Cab Packs - are they necessary?

Bill-RTP

Bill-RTP

Inspired
Hello all,

I've been an Axe user for about 6 months now but haven't made a move to any of the available Cab Packs, mostly because I've been so pleased with what I've gotten out of the Axe as is.

So the question is, am I missing out on a whole new world of tone awesomeness?

Thanks,

Bill
 
I got the 4 x 12 ultra res pack last month and its really good. allot more options ,even though I pretty much just stick to the recto cabs
 
For the price of a nice dinner out you can get cab packs 4 and 5, which will give you several options for different and awesome 4x12s and a bunch of very useful "combo" style speakers.

When you have all the options those cab packs give you you can really dial a sound up faster just by changing out IR's than spending days tweaking advanced parameters. Once you have it real close with no mucking about, you can then take it easily over the top with those same tweaks.

Throw in a decent bottle of wine with dinner and you have Cab-Lab as well. Now you have what I equate with a full guitar production studio available, where you can take different mics from the same cab and blend it up to what sounds great to your ear.

More food analogies. Axe-FX 2 with stock cabs - amazing rich chocolate ice cream. Axe-FX with a couple of cab packs and Cab-Lab - dozens of flavors and you can sprinkle whatever toppings you want on them.
 
Thanks for the post and the input from you experienced Fractal guys. I'm new as well(newer actually lol) so this is really useful info. Glad you brought up the value of the IR's in terms of being able to dial in tones more quickly Hellbat:encouragement: I will be looking into getting some new cabs! Anything else us new guys should know?
 
BDer, you should think about it this way. Cab modeling has the biggest effect on your tone right after the guitar you're playing. I like to compare cabs to a human mouth in which the amp would simply be lungs that supply the air to go through the mouth. If you want a stronger singing voice you might start building stamina and breath exercises but most likely it will not effect your tone nearly as much as making sure your voice resonates correctly in your mouth. Does this make sense to you? :)

After that there's the other factor that you can place a mic in front of a cab in a million different positions making it sound completely different.
 
You'll have a lot more time, and possibly sanity, without the cab packs. As mentioned, IRs have a huge impact on your final tone, so it makes it hard to audition them properly, and I doubt that anyone really does.

Granted, you can dismiss many IRs quickly, but when you some that sound roughly ok, each IR really should be re-dialled in with the amp speaker settings and probably graphic EQ as well to hear it at its best. Then you need to give your ears a good rest, come back and tweak again, and repeat over and over until you don't need to make further changes. Only then do you know whether its what you want or not.
 
Try the IRs that are out there for free first. Chances are really good that you'll find something awesome for free. If not, then move on to paid ones.
 
BDer said:
I've been so pleased with what I've gotten out of the Axe as is.
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if you are happy with your current tone, you don't have to go any further.
the ultra res samples that come along with the firmware upgrade are great and do go a long way.
imho getting into the cab packs are for us insatiable tone chasers.
you can get really lost if you are not careful or choose to be.
first you have your standalones, then you have your mixes, then you'll start mixing those mixes via cab lab and pretty soon you find yourself craving for the next pack, and it gets more and more and the more you experiment, the more it keeps coming and then the bar code reader breaks, and it's publisher's clearing house day...
sorry, where was i again?
oh yeah,
try them if you really want to.
 
Thanks for the decent advice all around. Just in the last six months I've gone from what I thought was great tone to something even better, and this keeps happening as I really learn the Axe. The last show I played I had a handful of people standing there looking behind me, looking at the foot controller, looking behind me again....as a guitarist that's a bit of a victory when you've got people trying to figure out how you're achieving the sounds that you are. That being said, I'm always on-board with taking a great tone and making it even better.
 
After a year of using stock cabs I thought I'd try cab lab and the new 4x14 pack.......totally worth every penny!!!! Just like the axe-II..!!!
 
dpeterson said:
No, very much no, not necessary. Just options. IR's can be giant rabbit black time sucking hole if you let it.
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Agree with this. I use only two or three stocks cabs (and also only three amps in the Axe) or so and make my sound with this. I don't want to waste time audition lots of cab (and amps). Rather want to spend that time on playing. If you are pleased with what you already got then there is no need to buy other cab packs I guess. But I can only speak for myself.
 
In general, I side with the 'No' vote...

This is because I my last Preset build session, I had literally thousands of IR options available to try in addition to the stock ones. GM Arts is of course quite right in saying that you need to try one then give your ears a break because you're always hearing the next one in comparison to the last - that's a tough conundrum and if I took a five minute break between each IR change, it would take days, even weeks with no sleep to work through them... and you can bet that by the time that's done, I'd have no longer have any idea of what I was looking for in the first place
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Of course, some of the options could be discounted as 'inappropriate' from the start. Looking a 4x12 tone..? Don't go looking at 6" ovals etc but all the same, that might actually produce something golden!

As Clark says above, an IR is a sound shaping tool. That's great, but most of what I waded through kept shaping the tone in the wrong way for me. Now, that's not to say that there wouldn't have been options in there that suited song A or song B a little better within the context of the full band mix, but finding that wood amongst all the trees is a hugely tiresome and often fruitless process.

I have two or three IRs that generally work for me and suit what I personally look for. Despite entering the last session with a completely open mind and willingness to find more gold, I ended up back where I started because they just work and the advances in the Amp Block give me all the tonal flavours I need.

Having now rambled on about that, I actually love that the options are available for everybody - everyone is different and what tickles one person can turn the next one off etc... but it is indeed a deep rabbit hole and with the stock options covering a lot of ground (yes, two of my three final choices are stock) I can help but answer the original question of "Are Cab Packs necessary" with a 'No' - but caveat that with a 'Who knows, your personal heaven made lie deep within some obscure pack somewhere!'
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Reading through all of the various responses, I can't help but to think that conflicting responses mean that these are great problems to have. In my limited time with the Axe I think the reason I love it the way I do is that the tone I'm going after absolutely can be achieved, and there's a lot of different ways to achieve it.
 
I still consider a six month user to be a newbie, and I imagine your still probably trying to figure out "your sound". Heck, I've had mine for just over a year and I'm finally settling in on a trio of amps that work for me.

I still think I did myself a disservice by purchasing the Ownhammer 2x12 pack after only owning the Axe for a few months. It sent me down the rabbit hole of tweaking endlessly instead of dialing in what my sound should be. That said, I would focus on the excellent UR stock cabs, including the two excellent ones that Cliff just gifted us this week, and really nail down what you want your sound to be and then take the plunge with Cab Packs.
 
You asked 2 questions:

"Are they necessary?" Absolutely not. The quality of the best onboard stock cabs is right up there with the best available anywhere.

"Am I missing out on a whole new world of tone awesomeness?" Yes, sort of, but that depends on you. Yes - if you need a huge variety on tap, or if you need a very specific cab sound you just can't find in the stock cabs. Or maybe you just really enjoy exploring all those different shades and nuances of miced cab tones. Nothing wrong with that, but it's not for everyone. You might value simplicity and use all that time and energy to write songs or work on chops instead.

It comes down to how much time you want to spend looking for that last 0.1%. The rabbit hole is real, you can really get lost in there.
 
Absolutely NOT necessary. It is however fun to mixs different cabs that offer different frequencies that compliment each other when combined. You can do that, I guess with the stereo cab block but on a much deeper level when you have the stand alone IR's and the use of something like CabLab.
 
I would say that's kind of liking asking is having more than one guitar necessary. I don't mean necessary as in having a backup for a gig obviously, but necessary for coming up with different tones. If you can get every sound you want with whatever you currently have, then nothing additional is necessary. If not, some additional IRs might be exactly what you're looking for to create the tones in your head.
 
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