Ableton Forum

I own Guitar Rig. I own an X-Station. Neither provide me with a simple solution to use Ableton as my sequencer, sampler, looper and guitar effects until. I'm looking for a (simple) setup - audio/midi interface and pedal board. Does anything like this exist? If not, what equipment are you guitarists using to do this? Thanks.

FCB1010 is a cheap well built tank that's really handy for traditional pedal-board use/switching along with the ability to make custom control-actions.
For example, using Clyphx X-controls you could assign a pedal to go to a certain track, and on each press, cycle through a different effect if you wanted to.
I bought mine with an Uno chip installed which allows a little more flexibility with the board but I don't think it's necessary at this point; between Max for Live and software someone wrote for programming the pedal I think you can get the same behavior without the mod.

The expression pedals do feel cheap though, and there's no spring action if you require it. I don't mind it but I have to frequently tighten the bolts to give them more friction. They'll still stay in place when they're looser, but I prefer them to be pretty tight. Nothing a wrench can't fix though.

IMO the FCB is a tank piece of shit. it's weird to program, heavy and clunky. I have one and never liked it. the SoftStep looks to be loads better and from what I can tell it killed the FCB.

I went through computer sims and the Line 6 Pod, then I went back to a real amp and love it. when I want to play I don't have to boot a computer or deal with latency settings or have a crash and use my muse time to play IT.

you'll find fanboys for all the soft sims and hardware emulators. end of the day much of it comes down to the user, they can all sound good. friends that are quite seasoned players vouch for different solutions. you should try them all.

my first choice barring a real amp is a Line 6 Pod. as for Live's effects, they're audio effects, not guitar effects, I've never found them applicable. Live's (pre 9) reverb is really bad (I don't have Live 9.) delays are easy to find, a Pod delay can be synched to Live. guitar effects are different than DAW audio effects, they had a different chain of evolution, IMO.

one fun thing to do with Live is to play a guitar through the vocoder. it's a feeling very similar to a midi guitar, you control a synth sound with the guitar.

pecked out on an iPhone...

Tone Deft wrote:IMO the FCB is a tank piece of shit. it's weird to program, heavy and clunky. I have one and never liked it. the SoftStep looks to be loads better and from what I can tell it killed the FCB.

I keep hearing this, hence my reluctance to go this route.

Tone Deft wrote:I went back to a real amp and love it.

Arrrrggghhhhh... I go back and forth on this. Amp/Pedals vs Sims. However I really dig the processing and looping power of Ableton. I'm curious why you think Ableton couldn't act as an effects unit. I've create dynamite sounds using some of the plug-ins. Though to be fair, most of my gems occurred after working with a sample of guitar, not in real time.

Actually, I'm gong to PM you. Hope we can carry on this convo that way. Thanks for replying.

The fcb1010 is dope! You just need to learn how to use it

I have used this in live settings for years, solid as a rock.
My live setup involves my pedalboard with a loop pedal running into my soundcard (emu 1616) with an fcb 1010 controlling ableton. All my effects are in a rack so switching is easy, we also run sequences and samples thanks to the drummer using a click track. On some stuff where it gets complicated, I even automate my pedal switching . It's a very versatile set up.

M-Audio Black Box



works great here . . .

Mister Natural wrote:M-Audio Black Box



works great here . . .

It's fun and cheap, but there's really no controller element at all. Thee pdals control the Unit, not your DAW, and the unit is, erm, awful.

IMO the Rig Control hardware pedal (the black one, number 3?) is a good all-in-one solution, and possibly the only one available with enough buttons to justify the title. I have the old silver one that doesn't allow for programming midi to the buttons, but the latest one does. You can buy it separately from NI and it's not much more than the FCB1010 but includes an interface.
http://www.native-instruments.com/en/pr ... e/pricing/

Tone Deft wrote:as for Live's effects, they're audio effects, not guitar effects, I've never found them applicable.

What on earth are you talking about?