Should I as a NEWBIE purchase amp packs ?

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Mateo11

Mateo11

Inspired
Hey everyone! Got my AX8 about 5 days ago and loving it. Been reading tons and tons of YEKS guides, WIKI page, watching vid tutorials etc etc. I've learned a lot in the past 5 days and feel fairly confident building and tweaking some basic amp + cab presets.

I've been interested in the Austinbuddy Naked Amps pack but not sure if I should stay away from purchasing amp packs and instead just work on building and creating my own?

One of the reason I like the idea of the Naked Amp Packs is all the amps are labelled by their real name and matched to their correct cab. That seems useful just in itself. (what I don't like is a preset or two to try out before i buy at $59) I was a Kemper user before and got burnt a few times on commercial profiles that I couldn't test first. Everyones ears and guitars are different.

Anyways is it too soon IYO for me to be purchasing amp packs? Should i just keep focused on what I am doing now? Thanks!
 
I think you should do anything you want to do with your money. These aren't profiles but there's no guarantee you'll love the patches with your equipment. Someone people pay someone to dial in their axe fx and never spend a day tweaking anything. There's no right or wrong way to do any of this.
 
One of the most frequent comments that I hear about buying commercial Presets or Packs (mine or otherwise) is, how much they learned about block routing, use of internal and external controllers, seamless scene switching, unique tricks or work-arounds, etc.....

From what I have read, there are great reviews of @austinbuddy's Naked Amp pack. A huge range of well researched and dialed Amp and Cab tones. A no-brainer IMHO.......:cool:
 
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the Naked Amp packs are a great concept for presets, as they feature the amp, rather than specific song tones, etc. not to say to avoid those, but as a beginner learning, it can be a real help to see examples of how the amps can/should/might sound when dialed in professionally.
 
Appreciate the responses so far guys! I didn't look at the angle of buying packs to learn from so that is helpful. I was thinking more of along the lines of buying pro dialed in packs as comparable to reading the cliff notes or synopsis of a book without actually reading the book if that makes sense? I want to master this deep machine know as the AX8 and didn't know if I would be cheating myself jumping into pro dialed presets off the bat. Thanks!
 
tbh, i don't think it's difficult to make your own presets, especially with the current firmware. i personally don't change any advanced settings, just the basics (bass mid treb gain) and i'm basically there. i EQ some highs off using the Graphic, and that's usually it.

so i'd say don't think it's hard to do, but at the same time don't worry about losing out on something by having presets that do sound good.

there is no short path to understanding all these amps - you'll still have to put in the work no matter what you do. so it's all beneficial, i think.
 
Just my opinion as I think about all the money I spent on things I ended up not using in the past. If you got the money and you don't have more important things though then my opinion may not apply. For me though everything that comes with the fractal unit without even loading third party irs is good enough. I also don't use but a couple of amps anyway. After a while it is this rabbit trail of options that is just too much. I would give it a few weeks and see if you are getting it to sound the way you expect. Watch all the free videos on youtube. And probably my biggest tip with all modelers if the volume is too low it will not sound good. Honestly I think that would be true with a real amp as well but it's been so long since I even used a real amp now.
 
Make your own.

Start with a blank preset, add an amp block and select an amp model that you are familiar with in the real world. Add an appropriate cab. Add reverb if you must. Adjust that to your preferences. Change cabs to see how that impacts the tone.

From there, start examining the delivered presets. The newest presets with FW8 sound fantastic. Look at how the effects are routed and learn from them.

There's so much to learn from the stock presets without spending more money. After you learn the unit, then consider whether someone's commercial presets actually offer you something that would be a benefit.

The WIKI is a great resource. Yek's amp model guide gives suggested cab IR's from the stock unit to go along with each amp, Make some presets that combine amp models and cab models from Yek's suggestions.

Most importantly, have fun!
 
I've purchased a few good presets. Thing is, every speaker I run my AX8 through sounds different and I need to tweak settings anyway. So buying presets doesn't mean "set it and forget it". In other words, IMO, there is no substitute for knowing how to adjust your tone to get the sounds you need at any given time, through any given amplification scenario.
 
...IMO, you can only benefit from getting the Naked Amp pack....wish I had it when I first started out....but all the guys who are putting out product, both free and commercial (especially those who came up thru the FAS system.. @Moke , @fremen @Danny Danzi , come to mind..) are worth checking out...but the naked pack give you amazing core tones OF EVERY AMP to build yer own creations.
 
There are several excellent preset builders here. Personally, I think you should try to build a few of your own so you can see how the options and controls on the AX8 work. Experiment with amps, cabs, effects, etc. You will learn a lot about how amps and gear work. I think it is a bad idea to just randomly tweak. Pick a sound (clean, crunchy, lead, etc.) and then try to create it. When you are ready, you can always buy a preset pack. I agree wholeheartedly with @hbucker that all presets are going to sound different depending on what you run them through, so you might have to do some tweaking even with a preset pack. The joy is in the journey.
 
chris said:
the Naked Amp packs are a great concept for presets, as they feature the amp, rather than specific song tones, etc. not to say to avoid those, but as a beginner learning, it can be a real help to see examples of how the amps can/should/might sound when dialed in professionally.
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Well, are you sure? Does that mean that the banks full of presets from FAS itself are not professionally dialed in?....
 
yves vanmeenen said:
Well, are you sure? Does that mean that the banks full of presets from FAS itself are not professionally dialed in?....
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The Factory bank are professionally done. But they only cover about half of the amp models available. The rest are using the same handful of amp models, showcasing different examples of effects. The cool thing about the specific pack mentioned by the OP is that every Amp model is represented with a matching Cab, and in two tone variations.
 
Moke said:
The Factory bank are professionally done. But they only cover about half of the amp models available. The rest are using the same handful of amp models, showcasing different examples of effects. The cool thing about the specific pack mentioned by the OP is that every Amp model is represented with a matching Cab, and in two tone variations.
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ok that makes sense.
 
Thank you for the mention, @bradlake :)

@Mateo11 I agree with what everyone has told you about building your own. However, the presets guys like Moke and Fremen create will at the least, give you a great starting point with sounds and effects....but most importantly, if you look deep into how they created and routed the presets, THAT is worth the price alone.

I've learned what I know from looking at presets from both of those guys as well as yek and the stock presets. If I were to go into this blindly and just start trying to make presets, I probably would fail. I actually did fail until I really dove into other peoples presets.

So though we want you to create your own tones as that will always be the best way to get the tones you hear in your head, it's always a huge plus to learn from guys that have a few years under their belts.
 
Moke said:
The Factory bank are professionally done. But they only cover about half of the amp models available. The rest are using the same handful of amp models, showcasing different examples of effects. The cool thing about the specific pack mentioned by the OP is that every Amp model is represented with a matching Cab, and in two tone variations.
Click to expand...

I did not realize this! Thanks for posting that info.
 
I've owned a bunch of modelers over the years from pretty much every company building them. IMHO, the AX8 comes with the most usable factory presets I've ever experienced. I think with something like the Kemper, buying profiles is almost mandatory. But with the AX8, all the tools are there for you to use. In addition to the factory presets, I'd strongly recommend downloading the following and playing with them before looking to buy any presets (you'll need to translate all these presets using Fractool):

Yek's Amp Guide. Good bare bones presets which may provide good starting points for editing. https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/fractal-audio-amp-models-the-presets-q7-02.112594/

Larry Mitchell Preset pack. Full disclosure, I don't love these. In fact the only one I kept was one of the Deluxe presets, but the included IR's are pretty nice once can't really argue much with the demo video comparing these presets to the real deals. http://www.fractalaudio.com/accurate.php

Simeon Hariis' presets/fx blocks. Some of these don't really translate to the AX8, but the FX blocks are all great and a couple of the synth presets sound good with a little tweaking: http://www.simeonharris.co.uk/Blocks/blocks.html
 
I too am interested in the Naked Amp pack. I also share your feeling of wanting a couple of presets to try out first though. I would gladly pay the $59 if there was say one vintage, one modern and one clean preset available for free. Just to to see if the patches work well with my setup. I've bought amp packs before from others and have been seriously let down, sounded nothing like the demos.

Try make your own presets and see how you go. If you do decide to pull the trigger on the naked amps, let us know what you think!
 
Will Chen said:
I've owned a bunch of modelers over the years from pretty much every company building them. IMHO, the AX8 comes with the most usable factory presets I've ever experienced. I think with something like the Kemper, buying profiles is almost mandatory. But with the AX8, all the tools are there for you to use. In addition to the factory presets, I'd strongly recommend downloading the following and playing with them before looking to buy any presets (you'll need to translate all these presets using Fractool):

Yek's Amp Guide. Good bare bones presets which may provide good starting points for editing. https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/fractal-audio-amp-models-the-presets-q7-02.112594/

Larry Mitchell Preset pack. Full disclosure, I don't love these. In fact the only one I kept was one of the Deluxe presets, but the included IR's are pretty nice once can't really argue much with the demo video comparing these presets to the real deals. http://www.fractalaudio.com/accurate.php

Simeon Hariis' presets/fx blocks. Some of these don't really translate to the AX8, but the FX blocks are all great and a couple of the synth presets sound good with a little tweaking: http://www.simeonharris.co.uk/Blocks/blocks.html
Click to expand...

I did download Yeks amp presets but I haven't had time yet to learn how to use that Fractool. It's on my to do list ....which is long ha.

I will say all of Yeks info he has put together and out there on the amp blocks , FX blocks, WIKI page etc is mind blowing. That guy deserves a lot of praise for taking the time to offer that up for everyone. I hope one day I can contribute like he and many others do here. I will say the Fractal community so far has been awesome!

I'll check those others out to you mentioned. Thanks.
 
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