First it's the Axe-Fx III and second is my real Mark V. (the ground noise should give it away)
Not 100% sure if you know me but a quick recap is that I love real amps, I love the Axe-Fx, I even like a couple of other modelers. The amp that I believe most modelers struggle with is Mesa Boogie and to be even more specific the Mesa Mark series. Throughout all these years I've given people a hard time about Mesa amps, and for that reason I've also made this a quest of mine to really nail my real amp sounds with Fractal gear and obviously share my findings with you guys.
I'll be honest, I've been struggling with the Mesa low end. I just can't get those palm mutes to sound right (=not just tight but MESA TIGHT!) and I'm one of the tweakers of this forum with 6 years of Fractal experience so it's not a case of me being new to all this. So today I decided that I'm doing this properly. A huge shoutout to a plugin that I LOVE that's called GlissEQ by Voxengo. It allows you to get multiple sources in the same frequency analyzer so I could compare the real amp and the Axe-Fx III "on top of each other" while a loop was playing. It's really easy to see where the differences in the spectrum are.
First comparison: Mark V FX loop with GEQ off VS Axe-Fx III without power amp modeling
This was quite a weird one for me. Although I'm using the Mark IV setting on the Mark V the only amp sim in the Axe-Fx III that has the same EQ balance to my Mark V is the IIC++ amp sim. All the other Mesa Mark series amp sims have way too much low end even when I have the bass knob at zero. The IIC++ EQ settings actually match my exact amp settings and I get the same EQ balance in GlissEQ as well so we're off to a good start. I have my gain on the amp at around 7. To match this amount of gain I needed to set both gains on the IIC++ amp sim to 10. Also to get the low end just a little bit tighter I had to raise the input EQ low cut to 250hz. Okay, these sounds are not identical, off to the...
Second comparison: Mark V FX loop with GEQ on vs Axe-Fx III without power amp modeling and GEQ tweakage
This was actually surprisingly realistic. The only difference was that I had to set the 80hz EQ knob to -1,5dB while in real life I have it probably around +1,5dB. My GEQ on the real amp is not as drastic with the 80hz and 6600hz sliders as you'll see with most people. These sounds are now identical again so...
Third comparison: Mark V + real cab miked vs Axe-Fx III with power amp modeling and an IR of that mic up
This is where things got weird. Just so people don't blame the IR, I compared the Mark V slave out and DI box out signals with the IR to the miked signal and those sounds are identical. No difference anywhere. So... this leads me to believe that there are big differences in how the power amp modeling is by default when compared to my Mesa Mark V that's connected to a Mesa 4x12. At this point I'm completely aware that these differences could come from just about anywhere but I fixed it with just the speaker page. These settings are a bit crazy, BUT if you listened to the clip above I'm sure you'll want to try these. Very simple: Low res Q: 0.300 and LF resonance: 5.00. That's it. Now that's a ridiculously wide Q setting. The thing is, it sounds just like my Mark V.
Small tweaks here and there as is to be expected but here you go. I made this preset that's using stock IR's of mine that are from the same exact cabinet that I was using so it should sounds very realistic.
WARNING: I'm using as much gain as I can handle. It does require you to palm mute quite heavily to keep things clean. If you feel like the preset is clammy and too gainy, lower the input drive to around 8.
EDIT: I added Fractool conversions for Axe-Fx II and AX8. I don't know if these work or not but give them a try if you're interested. At least the Cab Block will not work so try the stock CK TRAD IR's that you have or this free IR that's "the best IR in the world": bit.ly/MLSoundLab
EDIT EDIT: The Fractool conversion doesn't infact work but Fremen was kind enough to convert the preset and you can find it later in this thread. Thank you @fremen
Not 100% sure if you know me but a quick recap is that I love real amps, I love the Axe-Fx, I even like a couple of other modelers. The amp that I believe most modelers struggle with is Mesa Boogie and to be even more specific the Mesa Mark series. Throughout all these years I've given people a hard time about Mesa amps, and for that reason I've also made this a quest of mine to really nail my real amp sounds with Fractal gear and obviously share my findings with you guys.
I'll be honest, I've been struggling with the Mesa low end. I just can't get those palm mutes to sound right (=not just tight but MESA TIGHT!) and I'm one of the tweakers of this forum with 6 years of Fractal experience so it's not a case of me being new to all this. So today I decided that I'm doing this properly. A huge shoutout to a plugin that I LOVE that's called GlissEQ by Voxengo. It allows you to get multiple sources in the same frequency analyzer so I could compare the real amp and the Axe-Fx III "on top of each other" while a loop was playing. It's really easy to see where the differences in the spectrum are.
First comparison: Mark V FX loop with GEQ off VS Axe-Fx III without power amp modeling
This was quite a weird one for me. Although I'm using the Mark IV setting on the Mark V the only amp sim in the Axe-Fx III that has the same EQ balance to my Mark V is the IIC++ amp sim. All the other Mesa Mark series amp sims have way too much low end even when I have the bass knob at zero. The IIC++ EQ settings actually match my exact amp settings and I get the same EQ balance in GlissEQ as well so we're off to a good start. I have my gain on the amp at around 7. To match this amount of gain I needed to set both gains on the IIC++ amp sim to 10. Also to get the low end just a little bit tighter I had to raise the input EQ low cut to 250hz. Okay, these sounds are not identical, off to the...
Second comparison: Mark V FX loop with GEQ on vs Axe-Fx III without power amp modeling and GEQ tweakage
This was actually surprisingly realistic. The only difference was that I had to set the 80hz EQ knob to -1,5dB while in real life I have it probably around +1,5dB. My GEQ on the real amp is not as drastic with the 80hz and 6600hz sliders as you'll see with most people. These sounds are now identical again so...
Third comparison: Mark V + real cab miked vs Axe-Fx III with power amp modeling and an IR of that mic up
This is where things got weird. Just so people don't blame the IR, I compared the Mark V slave out and DI box out signals with the IR to the miked signal and those sounds are identical. No difference anywhere. So... this leads me to believe that there are big differences in how the power amp modeling is by default when compared to my Mesa Mark V that's connected to a Mesa 4x12. At this point I'm completely aware that these differences could come from just about anywhere but I fixed it with just the speaker page. These settings are a bit crazy, BUT if you listened to the clip above I'm sure you'll want to try these. Very simple: Low res Q: 0.300 and LF resonance: 5.00. That's it. Now that's a ridiculously wide Q setting. The thing is, it sounds just like my Mark V.
Small tweaks here and there as is to be expected but here you go. I made this preset that's using stock IR's of mine that are from the same exact cabinet that I was using so it should sounds very realistic.
WARNING: I'm using as much gain as I can handle. It does require you to palm mute quite heavily to keep things clean. If you feel like the preset is clammy and too gainy, lower the input drive to around 8.
EDIT: I added Fractool conversions for Axe-Fx II and AX8. I don't know if these work or not but give them a try if you're interested. At least the Cab Block will not work so try the stock CK TRAD IR's that you have or this free IR that's "the best IR in the world": bit.ly/MLSoundLab
EDIT EDIT: The Fractool conversion doesn't infact work but Fremen was kind enough to convert the preset and you can find it later in this thread. Thank you @fremen
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