9.00, no need for Warmth and Thump any longer

[Scott Peterson]

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.

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.

Good point. I've found, being deeply into tweaking the advanced tab personally, that this is really of no consequence. With V9.0 I've simply set everything in the amp block to default and tweaked it back; most models (once I got my head around the new changes to the underlying power amp algorithms) was pretty quick.

To me the advanced tab is less about 'fixing' any perceived weakness, and more about simply making good, better; better, great. And great, fantastic. They are mostly refinements that simply enhance the inherent 'goodness'.

I'll close with this - trust your ears. Just because something is defaulted some way, does not mean you should not at least try to change it just to hear the difference. Trust what you hear and feel.

 

[AlbertA]

[quote="Scott Peterson":2nzcydw9]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.

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.

To me the advanced tab is less about 'fixing' any perceived weakness, and more about simply making good, better; better, great. And great, fantastic. They are mostly refinements that simply enhance the inherent 'goodness'. [/quote:2nzcydw9]

Exactly, say you like the drive behavior of a particular amp, but you don't get quite the mid growl you are looking for. I can try changing the tonestack or tonestack frequency to tune the distortion.

Or what if I want more sizzle and I'm not getting it with the treble tone control... Then I increase the bright cap frequency.

What if the amp is to smooth sounding and I wanted a little rougher on the high end, then increase the high cut.

Very simple tweaks if I don't find what I want right away with the defaults...

 

[dk_ace]

Thanks for starting this thread! I've been struggling a little with some cloudiness that I can't quite get rid of. I still have the warmth on and hadn't messed with turning it down. I need to try turning it down and I bet that will fix most of my problems.

So far, I'm really digging v9.

D

 

[VegaBaby]

Thanks for starting this thread! I've been struggling a little with some cloudiness that I can't quite get rid of. I still have the warmth on and hadn't messed with turning it down. I need to try turning it down and I bet that will fix most of my problems.

So far, I'm really digging v9.

D

Try it ! Made a huge difference on almost all of my sounds (especially clean), otherwise I wouldn't have posted it.

 

[guitarnerdswe]

I already turned warmth and thump off in all my preset. Sounds better IMHO.

 

[TCD]

Vega,

That really was a great suggestion to turn down the warmth to 0.00. I posted on some other thread that the most appealing thing about "Matlab Madman" Cliff's changes to the amp blocks in v9.0 is the ability to add a healthy amount of treble and presence without any major accompanying harshness to the top end. So, to see if things were still good without the warmth, I went and put it to 0.00 on all my patches. The result for many of my high gain patches is the coveted “3D” or “in-your-face” quality really became apparent, without any nasty harshness in the top end. Just more nice harmonically complex “sizzle” IMHO. Thanks again.

 

[Jezza]

Hi all

I have a question for Cliff regarding the Warmth and Thump -

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./quote]

If you HAD removed the parameters what would you have set the value at? Would it have been 0.00 or the current default?

Just interested ... Thanks!!

J

 

[guitarnerdswe]

Hi all

I have a question for Cliff regarding the Warmth and Thump -

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./quote]

If you HAD removed the parameters what would you have set the value at? Would it have been 0.00 or the current default?

Just interested ... Thanks!!

J

My guess is 0.00. To my understanding, warmth and thump are sort of an "easy" way to simulate some "mono"-features in the poweramp. Now when Cliff has really managed to get the poweramp to sound and behave like the real deal, IMHO, they're not longer needed.

 

[VegaBaby]

Hi all

I have a question for Cliff regarding the Warmth and Thump -

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./quote]

If you HAD removed the parameters what would you have set the value at? Would it have been 0.00 or the current default?

Just interested ... Thanks!!

J

I could be wrong here, but it's probably 0. Before he introduced them they were 0 and I'm sure somewhere in the release notes back then it said something like 'if you want the tone of pre x.xx turn them to 0'.

 

[rsf1977]

Yea I'm in agreement that the parameters should be kept as a tweakable option but I'd really like the default amps to be set correctly as inteneded. If the defaults should be changed from what they currently are I think that would be the way to go then people can change them from there.

 

[rsf1977]

:?: was it ever confirmed that "Warmth" and "Thump" should be set to zero to emulate the true amp settings? I've been out of the loop for a few weeks, sorry if this was covered somewhere else.

 

[VegaBaby]

:?: was it ever confirmed that "Warmth" and "Thump" should be set to zero to emulate the true amp settings? I've been out of the loop for a few weeks, sorry if this was covered somewhere else.

I think that's how it always was. Warmth and Thump were never 'real' parameters of the amps, but nice tools to get better sounds until FW 9.xx arrived with a brand spanking new power amp simulation

 

[guitarnerdswe]

Is Cliff going to have them auto-default to zero? I'm tired of having to reset them to zero all the time :mrgreen:

 

[knoll]

Patiently waiting for 9.01

 

[browlett]

This may sound CRAZY, but...

I always liked the sound of my patches with the thump and warmth set to very low (even ZERO in some cases) settings. ...Even BEFORE 9.0. I kept quiet about it at the time... but, when everyone went nuts over trying the firmware upgrades back then (when thump and warmth were first introduced), I privately thought to myself, "I don't get it. What's the big deal? I think it sounds best with very little or none."

There's probably a great chance that I was doing something else somewhere that negated what everyone else had been experiencing as great. It always seemed to muddy up the sound for me or flat out ruin the tone that I thought sounded good without it. Either way, it's all good now. So, whatever.

 

[VegaBaby]

This may sound CRAZY, but...

I always liked the sound of my patches with the thump and warmth set to very low (even ZERO in some cases) settings. ...Even BEFORE 9.0. I kept quiet about it at the time... but, when everyone went nuts over trying the firmware upgrades back then (when thump and warmth were first introduced), I privately thought to myself, "I don't get it. What's the big deal? I think it sounds best with very little or none."

There's probably a great chance that I was doing something else somewhere that negated what everyone else had been experiencing as great. It always seemed to muddy up the sound for me or flat out ruin the tone that I thought sounded good without it. Either way, it's all good now. So, whatever.

I used to run Warmth very low..., around 1.50 and used to have Thump around 2.95, but to rectify I turned down bass in the amp and that worked really well actually...gave it that spongyness 9.xx seems to do naturally now.

 

[mortega76]

I just recorded another track and turned off both Thump and Warmth... and man... what a difference in top end clarity! Thanks for the tip!!! I wonder if the next firmware will have Thump and Warmth at zero?

 

[banjoze]

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.

Good decision! I love having that option and definitely take advantage of them.

 

[shredi knight]

I agree that Warmth really doesn't seem to be needed any longer, but don't want to see it go (better to have it and not need it, that to find it is needed in a situation and not have it). When I first switched to 9.00, my patch's tones seemed a little too warm. I thought maybe a change to the Warmth control where it could be brought down into negative values and make the tone less warm would be useful. Though after re-tweaking, I didn't find it to be too warm sounding any longer (or my ears just got used to it), but it might be a useful feature none the less.

I still use Thump though. I have it set the same as I did before in all the patches (which is almost all the way up). It adds a certain complexity to the low end that I really like. There is a noticeable difference when it turned all the way down.

 

[Scott Peterson]

It's no big thing to turn it down or up, no matter what the default setting is. Everyone is different anyway, so Cliff sorta has to leave it in. You can give people stuff, but once you do... they get ornery if you take it away. Even if they never used it.