Anyone with a II try to cop an SRV tone yet?

That is the piece de resistance of any tube amp or modeler. It's easy to get the extremes of either a clean, or a high gain, sound. The true test is that buttery, greasy mild overdrive rich with creamy harmonic distortion at the sweet spot where great tube amps start bending (Matchless, Divided By Thirteen, Dumble, Two Rock etc). Looking forward to hearing that from the Axe Fx II, as well.
 
cinealta said:
That is the piece de resistance of any tube amp or modeler. It's easy to get the extremes of either a clean, or a high gain, sound. The true test is that buttery, greasy mild overdrive rich with creamy harmonic distortion at the sweet spot where great tube amps start bending (Matchless, Divided By Thirteen, Dumble, Two Rock etc). Looking forward to hearing that from the Axe Fx II, as well.
Click to expand...

This. I've owned quite a few different Two Rocks and Dumble-voiced amps and I have yet to hear that compressed, slightly nasal OD come out of an Axe-Fx. To my ears the gainy stuff on the Axe-Fx all seem to have that high end fizzle and hiss associated with digital modelers. The Tweed models sound kinda sterile too and if I have to use a tube power amp or tube driven speaker cabinet to get that feel and sound then I may be a little disappointed, but I'm still gonna plunk my $$$ down and hear for my own ears.
 
phillyred79 said:
This. I've owned quite a few different Two Rocks and Dumble-voiced amps and I have yet to hear that compressed, slightly nasal OD come out of an Axe-Fx. To my ears the gainy stuff on the Axe-Fx all seem to have that high end fizzle and hiss associated with digital modelers. The Tweed models sound kinda sterile too and if I have to use a tube power amp or tube driven speaker cabinet to get that feel and sound then I may be a little disappointed, but I'm still gonna plunk my $$$ down and hear for my own ears.
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Agree. The Axe Fx was a very good modeler, but not that close to my modest Mesa F-50 in terms of real tube amp feel or tone.
The high gain stuff was maybe better than Line 6 or other hardware software modelers, but not earth shattering.
I sold it. Am interested in the II, but you can't get one.
 
The first part of this video (the Larry Mitchell clip referenced above) sort of flirts with SRV territory:
link

I'd really like to hear someone pull it off too. My current main amp is a Super Reverb, which slays, but is SO loud when you get it into the sweet spot. I'd love to be able to pull off a tone comparable to it with the Axe II...
 
sorry not even close
Great tone for sure but NOT the same

Get out your soldering iron and get to work .........
Just take a look at the size of the caps in the power supply not to mention the xformers and tube rectification just in the the power supply of the Super/Vibroverb

Have any of you actually heard stevie play live?

Believe it or not his tone sucked in the early 80's
until cesar and others where so inspired by him to
design specific mod's to existing circuit designs
to bring out his tonal soul

Axe is the ultimate FX hands down and can certainly stand on it's own
But C'mon SRV's bottled tone..........
maybe AXE FX LXVIII;)
 
I had to double check I was on the Fractal forum when I read some of the posts above ... I thought I had accidently stumbled on to Harmony Central. Thanks for sharing.
 
Cainer said:
The first part of this video (the Larry Mitchell clip referenced above) sort of flirts with SRV territory:
link

I'd really like to hear someone pull it off too. My current main amp is a Super Reverb, which slays, but is SO loud when you get it into the sweet spot. I'd love to be able to pull off a tone comparable to it with the Axe II...
Click to expand...

He's a phenomenal player and that's for certain!! :) here comes the but... BUT, there is a certain mid range hump missing to my ears.. the solos sound great, but I hear that certain digital squishiness when 3 or more notes are strummed.. Again, I'm all about digital getting ever so close, but give this man a DRRI, maybe a Klon, TIM, EP Booster, and God forbid some sort of Tube Screamer incarnation and look out! I do plan on getting an Axe-Fx II as soon as my internet connection lets me refresh fast enough!
 
phillyred79 said:
BUT, there is a certain mid range hump missing to my ears.. the solos sound great, but I hear that certain digital squishiness when 3 or more notes are strummed.
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It's amazing how faithfully the Youtube audio compression can reproduce that three-note digital squishiness coming out of the Axe FX, into a power amp of some sort, recorded by some unknown setup. They must have hired Cliff to write their algorithms. Sorry, this is an old trope and I'm tired...
 
Wolfy said:
It's amazing how faithfully the Youtube audio compression can reproduce that three-note digital squishiness coming out of the Axe FX, into a power amp of some sort, recorded by some unknown setup. They must have hired Cliff to write their algorithms. Sorry, this is an old trope and I'm tired...
Click to expand...
Amen...
 
Wolfy said:
It's amazing how faithfully the Youtube audio compression can reproduce that three-note digital squishiness coming out of the Axe FX, into a power amp of some sort, recorded by some unknown setup. They must have hired Cliff to write their algorithms. Sorry, this is an old trope and I'm tired...
Click to expand...

To put this point a different way, imagine the following study:

1. Record a bunch of clips of people playing actual mic'd amps, along with a bunch of clips of people playing direct through reasonably set up Axe II presets with amp and cabinet modelling.
2. Get a group of guitarists who self-report that they don't believe that amp modelling is "quite there yet".
3. Have the participants listen to the clips, but lie to them and tell them that all of them are from the Axe II.
4. For each clip, ask the participant if the clip sounds just like the real amp, or if they can tell the difference.

I would make the following predictions about the results of this study:

1. Listeners would report that some of the real amp clips don't sound quite like the real thing.
2. Listeners would report that some of the real amp clips have discernible "digital hiss".
3. There would be little (if any) difference between the real amp clips and the Axe II clips in terms of how likely listeners would be to report that they didn't sound quite like the real thing. (If the clips were compressed to YouTube quality, my confidence that this point would hold would be even higher.)

In general, properly set up blind tests regarding a variety of audio quality issues have shown time and time again that people's ears are nowhere near as good as they think they are, particularly among experts. In my opinion, it is better to forget about where the sound came from and just focus on whether you personally like it or not.

orpeus
 
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orpeus said:
To put this point a different way, imagine the following study:

1. Record a bunch of clips of people playing actual mic'd amps, along with a bunch of clips of people playing direct through reasonably set up Axe II presets with amp and cabinet modelling.
2. Get a group of guitarists who self-report that they don't believe that amp modelling is "quite there yet".
3. Have the participants listen to the clips, but lie to them and tell them that all of them are from the Axe II.
4. For each clip, ask the participant if the clip sounds just like the real amp, or if they can tell the difference.

I would make the following predictions about the results of this study:

1. Listeners would report that some of the real amp clips don't sound quite like the real thing.
2. Listeners would report that some of the real amp clips have discernible "digital hiss".
3. There would be little (if any) difference between the real amp clips and the Axe II clips in terms of how likely listeners would be to report that they didn't sound quite like the real thing. (If the clips were compressed to YouTube quality, my confidence that this point would hold would be even higher.)

In general, properly set up blind tests regarding a variety of audio quality issues have shown time and time again that people's ears are nowhere near as good as they think they are, particularly among experts. In my opinion, it is better to forget about where the sound came from and just focus on whether you personally like it or not.

orpeus
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Totally agree. However, with that said, there are certain low-gain breakup sounds that I have really strived for on my Ultra and have not quite been able to nail, and unfortunately for me they're some of my favorite sounds. I can get close, but not 100%. This could certainly be due to my lack of ability (both in playing and dialing in a specific tone), but I'm really looking forward to seeing what the Axe-Fx II can do in this area.
 
cinealta said:
That is the piece de resistance of any tube amp or modeler. It's easy to get the extremes of either a clean, or a high gain, sound. The true test is that buttery, greasy mild overdrive rich with creamy harmonic distortion at the sweet spot where great tube amps start bending (Matchless, Divided By Thirteen, Dumble, Two Rock etc). Looking forward to hearing that from the Axe Fx II, as well.
Click to expand...

I would say also, that the "Brian May" sound falls squarely into this category, and which I've yet to hear a convincing reproduction from the Axe.
 
phillyred79 said:
To my ears the gainy stuff on the Axe-Fx all seem to have that high end fizzle and hiss associated with digital modelers.
Click to expand...

BS

just yesterday I played an old AC-30 for quite some time and man, that thing had piercing highs. Nothing gentle or pleasant about it. And that was in the room and not close mic'ed. Same experience with Framus Dragon/Cobra and Rectifiers...

associating high end 'fizz' with digital simply perpetautes a very common misconception.
 
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