Axe-Fx III block to simulate FreqOut?

I had 3 pedals stopping me from going all axeIII (drop and freqout and a stutter) - with the pitch improvements this year I was able to drop the drop. Hoping this will be next someday!
 
I pulled this pedal back out of storage, in an attempt to make it work.

Has anyone solved the weird little chirp or whistle artifact at the end of the FreqOut “feedback”? It exposes its unnatural source. I have been tweaking knobs and settings, but it still surfaces. I can’t be the only one that hears it, unless mine is defective.

By the way, I decided to take another shot with the FreqOut, because the Dawner Prince Boonar sounds so flipping great in an Out-In loop. It isn’t echo. It isn’t reverb. It’s Gilmour.

The only way I've found to avoid the chirp is to use it manually in momentary mode, and even then I get glitches sometimes if I'm not off the switch fast enough before I release the note. Sometimes it seems to hold a bit beyond when the switch is released.
 
@RevDrucifer Sweet song. You got it way more natural than I did. I tried it both with and without compressor. I probably need to fiddle with the pedal more to get settings I like but I was able to improve it some by adjusting the gain/onset.

@flcmcya Thanks for pointing me to that thread, didn't see it. I went to that Mark Day axe-change preset. I was able to also get that patch to work on high gain settings (copied the compressor and pitch blocks to block library and then could paste it into whatever I want). I was using an expression pedal and not a switch that time, but it takes quite a learning curve on how to make it sound natural. I may try a switch instead.

I wasn't able to get that compressor/pitch block combo from the Mark Day preset to work as nicely with my Hendrix preset (been using star spangle banner to test). Once again, that may be user issues because I'm trying to fade a pitch/feedback and using a wah at same time. Going to keep messing with this.

Back to the FreqOut, I tried moving it out front this morning. The issue I am going to have is my current setup (still building). I have my pedals rack mounted, chain going Fat Fuzz Factory -> Analogman '68 mod Fuzz Face -> FX3, ultimately those pedals to be in looper (w/out buffer) such as RJM Mini Effects Gizmo but I'm waiting for the new one to come out before I buy a device. As such, I am trying to solve FreqOut in the loop so I can keep it in the rack. Otherwise, I would have to run a cable out and back from the rack to hook up to the looper to have the FreqOut on the pedalboard. I tried putting the FreqOut in front of the fuzz and that was a hot mess (as expected/buffer).

At this point, totally open to figuring out how to make the FreqOut work for my application or how to get the pitch block to work for me. Will keep tinkering (not enough hours in day).
 
The only way I've found to avoid the chirp is to use it manually in momentary mode, and even then I get glitches sometimes if I'm not off the switch fast enough before I release the note. Sometimes it seems to hold a bit beyond when the switch is released.

Same here. The other thing I have noticed is that it gets confused with which note of a chord it should pitch up, even when using an octave. It will start with the low note and then glitch into a higher one.

Since I am using the FreqOut in manual, I have been playing with using the Pitch Detector to trigger post FreqOut effects (compression and tremolo), but using the FO manually means I can't use a volume pedal to swell in the effect.

Overall, I can get one semi-real feedback tone out of it, but it feels like a 3 legged one trick pony. Considering that the FreqOut is a digital effect, it has to be possible for the Axe to replicate (and of course improve). A feedback block with Fractal levels of control would be a must have feature for players from some genres that could bring over a lot of analog players.

In the meantime, I am counting on all the super smart Fractal masters on this thread to get us closer.
 
feels like a 3 legged one trick pony.
+1 - It's a cool pedal, and probably the best at what it does (there aren't many pedals that do this), but flawed - if you are holding a note for feedback and do any bending within that, the FO freaks out - and forget about using a guitar kill switch for stutter during feedback as it will stop FO in its tracks - I have it in a loop, always on with loop attached to an expression pedal feeding to main signal before amp. With the right mix and pedal modifier settings it sound totally natural in small controlled doses - let it go on too long and it goes off the rails (I know compressor / delay etc can enhance FOs capability but the reason I got the pedal was so I would not have to use Axefx resources for that effect, so nah, I don't have a compressor/delay dedicated to it).
 
+1 - It's a cool pedal, and probably the best at what it does (there aren't many pedals that do this), but flawed - if you are holding a note for feedback and do any bending within that, the FO freaks out - and forget about using a guitar kill switch for stutter during feedback as it will stop FO in its tracks - I have it in a loop, always on with loop attached to an expression pedal feeding to main signal before amp. With the right mix and pedal modifier settings it sound totally natural in small controlled doses - let it go on too long and it goes off the rails (I know compressor / delay etc can enhance FOs capability but the reason I got the pedal was so I would not have to use Axefx resources for that effect, so nah, I don't have a compressor/delay dedicated to it).


It’s definitely got a learning curve to it. You kind of have to play the pedal as much as you are the guitar and even then, it can be unpredictable sometimes. To be fair, I had to do about 15 takes of that solo in the song above to get the feedback notes to ring out/sustain properly. I was also tracking loud enough that I was getting some natural feedback going on, so that may have played a part in it. It was a Strat with an SSL-5, so not exactly the highest output. With my JEM, I can get that bastard to sing all day long.

I’ve tried putting a Drive pedal in front of it just to boost the input a little more, but it ended up sounding like gargled garbage. I’m assuming this is why many have gone the compressor route.
 
I had 3 pedals stopping me from going all axeIII (drop and freqout and a stutter) - with the pitch improvements this year I was able to drop the drop. Hoping this will be next someday!

For me, it's Drop, Freqout, and Mimiq.

With this preset, I no longer need the Mimiq: https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/tc-mimiq-preset.164082/

The pitch block in the AxeFX III is every bit as good as the Drop pedal, but if I'm using a preset that doesn't have the virtual capo, or can't because of cpu, I'll just turn on the Drop pedal.

The Freqout pedal remains. I've got a guitar with a Sustainiac, which is much better than the Freqout, but if I'm using a guitar without a sustainiac, nothing can beat a Freqout.
 
With the Axe III, I was able to use my Drop pedal somewhere else. I have a Freqout on my board and it works great!

I re-purposed the Drop pedal to my incoming FM3 board to save some memory use on the unit so that I use a few more FX on it instead.
 
Maybe the compressor is giving it too much juice? Is the compressor before or after the pedal?

I have mine as the first thing after the Input, nothing else in line with it and use a momentary switch to control it. I had to tweak the pedal itself, the offset and the gain, to get it to work as it normally would in front of an amp. I’d say it’s about 98% there. I’ll post up a preset/sound clip tonight. I actually just used it all over the place on a new song I wrote.

This is still a work in progress, if you go to 1:19, 3:23 you can hear it used for some end-of-note feedback swells (I‘m fading in with a volume pedal then hitting the momentary switch) then it’s all over the solo at the end, when you hear the notes shoot up an octave, almost like a whammy pedal, but there’s no slide up in pitch. Solo starts at 5:42.

Really nice song!
 
Really nice song!

Thanks, brother. That was one that just flew out of me faster than I could keep up. The version posted was my truck mix, which I use when I have the general idea down and want to listen to it 100x to figure out what I want to tweak. I’ve recorded about 100 different versions of the chorus but haven’t nailed it yet, going back at it tonight. Already tweak a few things, drum velocities and some EQ stuff here and there. Rarely do I impress my father, so I was extra stoked when this sone accomplished that without even being finished.

That entire song started with me picking up my Strat and the first thing that came out is the first riff you hear in the song. Once I recorded that, the rest of the song flooded in my head and I was on a mad dash to get all the ideas down before they disappeared.
 
That entire song started with me picking up my Strat and the first thing that came out is the first riff you hear in the song. Once I recorded that, the rest of the song flooded in my head and I was on a mad dash to get all the ideas down before they disappeared.
It's wonderful the rare times that happens.
Anyway, I hear quite a bit of Floydian influences, am I right? :)

EDIT: I just saw the black strat in your avatar so.. stupid question :sweatsmile:
 
It's wonderful the rare times that happens.
Anyway, I hear quite a bit of Floydian influences, am I right? :)

EDIT: I just saw the black strat in your avatar so.. stupid question :sweatsmile:

That Black Strat was one of Gilmour’s he received when Fended released his sig. They had a photographer at Christie’s taking pics of anyone who wanted to put it on. Who knows if Gilmour ever played that particular one, but it was one of his!

And I unashamedly ripped off Floyd/Gilmour as much as I could with the chorus and the solo section. The choir voices are directly influenced from Gilmour’s acoustic version of “High Hopes” from the Meltdown concert and the solo is me getting as close as I can without actually playing the “High Hopes” solo. :cool:
 
Nice one Rev!

Fiddler... It does take a bit to get it dialed in and I don't find it as convincing as the real thing ....but it's close enough for me.

I use a control switch to toggle it in and out..... around 2000ms on the attack for a nice fade in, maybe 300 for the release as I don't want it to linger when I turn it back off.
You could also set the switch to be momentary but I just toggle it so I don't fall off stage! :oops:
 
I set an alarm on my phone to remind myself to post one of the presets I have using it in the loop. I’ll also post a pic of the face of the pedal so the settings can be seen. While it’s not 100% just like keeping it in front of an amp/input, it’s about 97% there, which is good enough for what I’m doing with it.
 
I think the problem with most (if not all) of the patches people have posted is that they don't sound like real feedback. While I guess they could be considered passable, they feel a bit artificial. There is way too much emphasis on boosting a block as well as whatever the pitch block settings are. Real feedback pushes the output of your cab back thru your whole chain over and over again. The current solutions limit to whatever the Pitch Block is set to which makes it feel too artificial imo.

I've toyed with the idea of using the Filter Block set to FB comb and trying to manipulate that via a Pitch follower. Seems like that would hit more frequencies and make it sound more natural. Of course this would still not be 100% authentic to real feedback and I admittedly only "kind of" understand FB Comb Filtering, so I'm not sure if my hypothesis is actually true.
 
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The only way I've found to avoid the chirp is to use it manually in momentary mode, and even then I get glitches sometimes if I'm not off the switch fast enough before I release the note. Sometimes it seems to hold a bit beyond when the switch is released.
Thanks for confirming. As much as people want the pedal be great, this is a dealbreaker. But I’ll turn this positive:

This is why I love Fractal. The standard is so flipping high. Every week, they make the best product of its kind in the industry better. If something causes a problem, it’s fixed immediately. I don’t think twice about the cost. The value is outstanding. I have spent a lifetime, literally a lifetime, chasing a better and better sound. Now it’s delivered to me almost every week. I had a pedalboard that started to weigh more than my amplifier-of-the-month. In my quest, every new pedal required a dutiful reconfiguration of my board - more connectors, hours of making custom cables, etc. I love my AF3. Best piece of gear since the Les Paul.
 
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