You always have some gnarly tone, and playing. It's a delight to see new content from you, so thanks for all that you do for the community.
I'm just wondering what's going on though lol I've downloaded your presets before and they sound nowhere close to the tones your ripping out. I know, I know... Tone is dependent on the player, and other aspects of the signal chain; buttttttt, I'm no stranger to playing, with 25+ years experience, and have a wide assortment of guitars. I know I'm not the only one in this camp, as I've read numerous others kind of touch on the same thing.
My question is this: Do you think the difference is YouTube's compression algorithm being the missing link? And if so, any idea how to replicate that with our beloved black boxes?
Have seen 100s of posts here similar to this in the 12 or so yrs I've used Axefx. Though I'm only a hobbyist player, I've spent waaay more time tone chasing than the practicing I should have been doing, and, in doing so, I've learned that trying to replicate the tone I hear from someone else's rig as seen/heard through Youtube with my own guitar/hands/frfr is very difficult if not futile even if I can play a similar riff with access to the exact same preset (actually, I stopped trying to replicate such tones long ago though I do like analysing Leon and others' great presets to see how they are designed for getting a certain tone type).
BUT! I'll put the following suggestion out there once more (mentioned this before here but not much uptake I recall, so maybe it's a dumb idea and I don't know why
).
Preamble: If "somewhat frustrated Leon tone lovers" could take their Axefx to Leon and have him play a few riffs for them into their own Axefx with his preset loaded as they monitored through their own headphones/frfr, then those "somewhat frustrated Leon tone lovers" would likely say to themselves: "well - now I have proof that
MY rig
can sound that awesome with that preset - the only variables remaining are me and my guitar". Hence forward the "no longer somewhat frustrated Leon tone lovers" would proceed with renewed focus toward achieving their tonal dreams.
Suggestion - Along with preset, Leon (or Burgs or Mark or Cooper Carter or other fantastic player / tone-preset wizard) provides a dry guitar track of some of the riffs he played (would be great if these could be posted with a preset on Axechange). The "somewhat frustrated Leon tone lover" then properly re-amps the dry track through his/her own Axefx rig dialed to Leon's preset and hears the same great tone through his/her own rig, and in doing so, cannot continue to think that some kind of Axefx magic is taking place at Leon's studio or that some kind of Axefx magic that should be happening at his/her own studio is not happening for some reason - the focus has to go back to hands and guitar.
I think just getting 1 dry track from 1 of these dudes once after 1 of these awesome tone vids gets posted, could put this question to rest in a lot of ways.
I'm sure someone will ask "what if the dry track sounds different on the "somewhat frustrated Leon tone lover"'s Axefx rig? I guess the answer is that this would shift the focus to headphones, frfr, or any other possible post processing difference (ie youtube as suggsted above?). - so even with this possibility, the dry track would tend to resolve that nagging thought in the back of Axe users' minds that there must be some sort of unknown Axefx settings/setup magic seemingly accessible to only a select few tone gurus.