I feel it's due to how well the amp modeling has come. I picked up my XL right as FW11 was released. While I was pleased with the versatility, I wasn't sold on my tones just yet. I tweaked a LOT more, and still used my Mesa live. It wasn't until around FW17 that I feel tones came easier to me. While I will always preach your IR is the most important part of the preset, everything just sounds better through the same IR I've been using for years from cab pack 7. I've been toying with the idea to upgrade my IR's, so I might just do that now since I have some downtime from shows.
Brilliantly simple. I've been looking for something like this to cover a variety of sonic colors and styles without a ton of blocks in the patch. Scene 1 is the Double Verb Vib as the X amp, scene 2 is the Friedman BE as the Y amp. Cab is the stock #132 using the high and low cuts you mentioned with 12db filter slope. Added the Optical 1 compressor, London Plate verb and Ambient Stereo delay. Also threw in an FX Loop for when I want to send it out to my FRFR. Works great with single coils and humbuckers. Simple and covers so many bases. Thanks Yek!To illustrate:
My clean tone is Double Verb Vib.
Drive at 3.50, bass at 4, mids at 5.50. That's all.
I use this with all 3 guitars that I play (humbuckers as well as single coils, and through FRFR or traditional cab.
My dirty tones are all Friedman BE.
Mids at 6, negative feedback turned down, drive between 3 and 7.
Again, with all guitars, and through FRFR as well as traditional cab.
The mono cab block (stock cab #132) is where I do the most tinkering. Blocking under 150 and above 7k, some motor drive and proximity. That's it. Proximity is really great to get punch and "oomph" from a FRFR monitor.
On the AX8 it's just a single Brit 800 34 block, controlling it with guitar volume, with the same cab.
... after years and years of owning, using and tweaking the Axe-Fx, I’m happy just using very basic and almost default amp and cab settings.
Generally my order of getting a sound I want is:
- Choose an amp
- Load up my favourite cab
- Set up Gain
- Set up B\M\T
- Tweak with GEQ.
If you've never messed with the GEQ, I would regard that as important as the B\M\T. It's really useful for getting the amp and the cab to play nicely together and to bring out the things you like in the guitar tone. I always like to find the cleanest part of the mids and push that forward so the guitar stands out a bit better in a mix.
I usually regard the advanced stuff as being more about feel and getting the amp to react to the note the way I want it to. That stuff doesn't really come out in a recording though, more of a playing thing which can get better performances but I'm used to how an AFX feels at this point so it's pretty minor.