I prefer using stomp mode as it allows you to turn on multiple effects as needed, they way you would with a typical pedalboard. Scene mode is more constrained - you get what you get in that scene, and if you change scenes, you get something else, not both (or, not and). That’s great for quick tone changes in fixed performance situations, but its not as flexible as a pedalboard.
QC only has 8 switches, and all they can do is turn on/off individual blocks. But with a little work, you can used scene switches sort of like extra stomp switches to extend the number of effects you can control in a patch.
The limitation is that every effect you want to control with scene switches has to be independent of other scene managed effects - they have to be effects you’d likely not use together. This works great for effects you don’t use that often and aren’t used together. For me that would be flanger, Leslie, tremolo, UniVibe - mostly modulation effects that wouldn’t be used at the same time.
I use scene H as the default scene, all the scene managed effects are bypassed in this scene. The each scene is used to control the bypass of one block. There are a few things to consider:
- The block is bypassed in all scenes except the scene you want to control the block, bypass is off in that scene.
- All blocks that are controlled by footswitches need to be bypassed in all scenes so the scene doesn’t override the stomp switch. This has the perhaps undesirable effect of turning off all stomp blocks when selecting a scene effect. There should be a way to indicate block bypass isn’t saved in scenes as on Helix. Alternatively any block controlled by a stomp switch should automatically not be controlled by scenes, same as the block parameters.
- All blocks that are on all the time (i.e., a compressor) should not be bypassed in any scene
- Blocks whose bypass is enabled by the scene will typically also control all the parameters of that block. This happens by default when you change a parameter value whose block is enabled in some scene. Only change the parameters for the block in the scene that enables the block.
- Blocks that are enabled by stomp switches cannot have their parameters saved in a scene.
- The only way to bypass a block that has not assigned to a stomp switch is with MIDI or in a scene.
I haven’t tried using this live yet. It will take switching between stomp and scene mode to reach the effects controlled by scene switches. This might result in some mistakes if you miss scene mode and get preset mode. Then you have to switch back to stomp mode to control the rest of the effects. But I think it could work, at least for effects you don’t use too often and might be turned on at the beginning of a song.