So far I'm not entirely sold on the Axe Fx 3....

I could never complain about amp sounds, but the effects department is a little forgotten compared to amps.
The effects are in the ballpark, but not perfect. There is a looper, but if youre serious about looping you still need a separate looper. If youre a fan of rotary- you cant really nail Mini Vent. Same with Whammy sounds - you can get in the ballpark , but the sound of the real Whammy is much fatter.
Its still better than most multi fx, but not there when it comes to real pedals. So if youre an effects freak you still have to buy pedals.
 
pauliusmm said:
I could never complain about amp sounds, but the effects department is a little forgotten compared to amps.
The effects are in the ballpark, but not perfect. There is a looper, but if youre serious about looping you still need a separate looper. If youre a fan of rotary- you cant really nail Mini Vent. Same with Whammy sounds - you can get in the ballpark , but the sound of the real Whammy is much fatter.
Its still better than most multi fx, but not there when it comes to real pedals. So if youre an effects freak you still have to buy pedals.
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Not agreeing with you regarding the Rotary and Whammy. I get excellent results.
 
unix-guy said:
@Ant Music and @Bodde - I am curious what specifically you are looking for in effects that are not there now?

I think the biggest complaint I have seen over the last 5+ years I've been using the Axe Fx III is around two things:

  1. How do I get effect X to sound like product Y (e.g. make the phaser sound like a Small Stone)
  2. Ability to easily achieve effect X which is really a combination of effects that is a "preset" sound on some other device (e.g. Strymon)
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Oh god too much to mention. Have a look at the updates threads in the wish list for Axe Fx 2. It's pretty much all in there and there are some great ideas in there. A couple of things I personally would love to see is and expanded Synth Block that incorporates polyphonic pitch detection but can also receive midi notes. Another being ADSR triggered by CC But the list goes on and on..... I'm not going to go into every good idea that is out there.

Oh and one little thing I'd like to see is the Drive Blocks updated so the Mix parameter works as it should. Unfortunately as it currently is, any eq settings in the drive block still affect the tone of the "dry" signal even when the mix is set to zero. I was startled to find that that was the way it works and that really should be rectified.

And I'd prefer to see a "native" functions tab in Axe edit for modelled devices so that you can see only the actual controls that appear on the actual piece of gear ie; a script 90 only has one dial but of course you have the other tabs for the generic controls we already have too.
 
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Severed said:
In regards to effects, it seems to me that a lot whom are saying they want a bigger focus on fx development, actually want FAS to model real life pedals, complete with settings so it's like using the real thing, instead of giving a blank slate base line of the effect with default settings leaving the end user to figure it out on thier own.

This gets especially difficult when the effect pedal in question is actually a combination of different effects working together with real time mods to produce the signature effect, and the end user is unable to reproduce it.

I don't live on the forums, but this is what I've observed most of the time.
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This may be the case in a lot of cases but it is not an unreasonable request. Hence why the effect types were introduced like the block 90 and vibe, deluxe mind guy etc. It is perfectly reasonable to want to be able to simply select an optimized emulation of a popular effect rather than everybody having to reverse engineer it themselves. I see nothing wrong with this and it seems most people are good with that too. As it were in the past before effect types were introduced you were indeed left with only a base set of parameters and left to your own devices to sculpt your tones. Whilst this may suit some people it is rather laborious to most.
 
Bodde said:
I don't say that the effect are not good or anything. Also not saying that I am not happy with my Axe fx II. I but I definitely see some room for improvement in the fx section and I don't consider it completely developed or finished. I guess you could say that from modelling too.
I don't want clones of pedals as some say here above.

A few things I would like:
- Polyphonic pitch detection for pitch block.
- Better synth block, especially better tracking
- More looper functions, like replace function and some more things
- better fuzz sounds.
- More new specific and experimental effects.

I goes to far to sum up all my wishes here....
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1000% down for better fuzz sounds. I have really been underwhelmed by the fuzz tones in the Axe Fx. I've got anything to sound good to me from the fuzzes. And FFS put the ZVEX Fuzz Factory in there!!!!!!
 
pauliusmm said:
I could never complain about amp sounds, but the effects department is a little forgotten compared to amps.
The effects are in the ballpark, but not perfect. There is a looper, but if youre serious about looping you still need a separate looper. If youre a fan of rotary- you cant really nail Mini Vent. Same with Whammy sounds - you can get in the ballpark , but the sound of the real Whammy is much fatter.
Its still better than most multi fx, but not there when it comes to real pedals. So if youre an effects freak you still have to buy pedals.
Click to expand...

And they should add a dive bomb feature in the whammy!!!! You know, like the the real ones have....
 
yek said:
Not agreeing with you regarding the Rotary and Whammy. I get excellent results.
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I think the updates for the rotary were very good and it really does sound a lot better but I still would say it doesn't sound as good as the ventilator.
 
I owned the Mini Vent and was able to match it closely. The Rotary isn't aimed at modeling the Mini Vent / Ventilator though, it's aimed at simulating a rotary cabinet.
 
yek said:
I owned the Mini Vent and was able to match it closely. The Rotary isn't aimed at modeling the Mini Vent / Ventilator though, it's aimed at simulating a rotary cabinet.
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The point being that the ventilator sounds more authentic to me at least than the Axe Fx Rotary. I'm certainly not complaining about it. I campaigned for it to be updated and it was very much improved. I can live happily with it. But, I do still think that the Ventilator sounds better (by better I mean more authentic).
 
I don't have a real rotary cabinet (luckily, they're big and heavy), so I can't really compare in real life.
@hippietim does and can, and he wrote recently that the Rotary block holds up.

Dive Bomb can be configured.

Nice fuzz tones are achievable. Bearing in mind the "buffer" obstacle ALL modelers have to deal with.

I understand the wish for turn-key effects and models, but personally I prefer the architecture as it is.
 
Realize that no one pedal is the only gold standard. For every neo vent owner there is someone else who bought a lex, or some who who liked the chorusey sound of the rt20, or the noise of that tube driven one etc

To say something to the extent of “why doesn’t this axe have ______ blank, it’s the “best” effect is kind of silly.

I mean heck, I bought the neo vent and returned it, didn’t really like the sound, especially for the price. I actually like vibratone sounds more than a “proper” Leslie anyways

So while I get why one might want a specific model, realize that someone else could care less about it
 
Until the floorboard is out I'll probably wait, the idea of programming the MFC I have manually with MIDI does not appeal and as pointed out currently the difference in sound is pretty minimal to the IIs.
 
yek said:
I don't have a real rotary cabinet (luckily, they're big and heavy), so I can't really compare in real life.
@hippietim does and can, and he wrote recently that the Rotary block holds up.

Dive Bomb can be configured.

Nice fuzz tones are achievable. Bearing in mind the "buffer" obstacle ALL modelers have to deal with.

I understand the wish for turn-key effects and models, but personally I prefer the architecture as it is.
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I plan on doing some rotary comparisons if I can. Mic’ing a Leslie successfully is somewhat of a dark art. Off the top of my head I can’t remember if the Axe supports not having the horn - my Leslie is one of the ones they made for guitar without a horn.

As for turn-key effects, I agree with everyone: I like the current architecture and I want way more turn key effects.
 
Thing about “turn key” effects is that you still need to tweak a pedal to get a given sound for a particular knob setting.

You can’t just spin a dial til it says “rams head big muff” and sound like Gilmour than you can if you went and bought a Vick 73 or any other pedal. Your still going to have to dial the settings in, gain stage with a boost or OD etc

It might make things a little simpler by adjusting the mid scoop and such, but your still going to have to find the “right” knob settings

Pedals have knobs becasue there is no one right setting, just like the axe parameters do.
 
Ant Music said:
The point being that the ventilator sounds more authentic to me at least than the Axe Fx Rotary. I'm certainly not complaining about it. I campaigned for it to be updated and it was very much improved. I can live happily with it. But, I do still think that the Ventilator sounds better (by better I mean more authentic).
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I don’t know about that my friend. Many of you have heard of Fat Sound Guitars which was a great boutique guitar shop - killer amps, guitars, and pedals. It ended badly. But probably 9-12 months before the demise, I went there with the intent of buying one of the high dollar Leslie pedals - $350-450 iirc. This was before I had a Leslie myself. It so happens that the owner had his Fender Vibratone (Leslie rebranded for Fender and the model SRV used) in the shop and it had just been serviced and was running smooth and sounding great. So Stu set me up in the middle of the store with his Vibratone and another cab with the same amp and we proceeded to A/B boutique pedals - he had three or four of the boutique models and I know the Ventilator and Rotosim were two of them.

So naturally they all sounded really good. They should for that much money of course. But none held up great next to the Vibratone. Stu was even surprised. Then he looked over at the other side of the store where he had his Boss display and asked me if I wanted to try the Boss. I was skeptical. I was ready to pay a bunch more money, how could the Boss hold up? Heh. Well the Boss more than held up. It was appreciably better sounding than any of the boutique pedals and was much more natural sounding next to the Vibratone. The only thing the Boss didn’t sound as good on compared to a couple of the boutique models was with a lot of gain but the Vibratone didn’t sound good with high gain either (and neither does my Leslie).

I have not revisited Leslie pedals since that day and I know there are a lot more variations of Leslie’s than just the Vibratone and since that time I know more pedals have come out and there’s a Ventilator 2, etc. so take my experience for what it was at a point in time some years ago.

I have not done any A/B testing with the rotary in the 3 yet (so many things to test). But I know that the rotary in the 3 sounds damn good.
 
Cool thing about the rotary in the Axe is you can assign a lot of control variables, such as having the mix change along with an increase in speed, adjust the dampening of control pedal movements etc

Not only get a lagging speed increase but also add more depth etc, all with a single pedal. I find this way better than just a slow and fast setting
 
lqdsnddist said:
Thing about “turn key” effects is that you still need to tweak a pedal to get a given sound for a particular knob setting.

You can’t just spin a dial til it says “rams head big muff” and sound like Gilmour than you can if you went and bought a Vick 73 or any other pedal. Your still going to have to dial the settings in, gain stage with a boost or OD etc

It might make things a little simpler by adjusting the mid scoop and such, but your still going to have to find the “right” knob settings

Pedals have knobs becasue there is no one right setting, just like the axe parameters do.
Click to expand...

I think the point about turn key effects is that they have the right number of knobs with the right ranges and limits. The effects on the Axe can have pages of knobs. But if you’re trying to dial in a CE-2, it has two knobs - so what combination of parameters do you have to change to mimic that?
 
hippietim said:
I think the point about turn key effects is that they have the right number of knobs with the right ranges and limits. The effects on the Axe can have pages of knobs. But if you’re trying to dial in a CE-2, it has two knobs - so what combination of parameters do you have to change to mimic that?
Click to expand...

I think the point should be does it sound good, not is it an exact match for a given pedal. Authenticity doesn’t always equate to the best tone, but some people think it must.

Does anyone put a hardware pedal on their board just to say they have the pedal, or do they put the pedal on there to get a certain tone?

Taking away controls seems a steep backwards to me personally. I guess I can see why someone would want to turn a dial til it says ce2 and have just two knobs to adjust, but personally like more control.

I used to hate how limited pedals where back in the day, wishing hey had more control, nodding pedals for added control etc. the axe is a step in the right direction adding more control options, which I think is progress

Some folks seem to want to exist in a state of blissful ignorance, no offense implied, wanting less control because they can’t be bothered to learn what the controls do. I get it, people want to be musicians and not engineers, but omitting controls just because people don’t understand them seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

I think in the time people spending wish for XYZ pedal they could experiment with the setting and actually match that pedal.

But again, I get it that some folks want it handed to them. They paid a lot of money and want to press a button and get a tone. For me though, the process is part of the fun.
 
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