9.00, no need for Warmth and Thump any longer

bigedawg said:
Very Interesting. The "Low-Mid" cloud is something I've been struggling with for quite some time. My base patches are centered around replicating the tone of my '70 SF Deluxe and '92 Matchless HC30 (Scott, thanks for the keys to dialing in the Matchless tone). while I've been able to dial up decent tone in the Ultra (Blackface and Boutique1), as soon as I start A/B'ing what I've dialed up to the actual amp, the actual amp's tone has an openness to it that the fractal just doesn't give, and to my ear, it's centered in the low/mid frequency range. After endlessly tweaking the presence freq, thump, warmth, eq center frequency... I finally settled on using a PEQ in front of the amp block and notched it out. I'll give the thump & warmth tip a try.

BTW-I'm using an Utra FW 9, Atomic Reactor FR w/redwirez IRs. Prior to the reactor, I used an ART SLA-2 into marsh 4x12 (25watt) or matchless 4x10 open back cab.

Regards,
Chris
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I've got the BEST Matchless tone I've gotten now; including when I had my Matchless amps. I'll start a new 'tweak' thread about that. In fact this v9.x Matchless tone is my favorite tone. It's huge. Standby, work to do first (real life) then I'll start a new thread later about it...
 
FractalAudio said:
Yup, I really debated removing them. But I figured if I did someone would make a big stink so felt it best to leave them in.
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Maybe not removing them, but how about a different, and lower, default value ?
 
niebla said:
FractalAudio said:
Yup, I really debated removing them. But I figured if I did someone would make a big stink so felt it best to leave them in.
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Maybe not removing them, but how about a different, and lower, default value ?
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I considered that. I felt that the default was already fairly low. You'll notice the Bogner models default to a thump of zero.

I'll give it some more thought.
 
FractalAudio said:
niebla said:
FractalAudio said:
Yup, I really debated removing them. But I figured if I did someone would make a big stink so felt it best to leave them in.
Click to expand...
Maybe not removing them, but how about a different, and lower, default value ?
Click to expand...

I considered that. I felt that the default was already fairly low. You'll notice the Bogner models default to a thump of zero.

I'll give it some more thought.
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This thread today and after messing a LOT with the new Bogner models is what made it come home to me. I cranked up the warmth to 2.99 when I saw it at whatever it is set at by default and didn't like what I heard. Pondering it, I saw this thread this morning and inspiration hit me and viola, by lunch I had a good chunk of my presets (at least at the amp/cab level) done.
 
Cliff,

As a guy who likes a good amount of low end punch, I hope you will not eliminate these parameters - for certain amp models and cabs, they are still very helpful for fatness and balance.

Congratulations and thanks for an excellent update!

~Rad~
 
ElectricPhase said:
Scott Peterson said:
I'll start a new 'tweak' thread about that.
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Looking forward to it. As a side note, I'm loving these tweak threads. Much better than exchanging patches.
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+1

I might just go fire up the rig now. I haven't played with v9.0 yet :eek:
 
Please don't eliminate the Warmth and Thump. I get a kick out of cranking up the 18" subwoofer in my bedroom and shaking the walls - seriously. PLEASE don't take that away. :cry:

In all fairness, even if the thump were eliminated, Cliff's "tight tonez" trick with the envelope modulating the cutoff of a HPF would give me more thump than I'd ever need. I found one preset that had the Q turned up to give a "bump" right above the variable cutoff - it sounded killer through the subwoofer with the right cab sim. There are other things you could do to get thump as well with the processing and routing available.

The Warmth changes the character of the tone and takes away from the clarity and the edge, but it softens it up and is nice for certain applications. I don't know how I'd replicate that. It sort of makes it sound like a "different" amp. It's not just EQ to my ears; it's a change in the harmonic content of the distortion, at least that's what it sounds like.

Unless they are memory or resource hogs I vote to keep both. If however there comes a time when a new feature needs room, then dump 'em, the Thump first before the Warmth. It seems to me it makes sense to keep them around until you really need the resources for something better.

That's just one user's opinion. As always, thanks for allowing me to express it.

Stephen Cole
 
Why do you start threads like this when I'm at work? :cry:

But Scott, since you wrote that Matchless thread, this is my new goto amp. Wonder what it sounds like when I try the thumb/thump-warmth trick...

For me, with every firmware there is a amp-of-the-month. Previously it was the Hiwatt, now it's the Matchless. I actually for a quick moment thought about buying a real one. But when I think of my Deville standing around doing nothing.

Damn, this box is amazing.
 
I don't think Warmth and Thump should be removed. I didn't start this thread to ask for removal, but rather as a tweaking inspiration of something I had come across more or less by accident and which worked great for me. I'm glad it worked for other users as well, but as we all know, tastes are different, applications are different. The parameters are there...turn them up or turn them down ;)
 
I don't think Cliff should remove warmth and thump; we can just turn it down if we want after all.

I thought the main thrust of the thread was basically, "try this."

I would suggest defaulting them to 0.00 however after extensive listening. If folks want to warm and thump it up, by all means - have at! :D
 
Scott Peterson said:
I don't think Cliff should remove warmth and thump; we can just turn it down if we want after all.

I thought the main thrust of the thread was basically, "try this."

I would suggest defaulting them to 0.00 however after extensive listening. If folks want to warm and thump it up, by all means - have at! :D
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+1

'Try This' was exactly the intention ;)
 
One thing that I can't get my head around...I get that the new stuff makes the warmth and thump less important and will make adjustments accordingly, but all this talk of transformer match, etc. has me confused. I would thing those are values that make the amp what it's supposed to be. By changing those up significantly, aren't you created a different amp? For me, I feel like the more I'd head down the advanced parameter path, the more in the weeds I would get. Is it necessary to head there to get a "better" tone? I thought this box was to a point now where you could dial it up more traditionally.
 
mtmartin71 said:
One thing that I can't get my head around...I get that the new stuff makes the warmth and thump less important and will make adjustments accordingly, but all this talk of transformer match, etc. has me confused. I would thing those are values that make the amp what it's supposed to be. By changing those up significantly, aren't you created a different amp? For me, I feel like the more I'd head down the advanced parameter path, the more in the weeds I would get. Is it necessary to head there to get a "better" tone? I thought this box was to a point now where you could dial it up more traditionally.
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Yes, you are creating amps that are less accurate to the real thing. But that's nothing wrong, some people like to customize the amps for their needs.
 
mtmartin71 said:
Is it necessary to head there to get a "better" tone? I thought this box was to a point now where you could dial it up more traditionally.
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No need to go there that much anymore since 9.xx unless you want to mod the original amp to something slightly different.

I heavily mod the Marshalls for example to actually get a different, more modded tone.
 
mtmartin71 said:
One thing that I can't get my head around...I get that the new stuff makes the warmth and thump less important and will make adjustments accordingly, but all this talk of transformer match, etc. has me confused. I would thing those are values that make the amp what it's supposed to be. By changing those up significantly, aren't you created a different amp? For me, I feel like the more I'd head down the advanced parameter path, the more in the weeds I would get. Is it necessary to head there to get a "better" tone? I thought this box was to a point now where you could dial it up more traditionally.
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That's an excellent point, and precisely why I never messed with most of the advanced params. But, as it's been said so many times before, if it sounds better, it is better. To some, the traditional amp sounds best, and others a modified version sounds best. That's the true beauty of the axe - you can have anything you want :cool:. And modifying amps is nothing new. There's a million mods out there for lot's of mainstream amps. Like you though, I didn't want to get lost in the weeds. But it's easy enough to explore, and if you feel like you're lost in the weeds, just don't hit save ;)
 
This topic - 'deviating' from the real 'base' model - is not a negative.

It's the jumping off point folks need to accept and understand. The Axe-FX can be better than any given 'real' amp; folks get so caught up in trying to create what 'is', warts and all, that they lose sight that with the power of the Axe-FX you can create what SHOULD be instead.

The haters get caught up in that trap, 'how can a copy of something be better than the something it copies?'; when the real 'target' here is good tone. I look at the base amp model blocks as jumping off points, touchstones where you can then optimize them past what you can do in real life.

Why limit yourself? You have the black box, create your own reality.
 
Scott Peterson said:
This topic - 'deviating' from the real 'base' model - is not a negative.

It's the jumping off point folks need to accept and understand. The Axe-FX can be better than any given 'real' amp; folks get so caught up in trying to create what 'is', warts and all, that they lose sight that with the power of the Axe-FX you can create what SHOULD be instead.

The haters get caught up in that trap, 'how can a copy of something be better than the something it copies?'; when the real 'target' here is good tone. I look at the base amp model blocks as jumping off points, touchstones where you can then optimize them past what you can do in real life.

Why limit yourself? You have the black box, create your own reality.
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Sorry. Didn't mean to infer it was a negative if I did. For me, it was just confusing as far as feeling the need to use advanced parameters to fix any perceived shortcomings. I get that people may want to mess with parameters to customize their amp block. I just wanted to avoid the rathole of trying to "fix" the AxeFX's sound i.e. harsh high end not present in the real models etc. I think what I'm reading is that 9.0 really does a good job of closing the gap further between tube amp and digital amp. From a personal standpoint, I didn't want to get too caught up in customizing the amps as I'd prefer to use "stock" models so that patch changes are easier to digest with new FW updates (which are frequent). I figured the more I'd change, the more I'd have to remember to retweak with an update. The more I relied on the stock parameters, the less I'd have to tweak.
 
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