[For FM3] Brian May's "Wall of AC30" rigs

[km 202257]

[Edit Apr. 22th, 2024] Updated preset for FW8 (Cygnus X-3) is available on Post #11. The presets attached to this post is obsolete so deleted. Demo video is taken down as that no longer demonstrates the current version of this preset.

Attached is my presets to simulate Brian May's "Wall of AC30" touring rigs (in 2000's and after), re-tweaked for FM3 w/ firmware ver. 7.00 or after.
(Originally for AXE-FX III, available at: https://forum.fractalaudio.com/thre...available-for-fw22.189154/page-2#post-2431557)

I made 3 separate presets to meet different use cases. Here are the brief introduction of each preset:

“Wall of 9 AC30s FM3 |km 202257”

• This is my take of Brian’s rig for the gig, including the chorus, pitch shifters, and Brighton Rock delay.
• You can choose either chorus, pitch shifters, and Brighton Rock delay by changing the Scenes.
• This comes with the simulation of a treble booster (the Drive block) so you can directly connect your Red Special or any guitar into Input 1.
  • If you want to use your real treble booster, connect the booster to Input 2 and apply the following tweaks to the preset:
    • engage Input 2 block in all the Scenes,
    • turn off Input1 and Drive block, and
    • change the "Tonestack Type" of the Amp block to "Default"

“Doc's Eventide FM3 |km 202257”

• This is what Scene 6 "Eventide in Get Down Make Love" on the original preset is separated as a dedicated preset to meet "1 pitch per preset" limitation on FM3.
• Specifications on Inputs are the same as “Wall of 9 AC30s FM3”.

“Doctor's Fav AC30 FMx |km 202257”

• This is intended for studio recording quality tone. Chorus, pitch shifters, Brighton Rock delay, FX Delay, and Reverb are not available.
• You’ve got 3 scenes with different cab/mic placement. On Scene 1-4, simulation of a treble booster (the Drive block) is engaged, while on Scene 5-8 it’s bypassed so that you can connect a real treble booster to Input 2. (Scene 2 and 6 are intentionally left blank)
• For all the scenes, Cab block comes with a combination of dynamic mic IRs and condenser mic IRs. Dyna-Cab is used on Scene 4 and 8.

I'm afraid I haven't prepared the sound clips of these presets. Meanwhile You can hear the original preset for AXE-FX III in the video below to get in the ballpark.
I'd like to acknowledge Yonderbosk as the manufacturer of the treble booster I played with my preset “Doctor's Fav AC30” on this demo. If you liked my tone there, check out "BC149 ‘Orange Label’ Treble Booster" at http://yonderbosk.com
Keep in mind that Chorus is bit more "Chorus-y" on the attached presets due to the updates mentioned in the additional notes below.

This is the FM3-specific notes. The resulting tone is different from what I intended, due to:

1. Phase cancellation in Scene 1 "Chorus".
   As the core tone is completely the same in both dry and wet signal, they cancel out each other and the preset sounds thinner.
   This is why I had to use 2 amps/cabs on original presets. By creating the offset between dry and wet signal, they do cancel out each other but to less extent.
2. Input Impedance not adjustable on FM3.
   Generally, treble boosters have input impedance around 100kohms. To replicate the interaction of devices with such low input impedance and PUs, I programmed my preset to set the input impedance to 70kohms on AXE-FX III and FM9, whereas FM3 is fixed at 1Mohms.

Especially, the impact of 2. is significant. Therefore I recommend either:

• playing with a real treble booster connected to Input 2, or
• before Input 1, connecting an impedance adjustment device (such as Radial Dragster: https://www.radialeng.com/product/dragster) to bring down the impedance loaded onto PUs anywhere below 100kohms

Here are some additional notes…

• Drive block’s got a different setting for each channel and are set to the channel that matches best to each of the scenes. Here’s what each channel has got:
  • Channel A: matched to a treble booster by Fryer guitars by ear. Similar to Brian May’s treble boosters in late 90s-2000s.
  • Channel B: matched to a treble booster by Pete Cornish by ear. Similar to what Brian used in late 70’s to early 80’s.
  • Channel C: Almost the same as the default of the “treble booster” model but with clip type changed to “Germanium”. Intended to simulate what Brian used in early 70’s
  • Channel D: The default setting of the “treble booster” model.
• After experiments, I recommend treble boosters be connected to Input 2, not 1.
  • However low I turn down the input level or A/D sensitivity of Input 1, it never stops clipping when a treble booster is connected. It is not the case with Input 2.
• For the presets/Scenes intended for the use with a real treble booster, the gain of Amp block is adjusted to improve S/N ratio.
  While with these presets/Scenes I feel the AXE-FX is behaving very close to the real AC30, you may find the gain is lacking especially in the solo. Adjust the gain in that case or I recommend using the presets/scenes with Drive block engaged.
  • Actually I prefer using the simulated treble boosters as it can achieve higher gain and still tolerable S/N ratio.
• I didn’t include the foot controller configuration. Please do the configuration yourself If necessary. If you are gigging with my presets, I guess you’d want to assign switches to change the Scenes and control other FXs.
• Chorus block is updated from the AXE-FX III version to match with Brian's own chorus settings.
  • A new information on Brian's settings of his FX effects (TC Electronic G-Major 2 BTW) becomes available by Doug Short, who asked Brian's guitar tech Nigel Knight to build the same rack unit as Brian's, including the same setting of chorus and other FXs as Brian's. The parameter is available on Doug Short's website (https://dsgb.net/gear/brian-may-live-rig/)
  • I applied the same settings to the Chorus block of my presets, except for "LFO Phase" tweaked a bit to obtain a better stereo effect and "Delay Time" to replicate the latency by TC G-Major's A/D & D/A conversion.

Apologies for the lengthy post. I hope you like them!

 

[hipeboy]

Thanks
Will try them out

 

[Falcon75]

Wow, the sounds in the video are great. Well done!
Unfortunatelly the attached presets do not translate well to the FM3. Did you create them on an actual FM3?

 

[km 202257]

Wow, the sounds in the video are great. Well done!
Unfortunatelly the attached presets do not translate well to the FM3. Did you create them on an actual FM3?

Sorry for the inconvenience. Unfortunately it was not programmed on FM3 as I don't have one. I assumed FMs are capable of loading AXE-FX III presets as far as no AXE-FX III exclusive features are involved.
May I ask which preset your FM3 fails to load? If it's just the pair of "Wall of AC30s" presets, I have an idea wh

 

[Falcon75]

When I import them into the FM3 they look like the screenshots below. That is probably because FM3 Edit has a 4 row and 12 column grid.

• The first one (Doctor's Fav AC30) I can recreate using the screens from the Youtube video.
• The second one (Wall of 9 AC30s) is missing some blocks (Cab and Pitch). Of course you have the limitation of only one Amp block, Cab block, and Pitch block in the FM3.
• The third one (Doc's Eventide), I guess it should be similar to the Wall of 9 AC30s, but probably missing a Pitch block.

 

[km 202257]

When I import them into the FM3 they look like the screenshots below. That is probably because FM3 Edit has a 4 row and 12 column grid.

• The first one (Doctor's Fav AC30) I can recreate using the screens from the Youtube video.
• The second one (Wall of 9 AC30s) is missing some blocks (Cab and Pitch). Of course you have the limitation of only one Amp block, Cab block, and Pitch block in the FM3.
• The third one (Doc's Eventide), I guess it should be similar to the Wall of 9 AC30s, but probably missing a Pitch block.

View attachment 126260

View attachment 126261

View attachment 126262

Thanks for the screenshots. OMG that’s too bad. I wasn’t aware FM3 had less rows and columns on the grid. Apologies for the inconvenience, I will update the presets to come to this limitation very soon.

 

[km 202257]

When I import them into the FM3 they look like the screenshots below. That is probably because FM3 Edit has a 4 row and 12 column grid.

• The first one (Doctor's Fav AC30) I can recreate using the screens from the Youtube video.
• The second one (Wall of 9 AC30s) is missing some blocks (Cab and Pitch). Of course you have the limitation of only one Amp block, Cab block, and Pitch block in the FM3.
• The third one (Doc's Eventide), I guess it should be similar to the Wall of 9 AC30s, but probably missing a Pitch block.

View attachment 126260

View attachment 126261

View attachment 126262

[Edit Apr. 22th, 2024] Updated preset for FW8 (Cygnus X-3) is available on Post #11. The presets attached to this post is obsolete so deleted.

Here are the presets in response to your bug report. Fixes include:

• Rearranged the grid layout to comply with 4 row and 12 column grid,
• Replaced the block types not available on FM3 - Pitch 2 and Cab 2, and
• Omitted the Delay and Reverb blocks at the end to avoid preset running out of CPU.

Please let me know if this works on your FM3 (or the FM3 of someone here).

 

[Falcon75]

Thank you @km 202257 !!
Sorry for my late reply, but they now work and load on my FM3 system.

 

[MauroDave]

Thank you @km 202257 !!
Sorry for my late reply, but they now work and load on my FM3 system.

Here are the presets in response to your bug report. Fixes include:

• Rearranged the grid layout to comply with 4 row and 12 column grid,
• Replaced the block types not available on FM3 - Pitch 2 and Cab 2, and
• Omitted the Delay and Reverb blocks at the end to avoid preset running out of CPU.

Please let me know if this works on your FM3 (or the FM3 of someone here).

Brian May's sound theme is very interesting.
How do the more basic presets created for FM3 sound? valid? can you post some examples?
do you use the red special? from experience May's sound is very characterized by those pick ups and particular guitar...
For Brian May I use amplitube which by virtue of the direct collaboration with the artist has an unparalleled sound specific to him, despite being amplitube much inferior to fractal overall

 

[km 202257]

Brian May's sound theme is very interesting.
How do the more basic presets created for FM3 sound? valid? can you post some examples?
do you use the red special? from experience May's sound is very characterized by those pick ups and particular guitar...
For Brian May I use amplitube which by virtue of the direct collaboration with the artist has an unparalleled sound specific to him, despite being amplitube much inferior to fractal overall

These presets are programmed on AXE-FX III. Unfortunately not verified on FM3 as I don't have one. Please see the YouTube video on post #1 for the example.
I tweaked my presets to sound like Brian when these are played with "Red Special" type of guitars and a sixpence as the plectrum. It is not intended to make any guitars sound like Brian with the Red Special.

Just to be fair, Amplitube Brian May seems to be highly regarded and the "de-facto" standard amp simulator within Brian May fan communities. I sometimes use it for Deacy sim.

 

[km 202257]

Bump, Excuse me. Following the release of Cygnus X-3, I've updated the presets to optimize them for current amp simulation algorithm.
I've also my findings after previous presets, including ones at the venues of the recent Rhapsody Tour by Queen + Adam Lambert that I attended (I had a luck of being provided a seat right in front of the line array speakers twice!)

Please find the attached presets. As the presets were programmed on AXE-FX III, please let me know if they don't load or work on your FM3 and I will fix it ASAP.
(Other than the updates mentioned below, instructions in Post #1 applies. If this is your first time to use this series of presets, please make sure to read it before use.)

These are the major changes from the previous version:

• Amp blocks
  • Adjusted to deliver my intended tone on Cygnus X-3.
• Cab blocks
  • For slots loaded with Factory cab "2x12 Class-A NTB 30W 421 D," Swapped to "A". "D" sounded too boxy with the updated Amp block so I decided to swap it with a brighter one.
• Drive block
  • In response to the claims on S/N ratio, I reduced the output level of Channel B/C/D.
    I feel the gain is adequate enough to play with my Red Special replica with Adeson Tri-sonic pups, which has rather weaker output. That said, if you find the gain is lacking, turn it up to your taste.

I recommend that you use this preset with your Red Special (or any guitar) connected directly to the device and with the simulated treble booster. After Cygnus X-3, I don't know the reason but Amp blocks lacks in gain with a real treble booster. That is why I omitted "Wall of 9 AC30s noTB" from this update.

Just FYI, You can hear the AXE-FX III version of “Wall of 9 AC30s v3" and see how it looks like in AXE-EDIT in the video below. Please note this is not the perfect demonstration of the attached presets due to the AXE-FX III exclusive features.


I guess this could be the final update of this preset, unless there will be significant addition of features that could potentially improve the authenticity of the preset drastically (e.g. Addition of the models of AC30s modified for Brian lol.)
I hope you enjoy my presets!