New axefx II owner: High gain patches sound flubby and farty

simeon said:
yes

you could have one output with the global set with the low end rolled back and one without. choose which pair you use depending on circumstances - use the pair without eq at home and also for pa and recording. use the compensated pair for your speakers when at volume
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That is an excellent idea!
i'm truly amazed how great the feedback is on here :) i'm going to be blown away if sounds i get from v9.02 are as good as the feedback haha
 
ehhh... I just went to transfer the firmware to the axe and as soon as i clicked send axe-edit crashed almost immediately
 
i just think there are far too many killer examples of gain tones on FW10 to blame the firmware.
 
So i made a some tones with v9.02 and i'm pleased so far! not sure if it's placebo but the response just feels a lot better and chuggs feel like chuggs now,
I made a little sample with my favourite amp from v10 that still is my favourite in v9, can anyone tell me what might be causing that high pitched slipping sound is?
I was thinking maybe it's the german 412 character or maybe even my picking style o: Thanks for the help everyone though, feed back has been excellent!

https://soundcloud.com/olli576/axefx-v9-pt-2
 
ollioj said:
So i made a some tones with v9.02 and i'm pleased so far! not sure if it's placebo but the response just feels a lot better and chuggs feel like chuggs now,
I made a little sample with my favourite amp from v10 that still is my favourite in v9, can anyone tell me what might be causing that high pitched slipping sound is?
I was thinking maybe it's the german 412 character or maybe even my picking style o: Thanks for the help everyone though, feed back has been excellent!

https://soundcloud.com/olli576/axefx-v9-pt-2
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If you're referring to that high-pitched scraping sound when you stop playing, it's probably something on your guitar ringing out. The only way to find it is to break down the playing into small steps to try to isolate when it's occuring. It could be your palm or pinky or something scraping the string when you mute, it could be something rattling, or even the strings between your nut and the tuning peg ringing out (this is why meshuggah has foam under that section of their guitars). The axe fx is only amping the signal your guitar is sending.
 
Sidivan said:
If you're referring to that high-pitched scraping sound when you stop playing, it's probably something on your guitar ringing out. The only way to find it is to break down the playing into small steps to try to isolate when it's occuring. It could be your palm or pinky or something scraping the string when you mute, it could be something rattling, or even the strings between your nut and the tuning peg ringing out (this is why meshuggah has foam under that section of their guitars). The axe fx is only amping the signal your guitar is sending.
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Nah i mean like the high end fizz that's there whenever i play aswell, the ringout out after stopping just sounds like i have my gate set wrong imo
I noticed amps in 9.02 get saturated realyyy quickly with the drive param, like i'm using no more than 1.5 with all the heads now and the pvh 6160 is still really saturated at that haha
 
ollioj said:
Nah i mean like the high end fizz that's there whenever i play aswell, the ringout out after stopping just sounds like i have my gate set wrong imo
I noticed amps in 9.02 get saturated realyyy quickly with the drive param, like i'm using no more than 1.5 with all the heads now and the pvh 6160 is still really saturated at that haha
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The gate treats the symptom. Kinda like covering up a wound with makeup.

Check your master volume settings too. There's a crazy amount of gain there. One of the things I had to relearn when I started working on a professional record was how much gain is too much. Take the t808 off and just use the gain knob on the amp.
 
They don't sound bad, per se.....but they sound half-way to that AM radio kind of effect people use in intros and such. Which means to me you're scraping way too much tone off with whatever means....and that you're not used to:

- hearing FRFR tones
- hearing lone guitar tones at low volume
- your speakers, and possibly your environment, are hyped


Also, like said above, your picking is a bit hard (possibly because of the low volume), and you need to adjust your gating a little.
 
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Sidivan said:
The gate treats the symptom. Kinda like covering up a wound with makeup.

Check your master volume settings too. There's a crazy amount of gain there. One of the things I had to relearn when I started working on a professional record was how much gain is too much. Take the t808 off and just use the gain knob on the amp.
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tubescreamers are my favourite though :( they bring through so much more cut through a mix and I can hear my pick attack a hell of a lot better with them
One thing i noticed with real amps is low master = highly saturated and fizzy tone, high master volume = tighter and punchier tone w/ more harmonics or i am i wrong?
 
Loquenau said:
They don't sound bad, per se.....but they sound half-way to that AM radio kind of effect people use in intros and such. Which means to me you're scraping way too much tone off with whatever means....and that you're not used to:

- hearing FRFR tones
- hearing lone guitar tones at low volume
- your speakers, and possibly your environment, are hyped


Also, like said above, your picking is a bit hard (possibly because of the low volume), and you need to adjust your gating a little.
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hmmm, i'll try another simple amp and cab block and work from there again, any suggestions as to what cab suits the herbie 2+ best?

Hard pick attack is deliberate, imo thick strings + hard picking makes notes more pronounced and chords much fuller! for heavy music anyway

For those curious, the actual sort of tone i'm chasing is similar to this with the top end sizzle these guys have - Masks | Stories
 
ollioj said:
Hard pick attack is deliberate, imo thick strings + hard picking makes notes more pronounced and chords much fuller! for heavy music anyway
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... but a good picking technique is completely destroyed if you use too much gain. Your tone will suffer the loss of articulation.
 
Stillbruch said:
... but a good picking technique is completely destroyed if you use too much gain. Your tone will suffer the loss of articulation.
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But i can't really find a sweet spot :( it's always either too much or not enough! with single amp setup anyway, haven't really dived into dual amp setup yet
 
ollioj said:
tubescreamers are my favourite though :( they bring through so much more cut through a mix and I can hear my pick attack a hell of a lot better with them
One thing i noticed with real amps is low master = highly saturated and fizzy tone, high master volume = tighter and punchier tone w/ more harmonics or i am i wrong?
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You can absolutely add a TS in there if you'd like, but turn your gain down. Most of the guys using them in front of high gain amps are using them as an EQ + boost with very very little of the actual distortion coming from the TS (crank the level up and use the Tone knob to set it how you want). You have the master volume thing backwards. On high-gain amps, the more master volume you use, the muddier and flubbier your low end will be. I probably run a bit high, but I like more MV power.

AMP (block) - Axe-Fx II Wiki

ollioj said:
hmmm, i'll try another simple amp and cab block and work from there again, any suggestions as to what cab suits the herbie 2+ best?

Hard pick attack is deliberate, imo thick strings + hard picking makes notes more pronounced and chords much fuller! for heavy music anyway

For those curious, the actual sort of tone i'm chasing is similar to this with the top end sizzle these guys have - Masks | Stories
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What you're hearing there is layers of gain. Not a single channel with the gain cranked. When you double track, the gain really stacks up fast. I agree with you about pick attack, but try flattening your pick a little to get more of that fat, strong sound with less scraping. That pick attack is around 1khz btw, so you can dial in more of that scrape sound without all the gain with a bit of PEQ around that frequency.

ollioj said:
BTW what are the advantages and disadvantages of using no mics?
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Mic sims are preference. I don't use them, but other people do.
 
Sidivan said:
You can absolutely add a TS in there if you'd like, but turn your gain down. Most of the guys using them in front of high gain amps are using them as an EQ + boost with very very little of the actual distortion coming from the TS (crank the level up and use the Tone knob to set it how you want). You have the master volume thing backwards. On high-gain amps, the more master volume you use, the muddier and flubbier your low end will be. I probably run a bit high, but I like more MV power.

AMP (block) - Axe-Fx II Wiki



What you're hearing there is layers of gain. Not a single channel with the gain cranked. When you double track, the gain really stacks up fast. I agree with you about pick attack, but try flattening your pick a little to get more of that fat, strong sound with less scraping. That pick attack is around 1khz btw, so you can dial in more of that scrape sound without all the gain with a bit of PEQ around that frequency.



Mic sims are preference. I don't use them, but other people do.
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I updated to 10.06 just then and put back on my herbie 2+ patch from the previous v10 firmware and turned off the mics and played around with a param eq a bit, did a skinny large scoop around the 2.5-3k area and it cleaned up a lot of the not nice gain and let the high end sizzle come through a lot more! I dunno what the scrape slipping sound is coming from, cos i've never heard it from me playing on anything other than the axe! particularly the german 412 and deizel heads

here's a sample of it: https://soundcloud.com/olli576/high-end-sizzle-x
there's that real high pitched scratch coming through occasionally haha
 
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Well it sounds better. Your picking is still a little hard in spots. What you think is hard picking in that Masks dealie is multi-tracking. Listen closer. Also, notice the definition the guitars have on that, that yours doesn't have even if you multi-tracked.
 
so you think it's guitar/pickup related? they get such clearer 'purr' than mine, I just don't get it how people say they can dial in a patch that only has cab and amp with say a 6160 and they call it playable
whereas i can't dial in a decent tone with any of the 5150/6505 heads except for one high gain head which is the herbie with 2 param eqs and a lot of high and low passes everywhere

my guitar does have a lot of clarity when put up against an 81 guitar or BKP aftermath guitar into a 6505 head so i dunno :/
 
ollioj said:
so you think it's guitar/pickup related? they get such clearer 'purr' than mine, I just don't get it how people say they can dial in a patch that only has cab and amp with say a 6160 and they call it playable
whereas i can't dial in a decent tone with any of the 5150/6505 heads except for one high gain head which is the herbie with 2 param eqs and a lot of high and low passes everywhere

my guitar does have a lot of clarity when put up against an 81 guitar or BKP aftermath guitar into a 6505 head so i dunno :/
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Could you test one of your friends guitars through the Axe?

A friend of mine has a cheap Ibanez which sounds awful even after upgrading the pickups to Dimarzio Tone Zone.
I've got the same pickup in my Ibanez RG2027x Prestige and it sounds awesome... We tried my guitar in combination with his POD thingy which also sounds quite acceptable...

So the guitar makes a huge difference. Just test it so you can try to narrow down the issue.
 
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