AX8 Reference Guide

Mateo11

Inspired
Hey everyone!

I made a condensed AX8 reference guide using Excel spread sheets for myself and figured it may be useful to some of you as well.

Since getting the AX8 a couple months ago I have been shoulders deep in the FANTASTIC & GLORIOUS "Yek's Guide to the Fractal Amp Models pdf." I'm not sure how I would have gotten along with out it. Its been priceless.

In addition to constantly referencing Yek's guide I also spent a TON of time referencing Wiki, the forum here & manual (of course) and user JMA's AWESOME "Amp and Cab Quick Reference pdf."

All of these have been extremely helpful to me understanding and unlocking the beauty of this wonderful black box.

What I was running into though was constantly scrolling & flipping through back and forth between all the documents mentioned above. I wanted to condense all this info down the best I could in a way that made sense to me and have it all in one document. Not sure if its my German heritage or OCD :) but I have a slight obsession to organize, categorize & consolidate/declutter data to help me as I learn. So I spent my entire holiday weekend putting this together. :)

I figured if it may help me it may help someone else out and I want to contribute to the Fractal community too!

I want to be clear though NONE of this work is my own. I just condensed the info I felt was most important to me when working with the AX8 from Yek's guide, Wiki, manual and JMA's guide etc. I made sure to mention this as well on every page in the spreadsheet because credit should go where its due. This is just a quick reference guide and if you want the full enchilada PLEASE visit and relish in all of the above documents. If you haven't they are all well worth it.

So this is what I did:

- I took all the Amps in the AX8 that have been modeled after real world amps and grouped them by manufacturer ie Fender/Friedman/Bogner etc and/circuit type/style like VOX & Dumble
- I included the # of Fractal models & Fractal names for each modeled amp
- Listed next to each amp are the recommended speaker types/options and stock cabs (underlined)
- Included which controls are present on the real world amp and as applied to the AX8 (best I could this was kinda tricky)
- Notes/Tips as pertains to the application, sound and dialing in of each amp
- # of inputs on the real world amp and what each input correspond to ie Hi & Lo | Normal & Brilliant etc
- Any notes that seemed relative like famous users, award winning, listed as collectible etc
- info like Tube types pre & power, Neg feedback No Neg FB, Tonestack location etc
- Added some pics (Hopefully these display ok) I am a novice with Excel so this whole thing may be a jumbled mess :)

I also added a separate Amp Block guide based off of JMA's document. I added some notes from Cliffs Tech notes section here on the forum (which is awesome) & the Fractal manual. I really tried to dial it down to simple basic info for the advanced amp parameters so when dialing in an amp you can quickly find which parameter will suit what tone shape you are trying to accomplish. I added a little section to the side to make it easier to find the correct parameter for common tone shaping issues too.

Lastly I attached the Cab list from Wiki for quick reference for pairing an amp model with the recommended speaker/cab. If you picked an amp model that say works well with Alnico Blue Speakers you can quickly & easily find which stock cabs have those speakers.

Theres bound to be some mistakes I made in this ( I am only one man!) but I was very careful in making sure to double check everything best I could. If its something thats glaring and misleading please let me know and I will fix it. I did lock the sheets just like they were a pdf that could not be edited but I left the workbook unprotected so if you see too many mistakes and its frustrating to you just copy one of my sheets as a template and paste to a new sheet and make changes as you see fit.

Thanks again to Yek and JMA for doing the actual hard work and I hope they don't mind sharing the info in this document.

FYI - You will (obviously) need Excel to open

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gojsk7jmfl8v0wa/AX8 Quick Reference.xlsx?dl=0

Enjoy!
 
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This is a great view. I'm not able to see the values in the settings all I see is a rectangle. I'm using excel on a Mac.
 
This is a great view. I'm not able to see the values in the settings all I see is a rectangle. I'm using excel on a Mac.

There are no values in the control panel section. The rectangles (Mac) or checkmark (Microsoft) are just showing what controls are used. The values are listed--for some amps--in the comments below the control panel.
 
Tausend (or 200plus) dank, Mateo. This is great and more at a glance than anything I have seen. Plus now I have an excuse to buy a bigger computer monitor ;-)
 
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