My Secret Formula

Sorry, if those weren't there I wouldn't miss them.
Waaaaaaaay too subtle for my ears.
I can hear the difference but "most powerful parameters"???

How loud were you when you checked? The ones that make the most difference lower volumes seem to be subtle at high volumes, and vice-versa.
 
From the Axe-FX 2 manual . . .

CHARACTER, CHARACTER FREQ – These two parameters control a powerful inverse homomorphic filter which adjusts tone dynamically in a very musical way. CHARACTE FREQUENCY sets the center frequency of the filter while CHARACTER sets how pronounced the effect is. To darken the tone when playing harder, one might set the frequency to 10000 Hz and the amount to a negative value. A positive setting would have the reverse effect of brightening the amp when pushed. CHARACTER defaults to zero when amp type is changed.​

So why would anyone want to darken their tone when playing harder or vice versa? Sounds interesting but I wonder why this would be a desirable effect?
 
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The "Character" parameters are two of the most powerful advanced parameters available but I bet almost no one uses them.

My secret formula:
Character Frequency: 3000 - 5000 Hz, adjust to taste
Character: -0.5 to -1.0, adjust to taste

Cliff I'm using them, ''Character Frequency'': 3000 Hz and ''Character'' between 0.6-0.8 In order to get a more shiny and brighter sound and also ''Definition'' on 0.6 in order to reduce Fizz a little bit, but I don't experiment this particularly setting or around it, I will experiment it on my current tone Philosophy,
Cliff please tell us more about your ''Secret Formula'' in the amp block.


Thank you Sir.
 
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this would seem to work against dynamic presence. i just tried cliff's suggested settings and couldn't hear any difference. maybe something...very slight...or maybe it was just placebo.
 
I didn't hear any difference either.


EDIT: after further experimenting I do hear the difference.
 
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The "Character" parameters are two of the most powerful advanced parameters available but I bet almost no one uses them.

My secret formula:
Character Frequency: 3000 - 5000 Hz, adjust to taste
Character: -0.5 to -1.0, adjust to taste

your timing is absolutely flawless....
I'm sat in the studio with a track I reamped through the 65 Bassman thinking " I love this tone until I dig in and it's getting shrill"
my guitars are hot and bright.. which is great..
but there's this thing in the 65 Bassman where it either sounds great or nasty.. but never great throughout the performance..
'static' parameter settings were just not working..
if I set it to sound great when my playing is softer means it get some nasty highs when I dig in..
making changes to get this area under control means the tone falls away and dies in the softer areas...
I was considering reamping it again later with a different amp choice.. one that had a more consistent tone..
and then I stumble upon this thread...

Cliff.. yuo're a star.. thanks for this..
I reckon this could be my 'have cake and eat it' parm
 
So why would anyone want to darken their tone when playing harder or vice versa? Sounds interesting but I wonder why this would be a desirable effect?

I think tones become brighter and more percussive with harder picking. Therefore if you happened to need to make your amp sound brighter, during a softly picked or finger picked section, and you wanted to remain in that same tone when you started using your pick, but that brighter tone that was great while picking softly or finger-picking becomes shrill, you can offset and "darken" it with this setting. That is an extreme "what if" scenario, but I'm just sayin' it could have it's uses.

The next thing that comes to mind, is maybe copying the amp into x and y, but having one of them darker by use of this parameter, because you are going to use a different pickup at a certain part of the song, but you want the same gain structure, you just want to take a little harshness off of how that other pickup sounds, compared to your primary pickup. Perhaps, you are also boosting the scene's output volume for that passage, and at that slightly higher output volume, it just bites too much, and you want to shave that off a little.
 
Will have to experiment more with Character. I regularly pull a couple of db out of my tone centered somewhere around the 2.2K range. Sometimes with a Para or GEQ block... Sometimes with the GEQ in the amp block... Sometimes with a special fan I own blowing across the front of my cab that knocks the 2.2K frequencies out of the air as the exit the speaker... whatever gets you home.

Karma
 
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Sim / Yek - having not tried this yet I have no idea...
could it be that the effect of this is more / less noticeable with different amp types / tone types..??
 
ahh... interesting... so there's a good chance that this may well be a good thing to try out with my 65 Bassman preset [with the MV set to 11]..

so would I be right in asuming that for amps relying more on the preamp for gain [5150, Diezel etc types] that this dynamically triggered tone change would be lessened?
 
Cliff ''Secret Formula'' Test

I just tried Cliff setting sugesstions about Character and Character Freq, I put Character on -0.50 Character Freq on 4234 Hz
Guess which one is Cliff Setting sugesstions X or Y?, may be it's very hard to say!, but I liked the Cliff Setting Suggestions a lot.



 
It is highly dependent on the amount of gain. This formula is designed for an "80's" lead tone.

I use on for my JCM800 preset because I find JCM800s get shrill as you turn the gain up. It also works well with the SLO 100 and Recto models.

The Character parameters control an "inverse homomorphic filter" which is a term I coined to describe a type of homomorphic signal processing. This filter is distortion dependent. The more distortion there is the more pronounced the effect of the filter. It's analogous to contrast and edge detection in image processing. The processing is dependent on the dynamic range of the image.
 
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