Axe-Fx III Firmware 23.04 Release

AXEMike said:
I have both the 100W and 100S. The Green channel on the 100S is almost impossible to get clean without lowering the guitar volume (even at .5 on the green gain knob there is still a bit of distortion). The 100W you can get a good clean sound out of it with some tweaking. I modified my 100S so that the green channel was about the same as the 100W so they are different between those two amps. The 100S also has more thump than the 100W at lower (well, all) volumes. It is a pretty different animal from the 100W.
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Modded the green channel how so? Lower gain tube in v1?
 
Deadpool_25 said:
I'm not talking about the difference between tubes. There's a difference in the circuit in the 100W Stealth (6L6) head and the 100W EL34 head.

For an example of what I'm talking about, you can go to 9:49 in this video (not my video).

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There are some spectacular tones in that video, but nothing I bet we couldn’t get with the Axe.
 
kplooksafterme said:
There are some spectacular tones in that video, but nothing I bet we couldn’t get with the Axe.
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Funny you say that. I was matching parts of that video the other night by ear using a couple of the TV factory cabs with the TV speaker impedance curve. I love finding stuff like this to use as a frequency reference point. It helps my ears not revert to something overly dark.
 
GuitarGuy316 said:
Modded the green channel how so? Lower gain tube in v1?
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I put in a 180K resistor in parallel with R55 (68K). This made it act more like the 100W circuit when the green channel engaged but left it alone for the rest. Also replaced V1 with a 5751 as I liked the whole thing throttle back a bit :tearsofjoy:
 
GuitarManiac32 said:
Hmmm, has anyone experienced presets sounding thinner and quieter and having some annoying higher frequency (maybe around 2 kHz?) quite audible? This happened to me between fw 23.03 beta 1 and the new 23.04. I'm just wondering if this is normal and I just have to tweak my presets to match the previous fw? I tested this with Ollo S5X headphones and the change in sound and volume is quite dramatic. I did the refresh after new firmware 🙂 I didn't notice any changes in global settings either. I also went back to 23.03 beta 1 and the presets sounded great like before. Then I updated 2nd time to 23.04 and the sounds degraded again. So for now I decided to go back to 23.03 beta 1 because I have 2 gigs this weekend. After that I'll probably update back to 23.04 and start tweaking my presets. Any info or tips to test about this is appreciated 🙂
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Volume was lower on my presets as well. I used the opportunity to do some tweaking - speaker thump, smoothing, slight eq adjustments - good thing to do periodically, imo.
 
FractalAudio said:
That's unavoidable without losing spillover. When the compander is active the data is compressed before being written to the delay line and decompressed when being read. So if you switch from not using the compander to using the compander uncompressed data is expanded which makes it louder.
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Awesome, thanks Cliff. I figured it was something like that, appreciate the explanation.
 
siin82 said:
Volume was lower on my presets as well. I used the opportunity to do some tweaking - speaker thump, smoothing, slight eq adjustments - good thing to do periodically, imo.
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Thank you for your reply. It's good to know it's normal and other users are experiencing the same. So I will update the fw again soon and start working on my presets 👌 I don't want to stay in the beta version forever and miss all the future updates 🤣 Maybe I'll even do a full system reset at the same time and clean up some unused user presets.
 
Thanks for the improved CPU usage, and fixed wrong default tone stack in 1959SLP and Plexi 100W 1970 models.

I spent most of the night playing through a real Marshall SLP, then updated my Axe FXIII to 23.04, updated my 1959SLP and Plexi 100W 1970 presets, and played through the Axe FXIII for a while. It sounds really good. Thanks!
 
NFB compensation in 23.04. when ON, adjusting the value changes the level a lot. When OFF, no level change.
Shouldn´t it be the other way around ?
BTW, EVH Stealth Blue sounds amazing without any tweaks. I just lower the gain to 3,5 and it´s still nuts with my unpotted low output Custombuckers :D
 
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GuitarGuy316 said:
The 6L6 (black) and EL34 are both called “Stealth” on the 100W. Read the chart below. Where they different is the green channel and power tubes.
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Ok, my same post then but with Original, Stealth, and EL34 Stealh instead of EL34.

Deadpool_25 said:
What mistakes are you seeing? The 50W blue seems to have more gain than the 100W to me. Also I thought the Stealth heads all had more gain than the 100W on the red channels.

It came from Howard Kaplan who designed every EVH amp except the first 100W head and Iconic (and did work with James Brown a little on the Iconic). He recently left EVH.

He talks a lot about designing the amp in these videos (there's a lot of overlap of course). He does talk about how they added gain at points and how some things were "left that way" because Eddie liked them. And they're also 2 hours long each 😂



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That chart is also only talking about Preamp gain, as it's labelled on the top. Which channels on which models are higher or lower gain than the others. So "the same as 100W" just means roughly the same gain. It doesn't mean tonally they're unchanged.

But also, the 50W Blue channel is definitely higher gain than the 100W, not the same as indicated on the chart, so that raises some questions too.
 
IronSean said:
Ok, my same post then but with Original, Stealth, and EL34 Stealh instead of EL34.



That chart is also only talking about Preamp gain, as it's labelled on the top. Which channels on which models are higher or lower gain than the others. So "the same as 100W" just means roughly the same gain. It doesn't mean tonally they're unchanged.

But also, the 50W Blue channel is definitely higher gain than the 100W, not the same as indicated on the chart, so that raises some questions too.
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The 100S Red channel has about three times the gain as the OG. The Blue channel has about 2.5 times more gain. The Green channel has over five times the gain.

Chart is simply wrong.
 
FractalAudio said:
The 100S Red channel has about three times the gain as the OG. The Blue channel has about 2.5 times more gain. The Green channel has over five times the gain.

Chart is simply wrong.
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And then you throw in what you said about pot tapers making the Red channel appear lower gain at 5 on the Stealth than the blue channel, despite having more overall, and then you need to ask "what did he even mean?"

I'm sure he built the chart with the best of intentions but given the nuance between all the amps I'm not sure any chat would tell the whole story.
 
what’s a generic gain potentiometer’s taper?

Since we’re talking stealth , what’s it’s gain pot taper?

I think more people should be aware about these concepts of tapers, seems like a big misconception when trying to match amp settings (especially pot tolerances and part availability )
 
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