MV,

I'll show you what I've learned so far. I think I can help you get your presets on lined out.

Your amp likely has all of the user, song and artist presets like mine (Spider IV 150) I assume.

And it sounds like you have the Shortboard? I don't know the Express at all, but here's how you can access

all of the presets onboard and put them on your A,B,C,D channels.

1) First of all, to understand how this sort of works, the FBV does not store the sounds and presets. Everything

is stored and handled on the amp. The footboard merely flips the settings on the amp as needed.

2) On your amp you have literally hundreds of preset sounds and effects. Some are 'user' settings, just random effects

that they have loaded on to your machine to browse through. You also have 'song' presets which have been loaded

on to emulate certain songs of different eras (50's, 60's 70' thru 2000's) to help keep you from having to manually

tweak on these sounds. (You can still tweak and modify any of these how you would like and store them that way).

You also have 'Artist' presets which have been tinkered by different band and studio musicians and addIed on.

Also online there are many others that can be downloaded and the uploaded using the Spider Edit software for your amp.

3) The first thing I did was to create a spreadsheet believe it or not, to help organize which sounds I wanted and where

I wanted them. You have 64 spaces to save whatever presets you want. A bank has 1-16, B has 1-16, C and so on = 64.

You can cycle through these using your footpedal instead of having to jack with your amp everytime.

4) Now, to get to your presets. Your amp should have a tiny yellow display showing the preset currently being played.

Just below that, there is also a little black round 4way multipad to cycle through your presets (you're going to have to do all of this through the

amp first, so bear with me). EVEN THOUGH YOUR AMP HAS MANY PRESETS, YOU CAN ONLY CONTROL THE ONES ON A,B,C,D BANKS 1-16.

That gives you 64 effects to work with. But don't fret, you get to decide what presets you want in your top 64. That's what I'm going to explain.

If you want to take these off and add the others on your amp here's how you go about it.

If you look at the little display, you might be on 06A. That is bank A effect #6 (of 1-16).

The little black multipad has 4 arrows - left, right, up, down. If you press the 'down' arrow, you should be able to

change/select a different effect. You can cycle through 1-16 on the A bank. To get to B bank or C bank, you have to use

the little "Presets' knob right next to it. You should notice you go from 6A to 6B to 6C, etc. That gets you to your 64 presets.

5) Now, to access even MORE presets, Use the round MF pad and use the 'right' (R) arrow. You are no longer accessing

your 64 'controllable' effects. You should now be in the 'Artist' presets. These are ones that were created by different bands and artists.

You can still play all of these by manually navigating to them, but I will soon show you how to add

any of these 'off the grid' effects to your list of 64 so stay with me. There are gobs of these to play and review. It took me hours

to cycle through and goof with each of these to come up with ones that I like and dont'. (Hence the spreadsheet. You'll want to take

some sort of notes on ones you like and don't like, ESPECIALLY note the ones you like and where to find them).

There are many artists, and each artist has many different tones they have created so the list goes on.......

When you show an artist name, use the little rotating 'preset' knob to cycle through that artists' sounds.

6) For even more fun, use the MF pad again and press the R arrow to go to "Song" presets. These were created to emulate

guitar for certain songs from the 50's, 60's 70s and on as mentioned before. If you're on the 50's, again use the preset knob to

cycle through the different songs (again keep notes on which ones you like).

7) So now, organizing presets into your 64 spots. It has been recommended to organize these by bank.

A,B,C,D. Something like this. Bank A would contain all of your 'clean' tones. Bank B rhythm tones, Bank C 'leads'. Bank D, flanger/wah effects.

Something like that, however would suit you best.

Here's where I goofed a bit. There were several of the original 64 presets that I wanted to keep and use. I began moving things around

and inserted some tones in their place by mistake and ended up having to find them again to restore them. Works best if you 'map out' your

A 1-16, B 1-16 on paper or spreadsheet to know which spots to use for which effects. Because as you start 'storing' different effects on here,

you are in effect, replacing the one in that given spot. You can first move it somewhere else if you would like to keep it.

For instance I might move my original presets to spots 16, 15 and 14 just to get them out of the way. So I can add others in 1-13 on that bank.

(And don't worry, if you happen to insert a preset over one that you intended to keep, they are pretty much all available on your amp somewhere)

8) Okay, how to finally start moving and storing these. First, navigate to the tone you would like to keep (you need to have a landing spot in mind, A1, B3 or wherever you are going with it). When you have the tone showing on the screen 'let's say 'song, 1960's Brown Sugar'.

If I want to add it to B1, (there should be 4 buttons on the face of the amp A,B,C,D) you push and hold in the B button on the amp for just a couple of seconds.  When you press and hold, All of the A-D lights should start flashing, you can let go. Your display should now show 'SAVE 15A or something for instance. Ignore the SAVE 15A part, what you want to focus on is the FAR right number in the display.
Before you do anything else, use the Multipad up/down to select the 'number' you want it to go in. (For instance B1 in our example, scroll down to change the number on the far right to 1). Now you want it to go to B-1 right? Now that you have 1 selected in the display, just simply press the B channel button that is flashing. Congratulations! You just saved your 'Brown Sugar' to position B1 on your bank. You can now access this tone with your footpedal. Repeat these steps up to 64 times to fill up your banks.

I hope this helps.