Anyone using Austin Buddy presets live?

Sonofiam said:
Not necessary at all, Fractal has provided a great product. There is very little tweaking that needs to be done from the default settings of any of the amps I've used. They are like any amp, no single setup is going to work for everyone, you need to adjust to what you like to hear. How in depth you want to go in the parameters is entirely up to you.

There are plenty of resources on the forum, especially the Tech Notes in the News and Announcements section, and on Axe Fx Wiki that provide any information you'll need to get the most out of any Fractal product. There are explanations of parameters and features, amp and cab guides and charts offering suggested cabs for each amp. The factory presets are among the best of any modeler I've heard or used and the amps and cabs from them can be used as a base tone for presets as well.

Some people want to skip the preset building phase or don't want to take the time to learn and want instant "gratification" so they buy presets. Nothing wrong with it but to say that the AX8 won't sound good unless you buy them is simply incorrect. The inability to get a good tone out of the AX8 is completely on the user.
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I totally agree with you. I'm building my presets myself, as I think you miss the power of what you're paying for if you can't use it.
But what I refer to is the factory made presets. Why probably no one use them, and rather buy AB's.
 
dariosicily said:
But what I refer to is the factory made presets. Why probably no one use them, and rather buy AB's.
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A lot of people use the factory presets. Others choose to buy @austinbuddy ’s presets. His preset pack gives you well-dialed-in presets for every amp model in the box. The factory presets give you well-dialed-in presets showcasing many of the amp models, as well as a lot of insanely creative presets showcasing the effects.

The AX8 gives you the tools to be infinitely creative. I don’t think it’s fair to look at one person’s creative works, and then say that Fractal should give us that for free.
 
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I don't think it's a matter of right or wrong, I think this is about marketing choices.

If I were fractal marketing, I would go for something in the middle of what you state above, given the success of AB's approach.

That's my opinion.
 
bullrog said:
Do you guys find yourselves having to reduce the bass on a lot of them? I bought the pack last night, and I haven’t had a ton of time to mess around with them. Some of them do sound a bit bass heavy to me, even at gig volume.
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I bought the pack and also found some a bit bass heavy......meant to be like this ?
 
teddis said:
I bought the pack and also found some a bit bass heavy......meant to be like this ?
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Some have more bass than others. That's to be expected. If you're listening at home in an untreated room, what you're hearing is probably room resonances.
 
I love single coils but you will find a lot of patches built for humbuckers and are just unusable for low output pickups.I find it so much easier to have the dialed in presets and then create from there (add mids etc.)

It is kind of like when I had my pedal board. If I bought a pedal and it was noisy in my chain it was out, move on to the next one. I am like that with presets and amps, try it if it is noisy or bad, move on to the next until you find one that sounds great.
 
Pllm said:
Sorry but is this advertising or true end-user answer? 'cause if anyone has released any magical product to have any guitar well sit in a mix, well that person would be very rich...
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It’s tried and true.

Sure, I might make a tweak here or there to suit my personal tastes or a significantly different guitar (single-coil pickups won’t sound the same as humbuckers), but I’ve never pulled up a fresh @austinbuddy preset that got buried in the mix on any guitar that’s anywhere near what the preset was dialed in for.
 
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Rex said:
It’s tried and true.

Sure, I might make a tweak here or there to suit my personal tastes or a significantly different guitar (single-coil pickups won’t sound the same as humbuckers), but I’ve never pulled up a fresh @austinbuddy preset that got buried in the mix on any guitar that’s anywhere near what the preset was dialed in for,
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Agreed. I’ve only had them a short time, but this does truly appear to be the case.
 
pauliusmm said:
No doubt the work he did is great, but the product is just too big for me.
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I agree, if I could by one preset for a dollar, I would probably have gotten 10 or 15 of them already. I hate option overload, so buying 700 presets in one package is simply not for me. I have had great success with my AX8 by focusing on a few amp models, I know I like, and I know how to work with. If I had the option of buying the presets for that particular amp model (or family of models), I probably would have done it just to see, what @austinbuddy could do with this amp. In the end, I might end up spending more than $59, but I would get the presets at the pace I want.

I might be weird that way, but hey that's me.
 
Smittefar said:
I agree, if I could by one preset for a dollar, I would probably have gotten 10 or 15 of them already. I hate option overload, so buying 700 presets in one package is simply not for me. I have had great success with my AX8 by focusing on a few amp models, I know I like, and I know how to work with. If I had the option of buying the presets for that particular amp model (or family of models), I probably would have done it just to see, what @austinbuddy could do with this amp. In the end, I might end up spending more than $59, but I would get the presets at the pace I want.

I might be weird that way, but hey that's me.
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Ditto
 
Smittefar said:
I agree, if I could by one preset for a dollar, I would probably have gotten 10 or 15 of them already. I hate option overload, so buying 700 presets in one package is simply not for me. I have had great success with my AX8 by focusing on a few amp models, I know I like, and I know how to work with. If I had the option of buying the presets for that particular amp model (or family of models), I probably would have done it just to see, what @austinbuddy could do with this amp. In the end, I might end up spending more than $59, but I would get the presets at the pace I want.

I might be weird that way, but hey that's me.
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I’m generally not a fan of option overload either, but this is such a time saver for me that it doesn’t matter. Before I bought these, I would spend hours auditioning amps and cabs and making adjustments to hope it would sound good live. Now all I have to do is pick an amp and add effects. Instead of tweaking presets, I’ve spent more time actually playing my guitar in the week that I’ve had these.
 
I bought the pack a while ago. I too did not like the idea of auditioning 700 tones. Instead, I focused on the amps I knew I wanted and found a handful of great base platforms to bass my presets on. It was a no brainer at $59, MHO. Really, how could you go wrong? To each their own, I have come to respect a lot of you guys on this board and understand your point of view. To me, his pack was a steal.
 
Akstrat said:
I bought the pack a while ago. I too did not like the idea of auditioning 700 tones. Instead, I focused on the amps I knew I wanted and found a handful of great base platforms to bass my presets on. It was a no brainer at $59, MHO. Really, how could you go wrong? To each their own, I have come to respect a lot of you guys on this board and understand your point of view. To me, his pack was a steal.
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Same for me, and he keeps the updates free so when the firmware changes he goes out of his way to update something he doesn't earn anything else from

Even if you buy the pack out of curiosity, or as a treat for yourself, it's still a great package
 
For something like an AC15 or Tweed Fender it takes me very little time to get it in the zone. But it took me over an hour to really dial in clean and overdrive channels from the Dumble models to the point they sounded and behaved pretty much like the clone I had at hand.

I haven't played even 10% of the actual amps modeled in the AX8, so I have only a vague idea of what most of them might sound like. So if there's a more or less dialed in preset of each one: that's the difference between getting a better experiential sense of what that amp can do, and not just blowing it off when I first try it because I have no experience of that particular amp and I'm not necessarily going to figure out all the specific tweaks that make it sing in a reasonable amount of time. (I would never have thought to dime the knobs on a Plexi, if someone hadn't come up to that amp and done it back in the day) Of course, I make my own further adjustments from a preset as a starting point, but I'll gladly spend a few bucks to a pro with extensive experience to save me hours of time and to get the most out of my AX8.

Who needs 250+ amp channels or 700+ presets? Probably no one: however: The point is each of us can pick from 700+ presets the ones we prefer. And they're on hand when the need arises. Seems to me it would add a fair bit of additional time, dreary work and extra cost to collate and sell different presets or bundles of presets to different players rather than: Here they all are: pick the ones you like.
 
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artzeal said:
For something like an AC15 or Tweed Fender it takes me very little time to get it in the zone. But it took me over an hour to really dial in clean and overdrive channels from the Dumble models to the point they sounded and behaved pretty much like the clone I had at hand.

I haven't played even 10% of the actual amps modeled in the AX8, so I have only a vague idea of what most of them might sound like. So if there's a more or less dialed in preset of each one: that's the difference between getting a better experiential sense of what that amp can do, and not just blowing it off when I first try it because I have no experience of that particular amp and I'm not necessarily going to figure out all the specific tweaks that make it sing in a reasonable amount of time. (I would never have thought to dime the knobs on a Plexi, if someone hadn't come up to that amp and done it back in the day) Of course, I make my own further adjustments from a preset as a starting point, but I'll gladly spend a few bucks to a pro with extensive experience to save me hours of time and to get the most out of my AX8.

Who needs 250+ amp channels or 700+ presets? Probably no one: however: The point is each of us can pick from 700+ presets the ones we prefer. And they're on hand when the need arises. Seems to me it would add a fair bit of additional time, dreary work and extra cost to collate and sell different presets or bundles of presets to different players rather than: Here they all are: pick the ones you like.
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Yeah, it really makes sense. I will probably go for it. I know how to deal with fender and plexi... But they're just a tiny part of the game. I tried today to dial a Bogner... But actually I don't even know what kind of sound it's supposed to give me, so... But one question : the blue Bogner seems to be a versatile amp in the real world, with several switches for different sound solutions. What's the approach in AB'S pack in this case?
 
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