Axe-Fx III Firmware 31.04 Public Beta #2

ConstantM said:
i've noticed the jazz chorus amp gets dirty pretty easily. dont know if it's this fw or some of the previous ones but i dont remember it getting dirty with the gain even lower than 5 which now it is. for me at least. thought i would try the new transistor poweramp mode and i noticed it. anyone else having this or is it just me? cause i used to be able to turn the gain up to like 7 and still get totally clean sound. havent messed with input trim etc and the guitars are the same with nothing inbetween the chain. just straight to amp
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Yes, but I’ve only ever tried a real one one time so I’ve never said anything. For me it’s probably user error. Would love some tips if you find any. In earlier firmware I found turning off the power amp helped.
 
Whoa whoa whooooaa... HM-2 and a transistor type power amp?! Are we eventually getting Valvestate and Randall solid state amps?!? Can't wait to see these features work their way to the FM3. I can approximate some Schuldinesque with the JVM410H and some IR-fu but having something closer to the mark would be awesome..
 
unix-guy said:
I've only played for an hour and almost all on only my main preset... But this firmware sounds and feels really good.
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Yeah. Cliff gave us a bunch of great tools in this one. The tracking on pinch harmonics is noticeable and welcome. I get an much more accurate reflection of the different harmonic locations with a virtual capo now. Solid state, HM-2 -- this is just a late x-mas present. Thanks!
 
Finally grabbed my rig from our rehearsal room and got around to installing the Beta. My Recto presets feel & sound phenomenal with my Les Paul (Fishman Classics), nice and greasy as @2112 would say. Raised the low cut frequency on the amp input EQ just a smidge and it’s just so big and tight, still having that ‘push back’ against the pick attack.

Man it really does just get better and better with each FW release. Tomorrow I’m going to break out the Strat and dive into the HM-2, going for some Gilmore-ish tones.

Can’t wait for rehearsal Tuesday!
 
RifferMcDuck said:
Maybe he plays Djent, which is basically just a competition for who can create the lowest note, and make entire albums out of just that note.
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Not really, no body playing djent, would be so low, you're generally in D- G for this which is just an octave lower. even thall is just at max few semitones lower, that being said playing very odd time signatures and riffs , djent is much better and more fun rhythmically whether its just 1 note or a few. but unfortunately too many bands think an open chug is everything.
 
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1234 said:
@FractalAudio

THANK YOU CLIFF FOR THE BOSS HM-2!

I am one of the users who always wanted the HM-2 on the Axe-Fx 3.
I remember you saying something along the lines of "there's a ton going on with the mid-frequencies there" about the pedal.
I also wondered whether this would cause it to be challenging to replicate the pedal in the digital realm.
Last evening, I compared the Swedish Metal side-by-side will the real thing. A BOSS HM-2, which was a Christman present in 1990. It runs on 12v, not 9v, so I stuck a square battery in it and off we go! Bork, Bork!

The Fractal version is fan-tast-ic, thank you.
The only real difference I could find [with my ears] was the Fractal version had a tiny bit more 'body.'
All I did was turn the bass down a tiny bit on the Fractal and bingo! I would put that down to... [I don't have your technical vocabulary], a difference caused by the cumulative effect of components having different tolerances?
After that, I became confused. A few times I lost track and couldn't tell if I had the physical pedal on or the Fractal version.

Guys, you get all these derivatives of the HM-2 out there, right?
Roll your own. Experiment, do odd stuff, see what happens, you can have your own modded HM-2.
I kept the diode type as the original, but increased the number of diodes to four [on the left] and replaced the diode on the right with a single white LED.
Different flavour of HM-2!
No soldering or inhaling of the fumes required.
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Haven’t tried this beta, but i run 4+4 diodes in the DS-1 and gets tighter and better as a boost. For my taste, much better.
 
Here are some categories I'd love to have to help search and select amp models:
  1. Architecture: Fender, Vox, Marshall, Other
  2. EQ Emphasis/Focus: Bass, Middle, Treble
  3. Headroom: Low, Medium, High
  4. Gain structure: Clean, Low, Medium, High, Metal
  5. Clip Source: Preamp, Power amp, Both
  6. Clipping: Symmetric, Asymmetric
Similar categories would be helpful for drive models:
  • Transparency: transparent (mixes clean signal with distorted signal), non-transparent - how much the pedal changes the original tone of the guitar
  • Gain: how much clipping, low vs. high gain, how much saturation the pedal can produce
  • Headroom: low vs: high headroom - dynamic range and the ability to push downstream devices, how loud the pedal can get and remain clean
  • EQ: mid hump, no mid hump, possibly bass cut before distortion too. pre-distortion EQ will change the clipping character of the distortion, but post-distortion eq will only shapes the already-distorted sound. The way that pre-distortion eq interacts with the clipping stage is known as distortion voicing. Too much low end into distortion can result in muddy/flubby tone where the bass pushes the pedal into clipping before the mids and highs, masking or ducking the most important guitar frequencies. This can also lead to more intermodulation distortion.
  • Symmetry: symmetric or asymmetric (more complex, aggressive, associated with high-gain)
  • Clipping: clipping characteristics: hard: the signal is strictly limited at the threshold, producing a sharp, flat cutoff and more upper order harmonics. soft: clipped signal continues to follow the original at a reduced gain. Hard clipping results in many high-frequency harmonics; soft clipping results in fewer higher-order harmonics and less intermodulation distortion.
  • Clipping Device - contributes to the amount and distribution of overtones produced, character
  • Buffered: True or not (may be impacted by input impedance and block position)
 
ConstantM said:
i've noticed the jazz chorus amp gets dirty pretty easily. dont know if it's this fw or some of the previous ones but i dont remember it getting dirty with the gain even lower than 5 which now it is. for me at least. thought i would try the new transistor poweramp mode and i noticed it. anyone else having this or is it just me? cause i used to be able to turn the gain up to like 7 and still get totally clean sound. havent messed with input trim etc and the guitars are the same with nothing inbetween the chain. just straight to amp
Click to expand...

This is coming from an FM3/AM4 perspective, so can't speak to the update. However, I owned/gigged a JC-120 for around a decade and I can say that a real JC-120 with the level (gain) at around 2.5 is clean and loud as hell, like gigging a small/medium club without being miced up loud. In real life, I think it would be exceedingly rare to crank up a JC-120 to ~5.
 
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