A/B With Guitar Cab and Matrix GT 800FX

Yep. I mostly use IRs when my band is running our own sound. If we play a show where we have PA provided I will bring a cab. I may still go directly into the PA from the AXE3, but I want to make sure I can hear myself.

Oh for sure. For me, playing live is all about cabs for my own monitoring along with IRs to the board.

This might sound pretentious but I'm going to trust my own IRs way more than the soundguy's consideration of my tone when he grabs the first mic his hand happens to reach in his bag and aims it at who-knows-what part of the cone and just hopes for the best.

 
Love the sound I get through my Mather 4x12 loaded with Eminence Neos, and it weighs in at just over 50 lbs. I use that plus going into the PA direct and have never been happier with my overall tone.

I went completely direct with my last band, and the sound was great too. The new band is rock and metal, and I'm sure it would sound fine just direct, I enjoy having the only band with 2 guitarists running 4x12s in this little town.

So happy with the flexibility of this thing. I was showing my drummer the routings of my setup and he asked "Have you sat down and showed Brian what this thing can do?" (Our other guitarist) I think when my name comes up on the FM3 list I may have to get one and program a patch for him just to demo what Fractal actually does. Might be able to convert him from his TC and Carvin V3 setup! (He sounds great as is, but he has to tap dance and if he bumps one knob he is screwed getting his tone back.)
 
"warm tube sound" is usually just off-axis in a room tube sound. there's nothing inherently warmer about a tube amp.
Actually I wonder if the transformer to speaker coupling and the associated resonances don't have a lot to do with it in addition to the accoustic/off-axis/mic thing you get into with FRFR... SS amps cannot do that on their own and I suspect most modelers do not get this right and they cannot actually detect which 'curve' to use even they do model it, also the way tube power amps compress/feel makes them seem more organic which I think makes people attribute things to the tone in their mind.

Thankfully the AxeFx is the best unit out there at modeling both of those things.

I think the fact that the Axe exposes the controls for these to the user makes it a much more powerful device than any other system and also the update @FractalAudio did to allow selectable impedance curves was HUGE here. You can adjust it as needed for FRFR or a real cab! It's great.
 
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I’ve been using my Axe III at band practice with an Orange Pedal Baby and my other guitarist is using a real JP2C. I can get just as loud without losing any “balls”. It makes the floor shake. I have my Mark IIC++ model dialed in to where it melds perfectly with his amp when we’re jamming together. I think the whole “It sounds thin” argument comes from people who are incorrectly dialing it in to use it with a speaker cab, or people who are reluctant to accept how advanced amp-modeling has become.
 
For shits and giggles, I plugged my III into the Return on my Peavey XXX head (I happily use my HS-5’s for all my monitoring/recording/jamming with my self) to see how it’d sound through a guitar cab. Turned off the PA/Cab blocks and cranked it right up. My first thought was “WTF are people talking about with this amp in the room loss? For real?! There’s NOTHING about this that makes me miss anything!”

I didn’t tweak a single thing aside from turning those blocks off and it sounded killer right away (running into an old Line6 2x12 with WGS Retro 30’s).

I dunno, I think a lot of people complaining about stuff like that are just trying to find a reason to prefer their amps over an AxeFX, like not jumping on the modeler train is some kind of badge of honor. More than half the guitarists I’ve played with or talked to have never paid attention to their tone under a microscope or in studio monitors. Perfect example is a few years back we were tracking guitars for a band I was in, my buddy/guitar player was using a Dual Rec into a Recto 4x12, gets it all set up in the room and I put a mic on it. Sounds like a pile of ass coming through the studio monitors no matter where we put the mic, too much bass and distortion. After 45 minutes of letting him tweak the amp himself I told him to give me a shot at it. Went in and turned some knobs, came back in and had him track a couple sections, listen back and it sounds perfect. We take a break after a while and he goes back into the room with his amp, plays some guitar and says “It sounds like shit in here! I don’t want this getting recorded!”

That was a long session, finally we got him to just sit in the control room and not worry about the amp, just what was coming out of the speakers. I’ve told him to come over any time to check out my III but he’s yet to take me up on it. I keep taunting him telling him he’s a poon for not having the balls to show up. (I just don’t want to taunt him too much, he’s getting a Friedman JJ and I want to TM it!)
 
In every case the model sounded as good or better than the real amp

I love Fractal & my Ultra/II/III, but it strikes me as funny about this subjective statement. If someone was to say Pepsi tasted better than Coke, we'd know they were retarded.

I have no point.
 
I love Fractal & my Ultra/II/III, but it strikes me as funny about this subjective statement. If someone was to say Pepsi tasted better than Coke, we'd know they were retarded.

I have no point.

Pepsi tasted better.
 
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I love Fractal & my Ultra/II/III, but it strikes me as funny about this subjective statement. If someone was to say Pepsi tasted better than Coke, we'd know they were retarded.

I have no point.


I get what you are alluding to and would agree if the someone was just anyone. However, I do feel you can get to know people and their tastes and therefore trust their opinions on subjective topics.

I raise your no point with a I have no clue. :)
 
Glad to hear that you continue to check models against their counterparts! A couple of questions:
Do the “real” amps suffer with the same blanket over speakers effect due to FM at low volumes too? Or does FM affect real amps in a slightly different way? People in modeling land talk about FM all the time. But in tube amp circles no one seems to, maybe everyone is just diming their amps?

It's easy enough to test. If you play your "real" amp at bedroom levels, you get more bass. As you turn up the volume, you will need to add bass to get the same tone as at a lower volume. Also, guitarists are notorious for being LOUD on stage...if that's the reference, then as Cliff noted, Guitar Amps are frickin' LOUD.
For example, many amps have a "sweet spot" with their master volume at or above 6. Which very often is ridiculously loud :eek:
 
Regarding the transformer interaction, the whole point is to emulate a high voltage current source magnetically coupled to a low voltage, high current reactive load, using a voltage source directly driving a load. That’s what the the Axe does. And it’s great at it
 

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I dunno, I think a lot of people complaining about stuff like that are just trying to find a reason to prefer their amps over an AxeFX, like not jumping on the modeler train is some kind of badge of honor. More than half the guitarists I’ve played with or talked to have never paid attention to their tone under a microscope or in studio monitors. Perfect example is a few years back we were tracking guitars for a band I was in, my buddy/guitar player was using a Dual Rec into a Recto 4x12, gets it all set up in the room and I put a mic on it. Sounds like a pile of ass coming through the studio monitors no matter where we put the mic, too much bass and distortion. After 45 minutes of letting him tweak the amp himself I told him to give me a shot at it. Went in and turned some knobs, came back in and had him track a couple sections, listen back and it sounds perfect. We take a break after a while and he goes back into the room with his amp, plays some guitar and says “It sounds like shit in here! I don’t want this getting recorded!”

GreatGreen note: tl;dr - sounds great when recorded but like crap in the room.



I have experienced this exact phenomenon multiple times when I used to help my buddy record bands. Some of them would come in with stuff like 5150s or Rectos and a Mesa 4x12 cab, so we'd put a 57 and one or two more mics on it and get to work.

I was the one dialing it in. The head was in the recording room so I basically had to walk back and fourth between the mixing room and the recording room. Tweak, walk, listen, repeat.

I remember being in the listening room finally having dialed in the biggest, meanest, clearest, most ferocious tone coming from the monitors, but actually sitting in the recording space with the amp, you'd think you were playing through a flubby AM radio. No bass, no treble, no definition, just endless thin, muddy mids. I had to reassure the guitar player multiple times. "Yep, sounds like total shit in here. It sounds incredible through the monitors though." He didn't believe me until he heard the stems played back to him.

I think most people have just never tried to record a physical guitar cab with a real mic. They simply don't know how different in-the-room listening and through-monitors listening are from each other, and how different you have to approach dialing an amp in to get a good in-the-room tone vs a tone that will record well, or even what a physical amp and cab that will sound good recorded actually sounds like when you're standing in front of it.

Most people assume "if you mic an amp well, it should sound the same through the monitors as it does to me personally in the room" and this simply could not be further from the truth in my experience.

I'd also bet that if most people could travel back in time and be in the same room as their favorite sounding recorded guitar tones from their favorite records, they'd probably think it actually sounded horrible in the recording room itself, or at the very least, not even remotely close to what the recording actually sounds like.
 
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