guitar?
Let’s take a look at the market:
Currently, there are two devices that can do the desired feature in something. On the one hand, there are the Headrush devices. There you can create a setlist per song and then put the respective patches per dran & drop. The patches are not copied here.So if you have built 50 songs and realize that the lead sound needs a little more lead, you don’t have to go into all 50 songs and adjust that. If you keep this in mind, it should quickly become clear how important it is to separate the patch from the sequence of patches, especially since you usually call up a sound several times per song. If the sound is copied anew each time, you quickly come up with gigantic amounts of identical sound, which you would then have to adjust by hand. But back to the Headrush. This works very well, but it is rather unpleasant to kneel down in front of the device after each song, so that you can change the song. If I remember correctly, you can’t see which sound is coming next. So a little blind flight, especially if the amount of pieces is larger and one has not yet all of the flow perfectly memorized. I once had a Headrush, but returned it after the 3 defect on the USB port within 6 months.
The second is the Moddevices Dwarf. There you come very close to it. You create there pedalboards and for each song part then a snapshot, which can be provided with a name. The pedalboards can be combined via setlists. The whole thing can then be switched with the three buttons. You can get through a whole set without having to intervene with your hand and, once the corresponding song/pedalboard is selected, you only have to press one button to move on. In addition, you always get to see the name of the next snapshot. Very clear. Unfortunately, the implementation is still a bit shaky and the Dwarf can not yet keep up with the big devices in terms of sounds. From my point of view, another big disadvantage is that you can only program the Dwarf usably on a connected computer. Just changing something in the rehearsal room is only possible to a very limited extent.