I've been starving my Axe!

HerrSquid

Inspired
I don't whether to feel proud or like a total dumbass right now...

After spending a long time (years :rolleyes:) thinking that many of my guitars sounded kind of thin though my Axe-FX III, I just had a revelation.

I know the advice is that the input meter should be "tickling the red," but no way no how was it for me, even with my hottest humbuckers. I didn't think there was any kind of input control, but lo and behold, I happened to be looking at page 5 of the manual tonight. There it is: adjust Input 1/Instrument in the Setup: I/O : Input page.

Had I ever done this?

Turns out the answer was no. The input trim was set to 0%. I grabbed the nearest guitar with hot humbuckers and started thwacking away while turning that knob. I wound up setting it to about 87%. Y'know what? It didn't change the volume a heck of a lot, but sure fattened up the sound of those guitars!

Eureka! Suddenly things are sounding a lot better. Can't believe I didn't figure this out earlier... :oops:
 
Did you get it from factory or used?

If used, maybe best to reset everything to factory defaults.
 
I assume you mean "Instrument Level" not "Input Trim" as that is part of the Amp block.

It should not affect level as the purpose is optimize the A/D converters... Although for values below 5% it can affect the tone.
 
I assume you mean "Instrument Level" not "Input Trim" as that is part of the Amp block.

It should not affect level as the purpose is optimize the A/D converters... Although for values below 5% it can affect the tone.

Oh it certainly affected the tone! It really didn't affect volume level at all, which surprised me. I think that's one reason I went for so long without noticing it was a thing, since the volume level seemed fine.
 
Did you get it from factory or used?

If used, maybe best to reset everything to factory defaults.

I got it brand new, I figure it was set to a low level from the factory to be "safe" and prevent nasty volume/breakup surprises.
 
I got it brand new, I figure it was set to a low level from the factory to be "safe" and prevent nasty volume/breakup surprises.
I'm pretty sure the default value is supposed to be 100%... But I might be wrong. 0% definitely seems wrong :(
 
I got it brand new, I figure it was set to a low level from the factory to be "safe" and prevent nasty volume/breakup surprises.

That setting has an unfortunate name that makes it sound like it is a gain control , but it’s not. It’s a noise optimization control. It’s only when you turn it all the way down to zero that it has an effect on tone, and as Unix-guy says, it is not a pleasing effect when you do that :)
 
87% ????? seems way to high, I can only manage about 6.6% with my hottest humbuckers. They are actives but that to me seems unusually high. How long is your signal path before it hits the font of the Axe?
 
87% ????? seems way to high, I can only manage about 6.6% with my hottest humbuckers. They are actives but that to me seems unusually high. How long is your signal path before it hits the font of the Axe?
Very guitar dependent. Mine is at 100% and barely if ever gets to the red.
 
Mine is near 100% and it take a pretty good whack with any of my guitars to see red. I'm running vintage level humbuckers in all my guitars, and generally run them in parallel mode, which cuts the output quite a bit.

If you can believe the numbers, on the DiMarzio site, high output humbuckers can produce five times times the output of their lowest output pickups, using whatever method they use to test. A downstroking thrash guy with high output humbuckers is going to make a lot more volts than a guy playing legato with vintage output single coils. The Axe input has to be scaled to accommodate these variations, so it's not surprising that people see so much variation with the input range setting.
 
Default is 50%.

Out of curiosity, how do you select the appropriate value for that Input setting? As I understand it, unless you're using a test tone and analysis tools, all the values from 10% to 100% will sound the same. (The manual says they will all sound the same and they sound the same to me).
 
Hahahahaha, I've made this mistake when switching between two instruments. One guitar needs to go as low as 7.5% while the other needs a nice 25%. When I forget to turn it back up from 7.5% to 25% one of my guitars sounds thing, hollow and overall very week. As soon as I crank it up all the goodness is back immediately! :D
 
Out of curiosity, how do you select the appropriate value for that Input setting? As I understand it, unless you're using a test tone and analysis tools, all the values from 10% to 100% will sound the same. (The manual says they will all sound the same and they sound the same to me).
Adjust it by playing your guitar and "tickling the red LED".
 
I recently adjusted mine again for the first time in a while. Realized that my Anderson Drop Top with the switcheroo was really hitting the red pretty hard when I had the bridge pickup wide open engaged in series on the FM3, so I had to pad it to 6db on that unit. Some of my guitars with single coils now don't make it to the red, but at least hit the yellow hard. Assuming that is getting enough signal to them not to adjust any further. Mine's currently set at just shy of 60% on the Axe-III.
 
The point of that control is to maximize the signal to noise ratio at the input converters. It's level compensated after the input converters to maintain roughly the same signal level that's coming directly from your guitar. That's why you don't hear much of a level or tonal change when adjusting that level, unless it is at extreme ends of its range. "Tickling the red" ensures you are using as much of the available dynamic range of the input converter as you can without clipping.
 
That setting has an unfortunate name that makes it sound like it is a gain control , but it’s not. It’s a noise optimization control. It’s only when you turn it all the way down to zero that it has an effect on tone, and as Unix-guy says, it is not a pleasing effect when you do that :)

Indeed, it sounds much better above zero. Is there something that gets defeated when it's all the way down? I hadn't noticed anything about that, but then all this is being a thing because I didn't RTFM quite carefully enough.
 
Indeed, it sounds much better above zero. Is there something that gets defeated when it's all the way down? I hadn't noticed anything about that, but then all this is being a thing because I didn't RTFM quite carefully enough.

I would say it the other way around: It sounds bad below 10%. All values above 10% sound the same, by design. Down below 10%, the compensation is incomplete, presumably to avoid potential problems that could arise from crazy high compensation gain levels. This is a pretty confusing topic, so I wouldn't feel bad about missing something in the manual.
 
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