There are 180 orchestral tones to choose from on the FR-8X, though only 28 come pre-programmed to the treble registers, and 14 to the bass registers. If you want to re-program the default orchestral sounds that come assigned to your main register switches, follow this procedure:
- Make sure you’re in orchestra mode by selecting either orchestra 1, orchestra 2, or both. You can do this by pressing the respective buttons found on the grill, right above the treble keyboard.
- Select the register that you want to reprogram, with the unwanted orchestral sound also selected.
- To change the sound, enter the menu by pressing the menu button.
- Use the data/enter knob to scroll until you reach orchestra 1 edit or orchestra 2 edit – depending on which you’d like to re-program (or have selected).
- Press the data/enter knob to enter the parameter.
- Press the data/enter knob again to highlight the “tone” category, and scroll through the tones until you’ve found the one you’d like to have available on the selected register, for easy access.
- Hold the exit button to exit the menu.
- You’ll notice that the orchestral sound you selected has now replaced the tone that was initially pre-programmed on the register.
Notes:
- You can repeat the above process with every register, if you want to totally replace all 14 register switches with your own tone choices.
- You can use the same procedure, listed above, to change the orchestral sounds for the bass registers as well. Here are the only differences:
- You need to select the "orchestra bass" and/or "orchestra chord/F. bass" buttons so that they are lit up (also found on the main grill above the keyboard).
- After you enter the menu (step 4), you'll need to scroll to either "Orch bass edit" (8.1) or "Orch chord edit (9.1) - depending on which sounds you want to change.
Warning: You need to save your changes as a set before powering off the accordion, or else they will all get erased. For help on that procedure, please refer to this article: FR-8X: Saving a Set