700+ Naked Amps TonePack by AustinBuddy Available NOW!

Hi Austin Buddy,

Just a quick note to tell you how much I appreciate the fact that you posted sound clips of your presets. I find this invaluable for fine tuning the presets to accommodate my guitar and FRFR speaker. If you continue producing presets in the future, hope you will continue the sound clips.
 
Hi Austin Buddy,

Just a quick note to tell you how much I appreciate the fact that you posted sound clips of your presets. I find this invaluable for fine tuning the presets to accommodate my guitar and FRFR speaker. If you continue producing presets in the future, hope you will continue the sound clips.

Quark -- thank you. As long as I have talented Austin guitar players willing to come by the studio and play the Tonepack, I'll make sure we have clip examples! SoundCloud covers a LOT of them, but now more and more videos are coming out.

Some news: the amazing Cooper Carter posted on social media today he was in the process of doing a professional video review of my TonePack, which is AWESOME! Will be sure to post it when he releases it.
 
Nice! Thanks for the extra investigative work, @austinbuddy .


...In searching for sweet spots between zero and Cliff's recommended value of 3, here is where I'm at...
Note that 3 isn't Cliff's recommended value. It's the default value, which Cliff says is conservative. You might find it worthwhile to experiment with values higher than 3.

I find that values above 3 do compress more, but you still get plenty of dynamic response. It's just less of a volume response and more of a tonal response. With higher values, the harder you push, the more the amp squishes and pushes back at you.

As you say, it's a personal-taste thing.
 
Last edited:
AN UPDATE FOR TONEPACK USERS CONSIDERING UPGRADING TO FWQ9.0

Today I spent several hours A/Bing multiple presets the 700+ Naked Amps TonePack, comparing the preset sounds digital signal output from my AX8 (FWQ8.02) and my XL (FW 9), using an A/B box to switch between the units.

There ARE changes to the overall Tones on presets in FW9.

Here's a soundclip with about 7 examples. There are seven amps compared from dirty to clean:

1. Hook 2b
2. Friedman Small Box
3. Vox AC15
4. Plexi 100 Jumped
5. Vibroverb AB (first)
6. Blackface Princeton
7. Vibroverb AB (first)

In each one, the first amp is the AX8 wth TonePack as designed/programmed (FW 8.02).

In the second, you hear the same TonePack preset, from an XL updated with FW9, AND with SPKR COMP set at 5.0 and maybe a slight raise in the Amp Level (to compensate for Fletcher-Munson curve, need preset at equal volume).

These are both SP/DIF digital signals with no processing coming into my board, using an A/B box to switch from same guitar.



I'd love to hear your guys reactions to the sound differences?

To my ears, the public FWQ9 update applied to TonePack FWQ8.02 presets makes the FW8.02 created tones, to varying degrees, brighter and sharper, less mid-focused, and so in some ways "less rounded" than the Tonepack pm FW8.02. The 8.02 created-tones sound more organic (truly for lack of a better way of putting it).

FWQ9 has taken away any prior amp page speaker values (motor drive, motor constant, speaker drive) stuff that was in FW 8.02 of course, and it defaults to zero for new SPKR COMP if you load the TonePack.

The closest thing I can get to replicating globally the FW 8.02 TonePack sound is to turn UP the new SPKR COMP in FW9 up to 5, and then increase the amp LEVEL control by at 1 to 2 db louder to compensate (try to get it to measure -12db on DAW channel or console).

This Amp Block LEVEL adjustment very much seems amp dependent unfortunately and not something that works across the board/ll presets. While the above helps a lot and does smooth out the sound some compared to zero SPKR COMP value in FW9, it still has the overall EQ effect I described above -- it does NOT make it exactly like the preset sound in FW 8.02. Something in the overall amp EQ has changed slightly to my ears.

On Firmware 9 release notes, Cliff said of SPKR COMP:
<< This value defaults to 3.0 when the Amp block is reset. It does not get reset when changing the model. If using the Axe-Fx II with a tube power amp and conventional guitar cab you may want to reduce this value to 0.0. The gain reduction meter shows the amount of virtual power compression (select the Spkr Comp knob to monitor the gain reduction). Typical guitar speakers compress between 3 and 6 dB depending upon construction, age, volume, etc. The default value is conservative and yields about 3 dB of compression. >>

So for current TonePack users, I'd probably highly advise staying with FW 8.02 and not going to FWQ9 if you want the TonePack tones to sound "as designed, dialed-in and intended" for now. I personally am going to stick with 8.02 for now myself on my AX8.

If you go to FW9 with the Tone Pack, then I advise you

1) put SPKR COMP at 5.0 and adjust to taste;

2) the higher the SPKR COMP level you chose, the more you will have to raise the Amp LEVEL to compensate to get your preset back to a -12db overall average output level (see my video), and

3) dial the treble or presence back some, mids up a little, and bass to taste on any TonePack Amps you like to use for recording or gigs.

As the needed tools become available over the next month or two (Axe-Edit and Ax8-Edit compatibility with FW9, AND critically Fractool compatibility) I will see if anything can "fix" this for an updated TonePack download for customers -- but right now there is no one thing I can advise that does so, other than the 3 steps above or staying on FW Q8.02.

-AustinBuddy
 
Last edited:
Has Speaker Drive been removed?
This wasn’t so in the beta.
I can’t check right now myself.
 
Has Speaker Drive been removed?
This wasn’t so in the beta.
I can’t check right now myself.

Yes, the speaker drive is there. What I meant was, it is now zero'd out value (replaced prior) if I'm not mistaken in FW9.
 
Dear Austin,
Thanks for the soundclip and advice
To me the 9.0fw seems more like 2 D compared to 8.02 = 3 D for your presets, fwiw !
Or as you say 8.02 sounds more organic in a way.
Just my 2 cents
 
Dear Austin,
Thanks for the soundclip and advice
To me the 9.0fw seems more like 2 D compared to 8.02 = 3 D for your presets, fwiw !
Or as you say 8.02 sounds more organic in a way.
Just my 2 cents

Thanks Maurice.

I may and try to install FW 9.0 a second time my XL when I get back to it next week (traveling now) and repeat my tests. Saw another post where Cliff says SPKR COMP set to 0 in FW9 is identical to FW 8.02. So far, that has not been the case for me and my ears (thus the A/B sound clips), but Cliff is much smarter than I am.

I will say it is sounds more pronounced on the Marshall style amps in A/B...maybe that phase inverter thing he said he changed?

Regardless, the TonePack is optimized from FW 8.02 and still sounds great there. I don't see any easy fix for FX9 at this time that would work across all 700 tones (like by Fractal adjustments), but we'll see...
 
All i know is that I've owned an Axe-Fx since late 2007 and i have never gotten it to sound as good as when i loaded AustinBuddy's patches. Unless AB gives the thumbs up to update to 9, I may stay on 8.02 for the duration on my AX8, but I'll update my AXE II since all my presets have been borked so many times over the last 10 years that i've basically given up fixing them.
 
Unforunately I am from Austin/my gear until this weekend on family stuff, but am too optimistic about FW 9.01 and will pick a few amps to do side-by-side soundcloud tests like I did with FW 9.0 and report back... by Sunday probably... love to hear what others find. I love FW 8.02 so much though, hard to believe it could even be made better!!!
 
Unforunately I am from Austin/my gear until this weekend on family stuff, but am too optimistic about FW 9.01 and will pick a few amps to do side-by-side soundcloud tests like I did with FW 9.0 and report back... by Sunday probably... love to hear what others find. I love FW 8.02 so much though, hard to believe it could even be made better!!!


I have been playing on Q9.01 Beta 2 with all of the naked amp presets installed, and for each preset I just reset speaker comp and the time value (can’t think of the name right now) by double clicking on the value in Axe Edit. I don’t have 8.01 to compare them with, but those presets that I have tried sound Awesome! I think AUSTINBUDDY will be pleasantly surprised when he gets back in pocket!
 
Back
Top Bottom