YAAEHST (Yet Another Axe FX Holy $#!+ Thread)

I find that the 11R appears to respond more dramatically to rolling down guitar volume knobs, at least the Super Reverb, JTM45, and even the JCM800.
Never played through an 11R. But on the Axe-Fx, I can get each of the models you mentioned to go from squeaky-clean to chewy crunch just by varying my pick attack. When you add the guitar's volume knob to the equation, the range gets a lot wider.
 
Never played through an 11R. But on the Axe-Fx, I can get each of the models you mentioned to go from squeaky-clean to chewy crunch just by varying my pick attack. When you add the guitar's volume knob to the equation, the range gets a lot wider.

Yup; then add modifiers/controllers to input trim/drive and use an exp. pedal (or scene controller) and you can find that edge of breakup dynamically, on the fly for different guitars. I've been playing with this recently and it's super cool.
 
Been pretty busy so only getting to play with the setup a few minutes here and there, but I'm starting to feel like the Eleven Rack gives the impression of stronger attack because, compared to the Axe-FX, the attack and the saturation/distortion feel more separate, so on something like the Super Reverb you get a clear and relatively undistorted attack that fades out into a crispy distorted tail. Its almost like the effect of running a dual-amp setup with one clean and one distorted, which granted is a fantastic sound but isn't really how these amps should be behaving. The impression is compounded by the fact that all models I've checked out so far have more gain on tap in the Axe-FX than on the Eleven Rack.

The Axe is also definitely a little more rich and full-bandwidth through the same cabinet IR than the Eleven Rack, which occupies a bit more narrow of a band. The net effect between the extra attack and the narrower frequency band probably means that in a mix context the Eleven Rack would require less EQ/compression/whatever, which could save time but is definitely less authentic to the experience of mixing real guitar amps.
 
YMMV, but I tend to set input gain/PA gain for level of distortion and then tweak Speaker Drive & Motor Drive to enhance the character (often going back and backing-off the input gain/PA gain once I find 'it'). Usually I set Dynamic Damping around 3 (+/- 0.6) and use Brightness and Dynamic Presence for more clarity (tone stack usually at TMB=5,5,5 sometimes less bass as the Dynamic Damping seems to work like a 'Resonance' ctrl more/less).

What's really cool is using two different Cab IRs each with a trailing Pitch block (Say the L cab gets a +4 and -4, and R gets -3 and +3) summed into an Enhancer followed by 10-15% Spring Reverb and around 10-18% Hall Reverb. Sounds fantastic through some DT770s. :D
 
This makes a huge difference. I really wish the Axe-FX had a good way to copy or use Speaker page presets, since on the 11R that's essentially what I have access to.

Based on the above 11R experience I went ahead in the Axe-FX and manually set the JCM800's Speaker page to the values found in the AC-30 model. Time consuming, but it made the JCM800 way more enjoyable for me. This to me is a big problem with the Axe-FX: you can easily change out your speaker IR, but without tedious tweaking the power amp will still interact with it as if it were a different speaker.

Totally agree with this. I do wish there was a way of locking the speaker page settings rather than having to reset the speaker page every time I change an amp in a patch. For me, the speaker page is a key setting although it seems most folk don't agree.
 
We know Fractal does read this forum:

http://forum.fractalaudio.com/forums/axe-fx-ii-wish-list.69/

As far as the speaker page, it would be a nightmare to me to have to check every parameter once I switched amps; I like it resetting to defaults for that amp. I haven't really seen that there are speaker settings that translate to every cab regardless of amp, but it would be cool if that were true. Either way, it's a few seconds more work to get those settings back.
 
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