Axe-Fx II Firmware Version 12.04 Public Beta

Without lengthy preamble, I would suggest any prior presets you may have made are now defunct. I built a few presets on defaults with minor tweaks, and came up with sounds that had me ignoring my family for roughly 4 hours. Existing presets did not fully take advantage of the 'way things are now'.

While I felt overall improvements are evident, there are small things that make huge differences. Question my manliness, but I've always wanted to nail Styx's 'Castle Walls' tone on the break, and with a JVM model, and a 'Tetrode ideal' tube change, that odd crispiness I've wanted was in the fookin' house.

For those who want an easy fix to a Plexi, pull up 'Seans' Plexi' preset, dial bass to taste, crank up the Sag, LF Res, and welcome to 'my' ideal Plexi tone. It's not forgiving, but it has a very nice 'sing' to it if you treat it well.

R
 
So, I haven't had a chance to play with the new fw yet. Has anyone gotten to a point of abandoning aftermarket IRs in favor of the stock ones, and just compensating with all the tonal options in the box?
 
OK Cliff.....now I'm getting some magic in my Beyer 880s. I diddled with MV and Low Res on the Friedman HBE, then the VibroVerb in my go to version of the Ultraverb preset and finally a round with the TWLiverpool. All of them did indeed pick-up some 'amp in the room' feel after some tweaking. I do agree as some have stated, I will have to rebuild my go to presets around the new character......small price to pay.

Two questions.....

1) The TWLiverpool is just awesome, but the low end is muddy. When I try to take out the low end it looses some of its' character. My best results so far have been from just rolling the bass knob way down on the amp. Any alternate suggestions to tighten up the low end and keep the mojo?

2) Dialing in the MV sweet spot is tough for me. Aside from getting my wife to twist the knob (the MV knob :D) while I play and listen, it is hard to play-stop-adjust-play-stop-adjust-play.......and be sure I've found the best spot. Anybody have a technique or trick for this.
 
RossE said:
OK Cliff.....now I'm getting some magic in my Beyer 880s. I diddled with MV and Low Res on the Friedman HBE, then the VibroVerb in my go to version of the Ultraverb preset and finally a round with the TWLiverpool. All of them did indeed pick-up some 'amp in the room' feel after some tweaking. I do agree as some have stated, I will have to rebuild my go to presets around the new character......small price to pay.

Two questions.....

1) The TWLiverpool is just awesome, but the low end is muddy. When I try to take out the low end it looses some of its' character. My best results so far have been from just rolling the bass knob way down on the amp. Any alternate suggestions to tighten up the low end and keep the mojo?

2) Dialing in the MV sweet spot is tough for me. Aside from getting my wife to twist the knob (the MV knob :D) while I play and listen, it is hard to play-stop-adjust-play-stop-adjust-play.......and be sure I've found the best spot. Anybody have a technique or trick for this.
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Record dry into DAW, and loop it, then you can tweak while the riff plays :)
 
Is the "KT66" tube type in the new firmware the same as the KT66HP? That was my favorite tube of all time for my dual rectifier back in the day, it just sounded so big for whatever reason.
 
rsf1977_again said:
Is the "KT66" tube type in the new firmware the same as the KT66HP? That was my favorite tube of all time for my dual rectifier back in the day, it just sounded so big for whatever reason.
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FractalAudio said:
Well, the fact is that power tubes do NOT sound different. They do not have any intrinsic tone.

"But I can hear the difference when I change to a different type of power tube. How can that be?"

A power tube has a very flat frequency response and they all clip roughly the same. If you put a resistive dummy load on a tube power amp (assuming it doesn't have any intentional frequency shaping) it will measure very flat. However a speaker is not a resistive load. A speaker is a highly reactive load. As I've mentioned in the other threads in this forum section a speaker has an impedance that is sort of scooped at the midrange frequencies.

It is the impedance of the speaker that affects the tone of the amp and different types of power tubes react differently with that impedance. As I've mentioned before a power tube is nearly a current source. The operative word here is "nearly". No power tube has an infinite plate impedance and that's why power tubes sound different. A current source has infinite output impedance, an actual power tube has a finite output impedance.
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;)
 
guitardoc said:
That's the main 'problem' with guitarists. They just want to play guitar and not study amp building technologies in order to get a decent tone out if this magic box. Not complaining, just stating.
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This was not refered to "guitarists" either...just stating too! :p Read the latest posts @ the german board
 
steverosburg said:
Yep, I know how it works. The scene controller value in a valid patch which worked correctly on 12.03 had values like Controller 2 Scene 1 = 10%, Controller 2 Scene 2 = 15%, etc. for delay feedback. When I created a brand new preset, I didn't even set up any controller values, so they were all initialized to 0% (which I verified by looking at controller values), and even then I get the infinite repeat problem. When I switch to "None" as the modifier source and just use a fixed value like 20% it behaves as-expected.
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hi, finally had some time with the axe fx and tried to recreate what you experienced.
and yes, i now know what you were talking about.
the feedback control had min at -100% and max at 100%
setting the controller 2 at either 0% or 100% will cause your feedback issue.
setting it at 50% as what cliff suggested solved the problem.
a bit late in my response so i figured you've probably sorted it out by now.
 
Although I can't understand the fear of 13 in this modern age, wouldn't it be cool to instead have names for the major upgrades? Little bit like Android or Intel processors have names for different versions...
Imagine: The new firmware " Holy Shitballs" is now available for download.
 
just spent the last half hour or so playing through just one amp/cab combo: the suhr badger 18 paired with pete thorn's ir.
dimed the mv and raised the low res a smidgen. all other parameters at default.
very nice indeed!

off topic:
Chris@KatsuKuriMedia said:
check out my Scene Controller video if you're not sure:
Scene Controllers in the Axe-FX II – Basics : Katsu Kuri Media Blog
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didn't realize you had a video on this until i saw your post above. thanks for taking time to do this. your vids on setting up the mfc helped a lot when i got my unit. will be sure to check out your new videos soon. keep'em comin'!
 
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this upgrade is insane...
one day before the update i complained to my friend about the uncontrolledness in the bass region (arount 110 Hz), and one day after this update was uploaded.
the flubbyness is gone, and it sounds 3d (if you ask what it is, i won't be able to explain it :) )
and imo it is very logical to prepare this fw BEFORE the hi-res cabs, because it will increase the amount of some low frequencies, as i saw it from the sample frequency graph. these two will be killer imo!
 
Thank you Cliff for yet another great FW update.

This 12.04 Beta is absolutely wonderful.
I loaded it less than an hour before I had to leave for a gig where I was standing in for a friend.
I made a few very minor adjustments to my Tweed Deluxe, Dirty Shirley and Comet Concorde presets and decided to run the risk of gigging a Beta FW, as it sounded stunningly good and seemed 100% stable with these 3 simple presets.
It sounded glorious at the gig and the FOH tech just loved my sound, he left the EQ of my channel completely flat and only adjusted the level to fit the mix.
I ended up using the Dirty Shirley > 90 % of the time and just used the volume on my guitar and my PEQ boost and drive pedal to control tone and volume.
It's a good time to be a guitarist :)
 
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