A bunch of questions regarding the FA 06 and effects

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breaksoap
Posts: 7
Joined: 10:32, 4 July 2017

A bunch of questions regarding the FA 06 and effects

Post by breaksoap »

I bought the FA 06 a couple of months ago and after a lot of fiddling with the internal effects, saving studio sets etc and one live show I got some questions for you. I think a lot of the sounds are pretty good, especially the organ sounds, but I do have some issues with the MFX/TFX options the FA 06 provides.

It seems I can only apply ONE MXF per sound, and since the auto wah effect with expression pedal and rotary speaker effect aren't in the TXF list, I have to choose between one of them. Then again, I find the rotary speaker effect pretty useless. It seems washed out and when you go from slow to fast you kinda have to listen for the effect rather than getting blown away like one should. Both distortion and overdrive effect sound absolutely horrible. It sounds harsh even on low levels, no matter what sound I use, organs, clavs whatever. When using the expression pedal with the wah effect, it is quite difficult to get even resonance sweeps. It feels more like an on/off thing (could just be me though). Hmm, what else? I guess that's it. Which leaves me with the option of stripping the FA 06 sounds of the internal effects and go all pedals!

Price-wise I think the EHX Lester K sounds pretty good on Youtube videos, though I would have liked a rotor acceleration knob. Anyone tried the Lester G pedal with keyboards? Does it suffer from not having the stereo in option? (Guess it doesnt matter with just organs...) I would also appreciate if you got any other Leslie pedals suggestions, but keep in mind I cant afford the more expensive models. AND i hate pedals where one knob controls several parameters like the Neo-vent. Guess it's nothing wrong with the pedal, but not having the ability to visually confirm all settings doesnt work for me.

When it comes to wah pedals I am looking at the Crybaby Classic i think it was, since it packs a great sweep and true bypass. Anyone tried this with keyboard/organs? Other suggestions?

Coming this far I would have to get external delay and reverb as well. I was thinking about buying the cheap Joyo Analog Delay, not very picky here. And lastly a nice sounding reverb. I guess hall reverbs applies well to keys, but different kinds of reverb is always nice to have. The Hall of Fame seems quite nice though I detest the toneprint gimmick (prefer things to be as simple as possible). Would love to hear your thoughts regarding this.

I forgot the overdrive/distortion part!! I tried my Marshall Jackhammer pedal with organ sounds, and though it distorts it just doesnt sound right. Too higain perhaps. Actually my Big Muff Nano did a better job getting nice overdriven sounds, but I do believe this can be done better with a more vintage kind of overdrive pedals. I guess if I buy the Lester K it got the Drive knob there. Maybe sufficient for my needs? Not very picky as long as the overdrive sounds good. If I had the money a real tube preamp would have been nice though :)

Lastly, I guess there is no way around stripping the sounds of all effects and then save it to the user bank? There is no "hotkey" for pedal users? which instantly mutes effect, other than the knobs of course?

I humbly ask for your advice and opinions regarding these things, all input appreciated!!!
stevel
Posts: 520
Joined: 07:08, 17 May 2015

Re: A bunch of questions regarding the FA 06 and effects

Post by stevel »

breaksoap wrote:
It seems I can only apply ONE MXF per sound,


Correct, unless of course that effect itself is a "multi-effect" (such as Chorus and Delay on the same effect).
and since the auto wah effect with expression pedal and rotary speaker effect aren't in the TXF list, I have to choose between one of them.
Do you use the two together that much? I'm no organist but maybe Roland's thinking was that maybe players would be unlikely to use them that way. Of course, I'm not exactly sure Roland was thinking when they did a lot of these things, so...
Then again, I find the rotary speaker effect pretty useless. It seems washed out and when you go from slow to fast you kinda have to listen for the effect rather than getting blown away like one should.
it is what it is. I've never thought Roland's built-in effects (or COSM in general as well) were that great.

But that's true of a lot of devices - for decades buying built-in effects in amps were never as good as individual pedals. It's only now that we're starting to see actual models of individual effects arrive in devices that include built in effects (like many Boss products) but Roland seems behind the curve on this.

Again, their logic - if present at all - was just to put something crappy in to have becuase if you visit any keyboard forum you'll find that the gear heads all complain about the internal sound and have to use either the real deal or the latest emulation of it (the "Vent" thing?)

Both distortion and overdrive effect sound absolutely horrible.
Yep. Atrocious.

Taking an organ patch and adding that crappy distortion as an effect just sounds horrible. My old Sound Canvas sounds sound better becuase the drive is "built in" to the sample. Sure, you can't adjust it that way but it at least sounds good.

My philosophy with the FA is when I pull up a sound, check what effect is on it, and turn it off if it doesn't do anything to improve the sound!

As to your other point about effects suggestions, I can't really help you as my experience with them is as a guitarist.

But here's something to remember - the ouput of the FA is LINE LEVEL - guitars run on Instrument Level which is a different impedance (Mic Level is the other, and that's why there's that switch on the back of the FA - to change the levels).

So running a Keyboard into a Distortion Pedal for example might make the distortion tone sound nothing like what a guitar (with passive pickups) sounds like through the same pedal.

So make sure as you're looking for recommendations that you check impedance issues - for example, some multi-effects boxes like the Boss GT type effects already run at line level - or you can do some effects at line level through loops in amps so they would probably work in-line with a keyboard.

Lastly, I guess there is no way around stripping the sounds of all effects and then save it to the user bank? There is no "hotkey" for pedal users? which instantly mutes effect, other than the knobs of course?
Nope.

FWIW, this is my single biggest complaint about the MFX - TFX you can turn on and off with a button. But MFX, no.

Unless we all bombard Roland with it as a feature request in their next firmware update, I doubt they will ever do it.

There is a way to do something like assign a pedal to make an MFX parameter change between two states. For example, if you have Chorus, which has a depth control, you can set it so the pedal takes it down to 0 depth. So the chorus is on, just on zero depth which sounds like it's off.

IIRC you can do this with the S1/S2 buttons and the knobs too - I have a thread here on it and I'll look for it and add a link to a response.

But this is a pretty limited and maybe impractical approach - for example, some things, like amount of drive, if you lower that it's going to also lower the overall volume of the patch in most cases. So you can't use a pedal to "turn drive to 0" to "bypass the drive". Some things like Rotary have separate parameters for Horn speed and Speaker speed, so you can't do both with one pedal/button.

So yes, you save an un-effected and effected version of the same patch.

For a single sound, you could use TFX which you can at least control from the panel, but as you note, it doesn't have all your effects.

Honestly, I simply could not believe they didn't give you the ability to turn MFX on and off. This to me is sheer stupidity.

The only other way to do it is with a SysEx message. I have a thread on that too but if you have a device you can assign SysEx messages to, you could use that to control the MFX (and a few other things that don't (stupidly) operate on any other button or parameter (CC) like organ drawbars).

I set up my A-800 to turn MFX on and off. Besides being a pain, there are also different SysEx commonds for SN-A, SN-S, and PCM sounds, so I had to use 3 buttons instead of just 1. And there's a different message for Off than On, so I couldn't just toggle, so it took 6 buttons!

I do not believe it was intended to be a live performance keyboard. It was intended to make money off the "beatmaker" market and those attracted to EDM - lots of sounds, great price point, not a keybed for "real" keyboardists, loop launcher (which is what they want instead of real sampler) and very "current" sounding "soaked in over-the-top GarageBand style effects".

it does all that stuff well, and then it does some other stuff "well enough" - but it ain't no Nord Stage and was never meant to be (nor does it cost as much).

I guess the problem was, it *seemed* like it would make a great live keyboard and many people bought it with that in mind, only to find out how much practical stuff got left off.

Luckily they "fixed" the KBD Group thing making it much more of a live board. So there's some hope for the MFX - but don't hold your breath.

Use your memory slots.
stevel
Posts: 520
Joined: 07:08, 17 May 2015

Re: A bunch of questions regarding the FA 06 and effects

Post by stevel »

Here's the MFX workaround:

viewtopic.php?f=55&t=53029
breaksoap
Posts: 7
Joined: 10:32, 4 July 2017

Re: A bunch of questions regarding the FA 06 and effects

Post by breaksoap »

Thanks for the enlightening post! I guess you pretty much confirmed my doubts that the FA 06 is pretty impractical in a live setting. I will try the MFX workaround for effects that I wont bother buying a pedal for. May I ask what pedals you use live and what kind of music youre doing?
stevel
Posts: 520
Joined: 07:08, 17 May 2015

Re: A bunch of questions regarding the FA 06 and effects

Post by stevel »

breaksoap wrote:Thanks for the enlightening post! I guess you pretty much confirmed my doubts that the FA 06 is pretty impractical in a live setting. I will try the MFX workaround for effects that I wont bother buying a pedal for. May I ask what pedals you use live and what kind of music youre doing?
It's not "impractical". It's just that you need to do "workarounds" in your presets. The new updated Kbd Groups really kind of solves the problem for you. So it really is a much better live board now.

I played in a prog rock kind of band doing Pink Floyd, Rush, Zep, Kansas, Styx, etc.

I actually had to use two keyboards (controllers) so I used my FA along with an A-800. I used the A-800 buttons to pick patches for each sound.

What I did was pick sounds within a single Studio Set - which is probably not the most effective way to do it but due to the number of layers and splits I needed that involved re-using a lot of the same sounds, it seemed kind of silly to me to keep storing Studio Sets and switching them, becuase I'd have to switch the patches within anyway.

Changing the patches on the FA would have been a no-go live (favorites buttons to hard to see and too easy to miss) but now that they have the Pads improved with the Keyboard Groups, it would work every bit as well as the A-800.
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