AFX clean tones

Radley

Radley

Experienced
I have a good friend who recently tried the AFX. He said he liked the overdriven tones a lot, but was less impressed with the clean sounds. He also said the AFX was too complex for him to deal with. What are your impressions of the clean tones you are getting from your AFX?

Edit: Note that I am happy with what I'm getting for clean sounds - just want to get some other opinions.
 
Well, what is a clean tone? I mean the definition of a clean tone in a guitar amp is so broad. There are so many factors outside of the amp that contribute to a clean tone that make a huge difference. I think that the amplifier itself makes less of a difference in the overall tone than the guitar, pickups, cab and speakers do for a clean sound.

Compression and eq can make a huge difference in the sound. I find it hard to believe that you can't dial in any kind of clean tone you could imagine with all the adjustable parameters in the Axe.
 
Don't get me wrong - I feel I have gotten some very nice clean sounds so far, although I'm still not getting all I would like from the AFX compressors. I'm just wanting to get other's comments on their clean AFX sounds & how they compare to a great clean amp (Fender, JC-120, Vox, etc)
 
I personally think the weakness is in the IR's. I recently got my hands on some really good FF Rectifier IR's, and suddenly there was my Boogie clean tone. That's not to say the IR section is a weakness. I think it's as strong as the IR's you load.
 
It doesn't seem to matter what gear I use, I can never find a clean tone that I like. A couple of my favorite recorded clean tones are the cleans on Opeth's Blackwater Park, or Andy Timmons' Resolution. I just can't seem to dial the tones in to sound similar though. It seems I really don't have a clue when it comes to dialing in a clean tone.

To answer the question though, it seems the clean tones I dial on the Axe-Fx sound just as good as the clean tones I've dialed up on any amp...
 
I'm happy with the clean tones I'm getting from the Axe-FX though, to be blunt, I spend most of time playing non-clean patches.
 
Radley said:
Don't get me wrong - I feel I have gotten some very nice clean sounds so far, although I'm still not getting all I would like from the AFX compressors. I'm just wanting to get other's comments on their clean AFX sounds & how they compare to a great clean amp (Fender, JC-120, Vox, etc)
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One of the things I like to do to warm and fatten my clean tones is to put a compressor after the amp sim. It gives more body to the sound just as using a comp on drums can round out the tone. Another thing is to try some of the tones without the cab sim and use the para eq in the way that you suggested before. You can get very nice tones that way.
Also, I have found that increasing the drive a little and backing off on guitar can really help. You would think that would be the same as turning up the guitar and backing off the drive, but that just makes the tones more brittle.
One other thing....changing tonestacks & center frequency can really create some great results.
 
I'll disagree.

Since V9.0 the cleans are really good. I'll also say that careful attention and exploration of what is possible with IR's are important to getting it right.

IMHO, YMMV.
 
Scott Peterson said:
I'll disagree.

Since V9.0 the cleans are really good. I'll also say that careful attention and exploration of what is possible with IR's are important to getting it right.

IMHO, YMMV.
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Scott,

I hope you're not disagreeing with me, because as I said, I have been getting some very nice clean sounds - most of the time I have the (120 pf) bright cap engaged for 'silkiness'. For the most part, we talk about medium to high gain sounds here, so it's nice to get back to the fundamental, basic clean tones.
 
I find the clean tones very good, specially the Twin i am very impressed with (i have the Lathimer clean sound spot on :cool: think camel with Ice)
The JC120 sim is good also but it misses a bit of fullnes (is that a word ?) but i can compensate with some fx so i have a very good
rothery sound. My 2 JC120,s i hardly use anymore...

Getting there was much more work for me than getting a good gain tone though so i can see that someone who has the unit short is having trouble with it.

If someone is intrested i can post those presets on the forum.. The Eggie clean is real nice also.

I think Cliff did a hell of a job with the clean amp sims.
 
I play clean far more than overdriven, and I've gotten better clean sounds (to my ears) with the Axe-Fx than I did with any of the tube amps I have owned over the 43 years I have played guitar. From cutting funk to twangy C&W to fat, woody archtop tones, I've had no difficulty getting clean sounds from the Axe-Fx. It would be interesting to hear precisely what your friend was looking for and in what way he believed the Axe-Fx fell short.
 
Radley said:
Scott Peterson said:
I'll disagree.

Since V9.0 the cleans are really good. I'll also say that careful attention and exploration of what is possible with IR's are important to getting it right.

IMHO, YMMV.
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Scott,

I hope you're not disagreeing with me, because as I said, I have been getting some very nice clean sounds - most of the time I have the (120 pf) bright cap engaged for 'silkiness'. For the most part, we talk about medium to high gain sounds here, so it's nice to get back to the fundamental, basic clean tones.
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With your friend that didn't like the clean tones. I do like them. :D
 
I get pretty good clean sounds with the Axe-Fx. I mostly use the Blackface, the JC120 and the Vibro, all with the stock cabs. I also have a new preset with a clean Mark IV.
The choice of the cab/mic is very important and makes the difference.
 
Well it sounds to me like most of us are rather happy with the clean tones we are getting from the AFX - I'm not sure what my cohort was looking for in a clean tone (I will ask him soon since we tour together), but I feel the overall consensus is strongly positive concerning the AFX clean tonality. :cool:
 
Just woke up from last night's gig. About 2/3 of what we played last night was centered around clean tones I dialed on the Ultra. I did spend about four hours dialing those patches in...

Several slamming guitarists, a couple producers, a couple engineers, some club owners and a heap of our fans were there last night (it was a party marking our signing to Ropeadope) and nearly every single one came up to me in between sets to say how good our sound was in the room. All sorts of people looking for my amp...and 2/3 of the music was "clean".

Me likey.

Like any other patch in the Axe, it takes time to tune to taste. BTW, thanks to Jay and Radley for the reverb suggestions...that helped with the "clean in the room" tones last night!

BF3
 
For me I find that they can be harder to dial in. I'm not using Redwires yet and it sounds like they will help aid in tunning things but you definitly need to spend a little more time with them. Guitar choice is big factor in this one as well. With certain sims my Fender Elite can get some real glassy tones when compaired to my PRS with a taped single coil. I also found that the Reactor helped a lot when it came to the cleans, it gave the upper end that alive sound that you hear from a real amp.
 
A few folks have chimed in to say that if people aren't digging the cleans from the Axe, it is likely the IR's. Also, Scott Peterson sort of hinted at that by saying that the the IR's are the key to getting really good cleans.

I (almost exclusively) using the AC30 amp for cleans, but I use a real guitar 2X12 cab. I love the sounds I get. Some times I go direct and flip on cabs in the axe-fx and don't love my sounds as much. However, I have always felt like I could dial my sounds in for running into a FRFR speaker very easily and could get the same, or better sounding than I get through my real cab.

There are so many variable in the sound that when some one says they're not happy with the Axe, I usually don't know where to begin, but in this case, I would say it is either the IR's that your friend isn't happy with, or it is pilot error. As much as I hate to chalk it up to that, I think a lot of people who buy Axe's and then send them back must be doing something wrong because it seems like a lot of people on this list who are rabid axe-fx tone fans were not happy until they tweaked their rigs for a few weeks.

-Phil
 
Philip said:
There are so many variable in the sound that when some one says they're not happy with the Axe, I usually don't know where to begin, but in this case, I would say it is either the IR's that your friend isn't happy with, or it is pilot error. As much as I hate to chalk it up to that, I think a lot of people who buy Axe's and then send them back must be doing something wrong because it seems like a lot of people on this list who are rabid axe-fx tone fans were not happy until they tweaked their rigs for a few weeks.
-Phil
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Very true. We have SO many options/parameters within the AFX - a 'quick listen' can never reveal the full potential. Like everyone else, I am still learning new ways to create sounds.
 
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