AX8 high gain issue - please help

B

Bestial

Member
Hi guys,
last week I finally made up my mind and pulled the trigger on brand new AX8. It came in an undamaged package and everything seemed fine. I plugged in and gave it a go with some high gain stock stuff. Well, factory presets of most products sound underwhelming but from what I read and heard (YT), they should sound at least ok. Not so much. Tons of bass, no definition, lack of dynamics, felt lifeless. Sure, this unit needs a hell of tweaking so I opened AX8-Edit and tried. Either I made it fizzy as hell and it was even more flat, or boomy. Needless to say, I'm new to it all. Let's try some custom presets from exchange and youtube (most of them 8.X and 9.X. I loaded like 20 of them. Clean sounds? Amazing! High-gain sounds? Bad... Same issue here. All of them had so much bass it was hard to hear anything else, although beneath there was clearly improvement of tone. Yet they all were without any life. Lacking bass "chug" and definition. High gain should roar.
Hours of tweeking while watching loads of videos and reading 18 pages of AX8 forum. Some results, but the dynamics and definition weren't there. It felt same like my old Line6 PODxt.

I thought "Ok, something is wrong, let's find out what it is."
Chacked power amp and cab simulation both in setting and grid. Used 2 guitars (different PU), 3 cables, changed I/O settings. Resetted unit settings. Plugged straight into audio interface. Went to my rehearsal room to try through mix into Mackie Thumb 15A (I know, suboptimal but better than what I have at home.). Nothing.
So I plugged into my Engl Fireball. Instant joy! Yes, you can argue that captured cabinet and amp in the room are two vastly different things, they are. Engl's gain singed. It felt like an amp. AX8 was boomy something with a sizzle on top of it.

I went to a local store and tried Helix LT through Yamaha DSR12. It was a night and day. Sure, stock presets were not wonderful, but they had definition, adequate bass response, muting "chug" and they felt alive. High freq sizzle as there but adjusting that took few minutes.
I thought Yamaha cabinet finally did the difference. Then we plugged in the AX8 and it was true disappointment. Not much has changed. Some of the flubbyness was gone but rest remained uninspiring and without dynamics.
The shop assistant who was serving me said, he actually knows AXE-FX from his friend and it sounds incredibly good and to him this AX8 was shockingly bad. We tried to go through same presets and tweek it there but it was all the same.

Today I donwloaded free OwnHammer IR from their wesbsite. There are nice sounding with wide options but it's to no aid when whole sounds like under a rug.

May I ask you for help? Any suggestions are very welcome indeed.
Thank you.
 
Bestial said:
80-140 Hz low cut
6500-8750 Hz high cut
Click to expand...

Looks ok. At least boominess should be gone.

I had the same overall feeling, but after 2 weeks of tweaking I managed to make usable FRFR ready patches for rehearsal / gig volumes. Still not perfect though. Plugging into poweramp and a guitar cab gave much better results.

Plug into Engl's return and turn off the poweramp and cab sim :) Let us know if it still sounds lifeless...

And let's do some test: tell me, how do those presets (Leon Todd's Recto) played on Mackie or other FRFR speaker work for you:



https://www.dropbox.com/sh/oohdp7becvea888/AADsJQ4tGFAA_Cyhs_rIJ-Nta?dl=0
 
I will give it a try :)

Reason why I bought AX8 is to surpass guitar power amp and guitar cabinet so if it will give it a "life", it's no good to me either, but I will bring light at the issue at least and maybe help others.
I tried about 10 Leon's presets as they sound amazing on YT. Same result, but I will give this one shot. Thank you :)
 
Bestial said:
I tried about 10 Leon's presets as they sound amazing on YT. Same result, but I will give this one shot. Thank you :)
Click to expand...

Hint: I do think those presets sound great, as recorded by Leon, but on my unit, at rehearsal volume, they are completely unusable. I wonder what would be your feelings, and which way would you turn the knobs to make those usable - provided your impressions are the same.
 
There are two ways of thinking about it.
1st) AX8 knobs accessible on the front panel (same as real amp) - more Presence, less Bass, less Depth (but there's none).
2nd) Via AX8 Edit - more Bright, slightly more Presence, High Cut depending on Presence level, Low Cut up to 180 Hz maybe, less Master Volume and more Level, slightly more Definition in preamp, less or no Proximity in Cab settings, maybe GEQ

For me it lacks drive as most of the presets and I'm unable to find right way to set appropriate girth in the AX8.
 
For whatever reason the ax8 has inherently more 250hz and less sub (dynamic depth control) than it's real-life counterparts. Try cutting 250 between 2-3db and boosting the dynamic depth a little. Another parameter to check is the speaker resoance. Other than that, it's pretty dead-on .
 
Bestial said:
Thanks a lot :)
Click to expand...

Not a problem, I hope it helps. I will say that I get equally gnarly recorded tones from my amps and ax8 (along with tens of thousands of other people) so if something doesn't sound right, it's absolutely user error (which I have been guilty of).
 
Well some time with the tweeking helped a ton. Thank you for the 250 Hz cut. I put GEQ (pre P.A.) and it cleared it up tremendously with some other adjustments. Still can't get the right gain for single string muting, but now the unit is fairly useable :D Will try to put it through better speakers and Engl's PA + guitar cabinet on Monday.
 
There could be something wrong with your AX8. One more thing you can try, in the amp block, speaker tab, turn the low resonance way down, or just turn the freq down below 80hz or so and see if that clears out the mud
 
:) I'm happy to report, I finally made it work!
After hours and hours of tweeking I was desperate. I made two presets that didn't sound bad but mostly like my Line6 POD. I was almost determined to send it back.
One more time I went to rehearsal place to plug it into PA or try it with my Engl's power amp + guitar cabinet. The first option was fizzy, weird and didn't please me at all. The second one tho was actually good. Sadly it defies porpose but well, at least something.

Last step was trying Yamaha DXR 10 in a store. HELL YEAH! It roars!
That thing is tiny! Even cute I'd say. It was the very fist time I enjoyed playing the AX8! :D
 
If you call brand new Mackie Thump 15A crap, yes.
Yamaha DXR 10 was the first thing that made it sound good. But there was a crazy amount of tweaking before it sounded decent at all. Mostly presence adjustment and GEQ (250 Hz decrease) helped, but there was loads of stuff. Nothing like "It sounds good out of the box".
 
Bestial said:
If you call brand new Mackie Thump 15A crap, yes.
Yamaha DXR 10 was the first thing that made it sound good. But there was a crazy amount of tweaking before it sounded decent at all. Mostly presence adjustment and GEQ (250 Hz decrease) helped, but there was loads of stuff. Nothing like "It sounds good out of the box".
Click to expand...

Just because a speaker is not linear it doesn't mean it's crap. Best example is a guitar cab ;)

We have an RCF PA in our rehearsal space and it doesn't seem to be compatible with my AX8 presets either. It's rocks for vocals, drums and bass but it doesn't seem to like guitars. Well, that's what EQs were made for I'd say.
 
I just looked up the Thump15 and it is not claiming to be flat and I'm not surprised it could be challenging to get a guitar out of it without some EQ since it has built in speaker models.
Anyway - welcome to the AX8. I love mine, usually play it through a high end church system and it sounds spectacular. My advice would be to start creating patches from scratch, Amp+Cab though your PA and then add from there. The way you would add effects to a real amp once you have a good clean sound.
 

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