State of Epicicity
Fractal Fanatic
I’m hesitant to post presets in general because others’ presets generally sound bad with my guitar, so I’m pretty sure mine will sound bad on others’ guitars! I have posted just a few presets here and there anyway. But there’s nothing big deal about the mods:
For the ghost notes, there are also other parameters that eliminate them, like changing to overseas power line frequency, like, if you’re in the US, changing from 60Hz to 50Hz, and vice versa, but what I like to do is just to play round the worst ghost notes zone on my guitar, around the 12th to 16th frets of the wound strings, really linger on a note with an egregious ghost note, then just turn up the B+ Time Constant knob until it disappears; that’s it!
So keep in mind these mods do change the character of the amp, and for bias excursion especially, it can be a big difference. I know to Cliff this is an essential part of his modeling, that there is a view that these parts of the character should not be removed. I like removing them anyway; whatever gives a player the mojo they need is all that matters here, and it’s wonderful to have both options.
For the bias excursion, it’s similar: I find a way to get the most fizz in my playing, then, on that last page, with the long list of advanced parameters with no graphic knobs, I go to the power amp section and lower both bias excursion parameters until the fizz is not so extreme. Then it becomes a totally different amp to my ears, but I just can’t stand the fizz. I do think it’s probably just that my guitar for whatever reason brings out more fizz than others’. No big deal, there are so many amps that don’t do this in an extreme way, and so many workarounds, it’s handily manageable.
Lastly, lower frequencies seem really to exacerbate fizz, so just running an overdrive pedal and readjusting the amp BMT can do remove it when you’re working with a Plexi.
Along these modded Plexi lines, last night I was having a ball messing around with the Hook with the Maxon 808, and it was pure awesomeness, without fizz or ghost notes.
By the way, the new jumpered 6CA7 is sooo badass, I felt like a young EVH playing through it. And the HotCake was unbelievable in front of the 1959 SLP for some of the rudest, nastiest rock. It was all, like I imagined it would be, Plexiland heaven!
If you do want a preset, I’m glad to make one, but I just imagine that it might not eliminate ghost notes and or fizz on your guitar because of the simple change of input changing the whole ballgame, and just in general sounding bad on most other people’s guitars! For instance, when Leon Todd posted another fantastic video about the recent Diamante Fire model, it sounded really cool, but when I plugged in with the same IR and amp settings, it was fizz city, and pretty unusable. That’s what prompted me finally to find Cliff’s posts and yek’s consolidation of the information about fizz mitigation in general! After all that, and a bunch of helpful tips from forum members, I landed on the two different power amp bias excursion settings as the best way to reduce fizz for those so inclined. Hell, when I first experienced it, I didn’t even know what that sound was called, so I referred to it as “lasers!” haha.
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