80s Hair Cover Band - LIVE Patches Needed

dweiskopf

Inspired
Hi all -

Relative newbie to to the forum, so please be gentle :)....

I'm on my second try with an Axe Fx II, with MFC 101, this time having made the plunge with no going back!! I'm moving from a GSP1101....

I play in an 80s hair cover band, and we have a number of good gigs coming up. What I'd ideally like to do (though I know, having read the forums, some might disagree with this approach), is have presets for each song, and each part of the song, trying to approximate either the studio sound or the live sound those bands used to play. I'll be using these for LIVE performances, not recordings. I'm likely also to be going through a power amp / cab, though of course may decide to just go direct to the board for FOH. I most use custom Jackson guitars.

If I go through a power amp / cab, it will be through a VHT 2/50/2 into two stock Marshall 1960s in stereo. In to the board, direct stereo (our board is a Presonus Studio Live 16.4.2 AI; otherwise the house board). Of course I'll spend time modifying and tweaking, knowing I need to do that for my own situation. However, to the extent I can start with ones people have done that are close, that would be ideal! We'll be playing outdoor gigs and some clubs.

So.....on the off chance any body has / is willing to share their patches for the below songs (either a single patch or multiple for different parts of the songs), I'd be HUGELY thankful!! Thanks again!!!

Bon Jovi
• Living on a Prayer
• Runaway
• Wanted Dead or Alive
• You Give Love A Bad Name
Cinderella
• Shake Me
David Lee Roth
• Yankee Rose
Def Leppard
• Pour Some Sugar On Me*
• Rock of Ages
Dokken
• Alone Again
• In My Dreams
Europe
• Final Countdown
Guns 'N Roses
• Paradise City
• Sweet Child O' Mine
Journey
• Any Way You Want It
• Don't Stop Believin'
KISS
• Lick It Up
• Rock and Roll All Night
Ozzy Osbourne
• Bark At The Moon
• Crazy Train
Poison
• Every Rose Has Its Thorn
• Nothing But A Good Time
• Talk Dirty to Me
Ratt
• Round And Round
Scorpions
• Big City Nights
• Rock You Like a Hurricane
Skid Row
• 18 & Life
Twisted Sister
• We're Not Gonna Take It
Van Halen
• Jump
• Panama
• Right Now
Warrant
• Down Boys
• Heaven
Whitesnake
• Here I go Again
• Slide it In
• Still of the Night
 
Welcome to the board and welcome back to the Axe.
I have been playing some 80's rock in our sets for a while. I even play some of the tunes you mention.
Recently, there was a post about setting up "many" presets for this type of thing. I am from the camp that says a couple different presets will cover MOST of this music. I mean 80's rock had VERY similar guitars and although you will hear differences on the recordings of the time, live is anoither story. Very difficult to discern, especially for the audience.
You could conceivable Tone Match many of these tunes and get VERY close to original recodored versions, yet I submit they will be fairly similar in the end.

That said, a good place to start for "that 80's tone" is with the Splawn QuickRod and Friedman amps in the Axe. These amps cover 90% of that sound...add a little chorus/delay/reverb and you are there.
There are presets on the Exchange that will give you a good starting point, sine as you siad you will have to tweak the for your set-up anyway. Personally, I prefer the Splawn, but that's probably because I have 2 QR heads and no Friedman amps, YET.

Also, the power amp/cab set-up with a line out to FOH is a great way to go. Been doing this for a couple years now. Just remember that an FX Loop block needs to go BEFORE your cab block in the Axe, if you want to send Out 1 to FOH and Out 2 to your VHT and Cabs. That's how I do it anyway. Others may do something different...great thing about the Axe is you can run your system the way you want to run it and as long as it works, it's "right."
Don't forget your expression pedals for Wah, volume swells, etc...Also a big part of the 80's sounds.

Love to hear how you end up using things onstage.
Good Luck
 
I agree most of that stuff live can be covered by a couple amps. I prefer to use a pitch detune rather than chorus as an effect for 80's stuff. You should check out Mark Days stuff on the exchange he gets killer hair rock tones mostly using a HBE I think but still great tones in his patches.
 
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Thanks so much for the helpful comments. I definitely appreciate this can be done with a limited number of patches (do that now with the GSP1101 with ~10 patches). But, if really like to go deeper - to really get as close for each song/part. Even these bands' live tones from their various luve albums (which I'd really like to capture) sound distinctive. So any further help from everybody out there would be really appreciated.

Separately, GtarLover, what do you mean when you say "Just remember that an FX Loop block needs to go BEFORE your cab block in the Axe, if you want to send Out 1 to FOH and Out 2 to your VHT and Cabs". Sorry if a dumb question - a lot to re-learn. :). Thanks!
 
From someone who actually does what you are wanting to do, my biggest tip is to make sure you dial in to fit your band's mix, not so much copying the original.

My method is to take a tone match and then blend it in parallel to an cab block with my own ultra rez IRs of my JCM800 cab with original 1981 g1265 celestions.

Ends up giving me a usable live tone but also has the base character of the cover and really adds that flavor to the tone that people will recognize.
 
Severed: Thanks for this. Yes, couldn't agree more about fitting with the band's mix and cutting through (an issue I had with the GSP1101). But, having the close as possible to start from from which to teweak would be really helpful. If there are any patches you'd be willing to share, would be in debt (especially with our gigs coming up). Also, since I'm just getting back into this, can you help me understand what you mean by "take a tone match and then blend it in parallel to an cab block with my own ultra rez IRs..."? Thank you from the axe newbie.
 
Separately, GtarLover, what do you mean when you say "Just remember that an FX Loop block needs to go BEFORE your cab block in the Axe, if you want to send Out 1 to FOH and Out 2 to your VHT and Cabs". Sorry if a dumb question - a lot to re-learn. :). Thanks!

Not a dumb question.
The way I run my "live" rig is I run direct to FOH from the XLR's of OUT 1. Then, I use the 1/4" jacks of OUT 2 to run into my Matrix Power Amp and to a pair of Diezel 4X12's. The FX Block in my routing is BEFORE the cab block because the FX Block is where OUT 2 comes from...meaning I want the whole preset (amp, cab, effects) running out to FOH, however I only want the amp and effects (no cab block) going out to the power amp and 4X12's.
Does this make more sense??
It sounds like you are wanting to run a similar set-up, so I mentioned it. Just the way I run my stage set up. YMMV :)
 
Boost->JCM800->1960A Cab Mix IRs->Jet Flanger->Sh*tloads of Chorus->Sh*tloads of Delay->Reverb; spread/configured across a couple of scenes.
Repeat that over the entire list.
LOL.
:D
 
GtarLover - thanks - this is really helpful. I think I understand. But I'd there is any chance of sending a screen shot or actual patch I could use to learn from - I do better when I have something to start from and play around to understand it better.....

Severe/others - any specific patches would be hugely appreciated? Thanks!!
 
Thanks, Severed. Yes, definitely looking at the patches there. I was just thinking since you said you are doing what I am trying to, that a couple of your patches might really help for me to learn / see what you've done for this specific set up and song type. If you're able to share, cool. If not, no worries. Thanks again for he responses.
 
Yea, I got your PM. It's not that I don't want to share, it's that my presets probably won't work for you.

The thing is my presets are very surgically made for me, my band's live mix and my rig so they most likely won't translate too well. I don't use a real cab on stage, I either use my Carvin IEM's or a pair of Atomic CLR wedges. I also use 6 different guitars which are specific to certain presets, and even just using a different guitar with the same pickups doesn't work well. With FW 17, I got rid of most of my PEQ/GEQ blocks and just re-dialed stuff in on the Amp block itself while also using tone matching and my own IR's (I made myself, using Fractals cab-lab) of my own real cabs, but I also bought cab packs and did some mixing, so I can't share these, as they are a mix of several mic's of my own and purchased IR's.

Additionally my presets are for a stereo setup and not only will they not work for mono, they are not designed to go through a standard PA with subs, as I basically bring my own mini PA via a Behringer EPQ2000 powering two Peavey 215 FoH full range speaker cabs and there are no highpass or lowpass filters as I run full range. Generally I do give the house PA a single tap but only for my band members monitors which are high/low passes via the monitor EQ rack, and they don't mind not getting the actual full stereo sound cause it's more just for reference for them. Also I use a very specific setup on my MFC, requiring 3 expression pedals and all 8 scenes as I do a lot of realtime control of modifiers for volume, effect swells, Wah, Filter sweeps, delay holds, gain mixing, rotary, synth etc. I also use many custom scales for harmonies.

I also don't do any of the songs you listed except for Crazy Train, so I can share that one, but really it's just an amp and delay block and my custom made IR ( which I can't share because it contains a mix of a purchased cab pack IR's). So unless you grab the stem off the internet, do your own tone match and then mix that in cab lab with other IR's until you find the mix that fits, my "dial in" on the amp block prob ain't going to work for you either.

When I get my off time tonight, I'll fire up my Axe FX II MkII and see what I can do, but IMO, I think you really need to do it yourself and start from scratch due to all the reasons I've listed above.
 
Howdy everybody, I'm a new Axe-Fx II owner in nearly the same boat.

I sure would love to see a patch that is "known good" for:
- '80s rock/metal... like a modded Plexi/HBE
- Intended for direct-to-FOH in stereo, any kind of on-stage monitoring type is fine
- EQd to sit in a mix with drums, keyboard, and main/background vocals, in a small-ish club (maybe 250 people capacity)
- Compensated for Fletcher-Munson at gig volumes

...even _just one_ patch that I know fits these criteria would be invaluable to me, because I'll only have time to deal with tweaking during soundcheck, when everybody is busy already.
When I have a patch that fits this bill, I can make all my other patches work the same way... and those are, in fact, for many of the same songs that dweiskopf is looking for!

Thanks!
Eric
 
Severed:

Thank you SOOOO much. I really do appreciate this. I think this is will really help me study some patches to better understand how to make my own. So thank you. One quick question: are these intended for FOH/direct to board, FRFR, or through power amp/cab or some combination?

Thanks again!
 
Severed:

Thank you SOOOO much. I really do appreciate this. I think this is will really help me study some patches to better understand how to make my own. So thank you. One quick question: are these intended for FOH/direct to board, FRFR, or through power amp/cab or some combination?

Thanks again!

These were for Direct / FRFR.
 
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Hmm not sure what happened, I had edited my post, but it appears I deleted it.

/shrug

here are the presets again.

Enter Sandman (Metallica) Based off Live Shit Binge and Purge, but for a 1 guitar player band.
S1 - Clean (Use looper and play Wah over top for Intro)
S2 - Crunch
S3 - Lead
Ext1 - Wah - Auto engage. (Using a Mission spring loaded expression pedal)

Van Halen 1
S1 - Rhythm - roll back both Volume and tone controls for a sweet thick finger picking clean.
S2 - with Phaser
S3 - Lead (I actually think I uploaded the wrong patch, so the Delay on the lead scene might be out of whack (too wet))

You Could Be Mine (Guns N Roses) Based off Live video's of them touring this with Slash playing his BC rich.
S1 - Intro rhythm with auto wah, tempo is set to preset
S2 - Rhythm
S3 - Lead

Crazy Train (Ozzy)
S1 - Rhythm
S2 - Lead 1
S2 - Lead 2 (Which ever is louder is for the main solo, the quieter for the outro, I play it as he played it Live)
-Also use these IR's.
Tone Match Blend Guitar Left
Tone Match Blend Guitar Right
 
shame not to share your bank I use the same configuration lol
I've already explained the main reasons I don't share. I find it hard to belive you are also using a behringer EPQ 2000 and a pair of Peavey 215 speakers, but stranger things have happened.

The other part is, I don't think people unwilling to put in the time should benefit at little to no cost from those of us that do. You can blame a few rotten apples for this, but it gets real old when people just take, and take, and take, and give nothing back.

I'm always willing to help or share my knowledge, but most people just want the preset and don't want to learn.

You can call me selfish. I'm ok with that.
 
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