First order of business after I spent some time noodling with the factory presets was to move over a few gigging patches. I started with the main patch. I can, and often do, spend all night on this patch with my humbucker-equipped PRS. Its bones are in the Trey A patch I used to maintain, but its drifted in the past few months from a strictly Trey A tone clone patch to something that's really just "inspired" by.
It's also a "kitchen sink" patch. There's a lot going on in here. I don't always use everything in the course of a night. There's a lot of free jams in the stuff we do so what gets turned on depends greatly on the mood and what everyone else in the band is doing. For example: I'm rarely using the rotary block these days. Thinking about dropping it in favour of maybe some chorus or a mu-tron type filter block (which I had in there this summer, but dropped in the fall because I wasn't using it much).
Here's the preset as it exists in my Axe-Fx II XL+:
Looking at the "essential" bits I decided I could live without two drive blocks. I rarely stack them because I play a hollowbody guitar most of the time and the gain gets away on me (I'm not Trey when it comes to controlling that squeal). I do use them both, independently though, throughout a typical night.
I already knew I could lose the rotary.
I probably don't need the pitch block -- I use it for +1 octave fun stuff in the outro solos of a few songs near the end of a night. Total gimmick stuff that just makes me smile. For now, I'll roll without it.
I don't need the second pitch block in front of the wah block, most likely; it serves up a fixed octave below for "train song" type solo sounds, which I only use sparingly when we cover Use Me.
The second delay block is a long delay with fairly high feedback for on and on and on type sound layering. I'd like it there, but it's a "comfort block". If I'm being honest it has limited applicability in our sets and jams.
So let's see what we can do with all of this in the AX8. This is my first iteration:
I only have one expression pedal for the AX8 right now so we'll leave the volume block behind. I mainly use the one on my guitar anyways. I kept both delays for now. The drive blocks are down to one instance but the X side is the low gain drive and the Y side is the high gain drive from my AFII patch.
After playing around with it a bit tonight, I'm likely going to lose the second delay block in favour of X/Y settings on a single block. And I'll bring back the second pitch block that does the -1 octave down fixed harmony blended in with the dry guitar -- I'm realizing I like that enough for solos that I want it there.
I also need to order a second EV1 because I miss the volume block after all. Comfort block, but one I've grown used to zeroing out before I leave the stage apparently. Funny what we do and don't notice after we've done it for a long time.
The easy access to X/Y switching on the AX8 is making it really a no-brainer to stack things on to one block where, in the Axe-Fx II, I would generally use two if I had CPU to burn. I generally find I have more blocks to spare than MFC switches and I can use scenes to switch states without burning a lot of fixed switches for block types on the MFC. Not so on the AX8. It's an absolute pleasure to do X/Y switching on the unit so stacking things in to one block now is really comfortable.
For footswitch setup I'm going with:
When I double stack the delay settings in to one block, I'll add a switch for the pitch block to do octave down stuff.
That's Day 1 with my new AX8 coming to close. It's proving to be a stellar sounding unit with lots of thought having gone in to how to make it operate extremely efficiently given its size.
I'm also jones-ing a bit for an external MIDI controller for the AFII right that'll let me long-press to switch X/Y state on blocks. Darn.
It's also a "kitchen sink" patch. There's a lot going on in here. I don't always use everything in the course of a night. There's a lot of free jams in the stuff we do so what gets turned on depends greatly on the mood and what everyone else in the band is doing. For example: I'm rarely using the rotary block these days. Thinking about dropping it in favour of maybe some chorus or a mu-tron type filter block (which I had in there this summer, but dropped in the fall because I wasn't using it much).
Here's the preset as it exists in my Axe-Fx II XL+:
Looking at the "essential" bits I decided I could live without two drive blocks. I rarely stack them because I play a hollowbody guitar most of the time and the gain gets away on me (I'm not Trey when it comes to controlling that squeal). I do use them both, independently though, throughout a typical night.
I already knew I could lose the rotary.
I probably don't need the pitch block -- I use it for +1 octave fun stuff in the outro solos of a few songs near the end of a night. Total gimmick stuff that just makes me smile. For now, I'll roll without it.
I don't need the second pitch block in front of the wah block, most likely; it serves up a fixed octave below for "train song" type solo sounds, which I only use sparingly when we cover Use Me.
The second delay block is a long delay with fairly high feedback for on and on and on type sound layering. I'd like it there, but it's a "comfort block". If I'm being honest it has limited applicability in our sets and jams.
So let's see what we can do with all of this in the AX8. This is my first iteration:
I only have one expression pedal for the AX8 right now so we'll leave the volume block behind. I mainly use the one on my guitar anyways. I kept both delays for now. The drive blocks are down to one instance but the X side is the low gain drive and the Y side is the high gain drive from my AFII patch.
After playing around with it a bit tonight, I'm likely going to lose the second delay block in favour of X/Y settings on a single block. And I'll bring back the second pitch block that does the -1 octave down fixed harmony blended in with the dry guitar -- I'm realizing I like that enough for solos that I want it there.
I also need to order a second EV1 because I miss the volume block after all. Comfort block, but one I've grown used to zeroing out before I leave the stage apparently. Funny what we do and don't notice after we've done it for a long time.
The easy access to X/Y switching on the AX8 is making it really a no-brainer to stack things on to one block where, in the Axe-Fx II, I would generally use two if I had CPU to burn. I generally find I have more blocks to spare than MFC switches and I can use scenes to switch states without burning a lot of fixed switches for block types on the MFC. Not so on the AX8. It's an absolute pleasure to do X/Y switching on the unit so stacking things in to one block now is really comfortable.
For footswitch setup I'm going with:
When I double stack the delay settings in to one block, I'll add a switch for the pitch block to do octave down stuff.
That's Day 1 with my new AX8 coming to close. It's proving to be a stellar sounding unit with lots of thought having gone in to how to make it operate extremely efficiently given its size.
I'm also jones-ing a bit for an external MIDI controller for the AFII right that'll let me long-press to switch X/Y state on blocks. Darn.