A

[State of Epicicity]

For sure.

I am no expert and no one would ask for my advice, but I find a lot of modern mixes
way too crowded for my tastes. I like a mix that breathes and where there is space for
every instrument. That is just not the style or flavour in ANY kind of music now.

We can definitely hear how sonics have evolved and how everything has tended to
become more prominent and bigger in recorded music (including mastering everything to the
point that there is ZERO dynamics). Loudness wars anyone!!

I find it fatiguing after awhile. Like someone is talking at the top of their voice all the time.

I know, cantankerous old fart alert.

Dude, I’m with you all the way on this one. There’s a great book by Greg Milner that, in addition to a ton of other histories, deals with the source of the loudness wars: Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music. I highly recommend it for anyone who feels the way you do.

 

[RevDrucifer]

Definitely! I wonder what our experience of something like a Fractal would be
if we had owned one in year 2 or 3 in our playing? I am guessing mine would
not be good.

Sometimes more experienced folks take their experience for granted,
and don't realize that someone NOT getting stellar results is often due
to their lack of fluency.... and.... er experience.

I have 30+ years of experience playing different amps and making LOTS of
mistakes and horrific decisions. Still feel like I know less than I should. Just
so much to learn every step of the way.

Well, I often compare learning how to sing like starting off right out of the gate as a guitarist with an AxeFX; you’ve got everything you’ll ever need to make all the sounds you want, you just need to learn how to use it first.

The only reason I learned anything about tone was because I was a huge Eric Johnson fan when I first started playing and kept hearing him talk about tone, or being asked about it in guitar mags, it made me consider my own tone. At the time it was a MIM Strat and a Fender Champ 25 (the tube one). My dad gave me a rack EQ to put in the loop when I was 12 and I was off to the races.

If I had an AxeFX back then, I just would have tried to make it sound like EJ or Gilmour’s rig……..which is exactly what I do with it now half the time.

 

[la szum]

Dude, I’m with you all the way on this one. There’s a great book by Greg Milner that, in addition to a ton of other histories, deals with the source of the loudness wars: Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music. I highly recommend it for anyone who feels the way you do.

Wow! Thanks! Totally checking that out.

Edit: purchased.

 

[trancegodz]

Hi James,

If you have an Axe FXIII you should download presets made for the Axe FXIII. If you download presets that were made for an Axe FXII you should convert them with FracTool for use with your Axe FXIII.

If you use presets made by others you will almost always have to tweak them to sound right with your specific guitar and pickups, unless the person that made them was using the same guitar and pickups that you were, and has the same monitoring system that you do (or something very close).

I have to create different presets for the different guitars I use. Les Paul, Stratocaster, Telecaster, Gretsch Duo Jet, Ibanez Joe Satriani model, Ibanez Steve Vai model, etc. Presets made for any one of these guitars does not sound right on any of the other guitars I have.

You'll get the best results creating your own presets from scratch.

 

[la szum]

I think there's mixes like that, just gotta find out who engineers the way you like and what they've worked on. I like to think my last bands last full length was done in the way you describe lol.

Sweet! I definitely have my fave producers and engineers.

There are also albums that are totally ruined and butchered, where
great songs and performances are bludgeoned with compression and
faders pushed way too high. For my tastes.

 

[State of Epicicity]

Wow! Thanks! Totally checking that out.

Edit: purchased.

How awesome! I hope you enjoy it; I read it so long ago, but it really stick with me.

 

[State of Epicicity]

There are also albums that are totally ruined and butchered, where
great songs and performances are bludgeoned with compression and
faders pushed way too high. For my tastes.

Case in point, the first Black Country Communion album. I love so much about it, but it’s so hot, with no warmth in the sound, to my ears. But I don’t like Kevin Shirley in general; he just makes everything sound modern in a way that I find utterly soulless. I think in the back of my mind I always compare the sound of stuff to Yes’s Fragile album and Abraxas by Santana, and everything else can go screw, sonically haha.

 

[la szum]

How awesome! I hope you enjoy it; I read it so long ago, but it really stick with me.

It's a looooooooooooong winter, and I was looking for some fresh reading material.

The subject is also something I find myself thinking about and ruminating on when I
should probably be more focused on other things.

Thanks again for the shout!

 

[la szum]

Case in point, the first Black Country Communion album. I love so much about it, but it’s so hot, with no warmth in the sound, to my ears. But I don’t like Kevin Shirley in general; he just makes everything sound modern in a way that I find utterly soulless. I think in the back of my mind I always compare the sound of stuff to Yes’s Fragile album and Abraxas by Santana, and everything else can go screw, sonically haha.

Wow. Not a fan of Kevin (clearly he never learned from listening to how Martin Birch produced Maiden).

I feel like when the db Meters barely dance while a song is playing then something has gone horribly
wrong.

 

[skolacki]

For sure.

I am no expert and no one would ask for my advice, but I find a lot of modern mixes
way too crowded for my tastes. I like a mix that breathes and where there is space for
every instrument. That is just not the style or flavour in ANY kind of music now.

We can definitely hear how sonics have evolved and how everything has tended to
become more prominent and bigger in recorded music (including mastering everything to the
point that there is ZERO dynamics). Loudness wars anyone!!

I find it fatiguing after awhile. Like someone is talking at the top of their voice all the time.

I know, cantankerous old fart alert.

I’m a big Warren Haynes and Gov’t Mule fan. They did a blues album after the lockdowns. Heavy Load Blues. It’s interesting the way it was recorded. Everyone in a small space with no isolation and a lot of vintage gear. No digital all analog. Plenty of space and dynamics with that band and great guitar tones. I have learned a lot about fitting in with songs from Warren Haynes. There’s a vid on the tube. Snatch it Back and Hold it. That album is saturated with many of the tones we are all chasing.

 

[aziz]

Maybe you just have a very different idea of “good” tone than most people.....

Some people like black licorice though most people don’t. Like 99% of people think it’s gross, but the 1% who do like it think the other 99% are crazy because it’s delicious lol

Except in finland, where 99% love it.

 

[Rock Chalk]

I must admit in not having read through the whole thread, but a lot of the replies say build your own, which is definitely the best way to go.
That being said, every preset I’ve ever downloaded, for years now, from 2112, Burgs, and Mark Day have been totally bad-ass sounding from the getgo, with minimal tweaking. I guess my point is, if finding good downloadable presets is your goal…..they’re out there.

 

[Paulzx]

Hey guys, I’ve had the axe fx 3 since launch and I (somehow) only recently started downloading presets for it. Most of them are originally for the axe fx 2, but still, for some reason pretty much all the presets I download sound TERRIBLE, like extremely terrible, I get people have different rigs but some of these have me seriously questioning if the people who made them are mentally well, even some the high rated presets on axechange are pretty much unusable. Am I doing something wrong on my end? This seems very odd to me. Also, why does no one include the cab in their tone match presets?

I feel your pain.. I haven't had this experience with fractal yet but I have had the exact same thing with the Helix - different device, same disappointment. How can all of these presets be so unusable? Watching youtube demos also confounded me, these tones sound fantastic on the videos but nothing like it on my device.

The hard lesson I learned - and this is applicable to any modeller - is that the holy grail is in the combination, or chemistry if you like, of a few different factors. The output device mainly, an suitable guitar (a no brainer on a guitar forum!), and parameter adjustment of your patch to suit your surroundings.

When I switched to FRFR monitors, in addition to realising it only takes very small parameter adjustments to change the sound quite a lot, it then became obvious that I could make my own presets that sounded just as good as those youtube ones, I just couldn't use those guys presets, I had to tailor each parameter of the amp block in my room, with my guitar, to hit the spot.

In summary, I think you have to accept each part of the chain is so sensitive that you just can't short cut it by using other people's presets, you have to adjust everything to your own surroundings. It's frustrating and not always obvious but it's true. It took me a couple of years to really grasp this concept fully because I downloaded tons of presets and none of them were truly satisfying. Satisfaction finally came from dialling my own patches in, and that process also taught me a lot about how to adjust amp block parameters to sound like tones I wanted to replicate.

 

[JWDubois]

I've found you don't have to go super-high output to get good high-gain tones.

I think many of us have been there. But then you get a good tone and it's like, Holy Fuck this amp sounds GREAT!

I don't gig right now, but since that may change someday, I keep an ear out, so to speak, for when I come across a tone that sounds like a cover tune (like when I'm tweaking a preset), and I'll pause to save that tone and name it for that song. I figure if it at least sounds close, I can then do some fine-tuning in a band setting, should that opportunity arise.

I can get good (to me) high gain tones from my PAF guitars, it's not hard. I was agreeing with the previous poster that my PAF guitars don't seem to work well with the stock high gain presets.

 

[vika12]

Another tweak that I think is important is to make Hi and Low Cuts in the cab block. Cut the Hi to about 7500 and the Low to about 100 to start and tweak from there. This rids the preset of unwanted low and high end frequencies and helps focus the mids where guitars live.

 

[sprint]

Another tweak that I think is important is to make Hi and Low Cuts in the cab block. Cut the Hi to about 7500 and the Low to about 100 to start and tweak from there. This rids the preset of unwanted low and high end frequencies and helps focus the mids where guitars live.

I do this which helps as you mention, however, I've wondered why I'm doing it since should good quality captured IRs not already contain optimal hi/low rolloff?

 

[Budda]

Another tweak that I think is important is to make Hi and Low Cuts in the cab block. Cut the Hi to about 7500 and the Low to about 100 to start and tweak from there. This rids the preset of unwanted low and high end frequencies and helps focus the mids where guitars live.

This is how to arrive at a more polished sound. I used to cut 80-100hZ and 7k but after trying some more factory IRs I went back to min/max at 6dB/oct or 12dB/oct.

 

[unFILTERed]

I do this which helps as you mention, however, I've wondered why I'm doing it since should good quality captured IRs not already contain optimal hi/low rolloff?

I would (maybe) expect from a good quality IR to filter all below 50hz or so...but in most cases your low cut will be higher than that in a mix but that should be up to the user, how high you want to go with the low cut (or hicut). Baking in the filters that far in an IR just takes your freedom away. Imagine there is a section in the song, recording the guitar is all alone for some bars...you could need/get away with much more low end.

 

[sprint]

I would (maybe) expect from a good quality IR to filter all below 50hz or so...but in most cases your low cut will be higher than that in a mix but that should be up to the user, how high you want to go with the low cut (or hicut). Baking in the filters that far in an IR just takes your freedom away. Imagine there is a section in the song, recording the guitar is all alone for some bars...you could need/go away with much more low end.

Makes sense - thanks!

 

[vika12]

I do this which helps as you mention, however, I've wondered why I'm doing it since should good quality captured IRs not already contain optimal hi/low rolloff?

I don't know why a good IR would or would not have such cuts, but we should make them if they don't. I've have the same experience with AXE-Change presets and, although I've never bought preset packs or IRS, I assume that tweaking is almost always necessary to fit your guitar(s); your playing style; your venue(s); your speaker(s); etc. It's just not cookie-cutter. On the bright side, it's fun to dial stuff in with a bit of tweaking.