Axe-Fx III Firmware Release Version 16.00 "Cygnus"

If the mods are ok with it, I could share more of the results of my experiments.

I have to walk a fine line as a vendor though. For every person that may find such tips and tricks helpful such as yourself, there may be others that find it bad form that I am a vendor posting content about, egads, discoveries that I have made while working on my cab packs. One of the reasons that we have vendor tag it seems is people complaining about vendor content all over the forum.

If anyone wants to pick my brain about stuff, feel free to PM me or email me. I've helped many a bass or guitar player in finding cool ways to do things.
As long as you don't end the posts with, "...and buy my presets and cab packs here!" kind of thing, I think you're fine. The vendor rules are there to prevent vendors from shilling in every single post they make on the board.

I, for one, would very much love to hear what you've done with experiments here. I really like your GeekRB 4x10 IRs but I'm terrible at getting bass tones. Would be great to have a chat with someone who knows more about bass tones like you in a thread.
 
Little more information needed.....

For starters have you reset the amp blocks? Do you have speaker compression dialed in? Are you on FW16? What preset/s are you using (if it's a custom present you might want to upload here)
What are you monitoring through? What's your signal chain like?
Hi Jon, yes I have reset the amp blocks, dialled in speaker compression, re installed FW 16 twice, reset the amp blocks, wiped everything started from scratch, monitoring through Yamaha HS 7.

Thanks for your reply.
 

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A lot of tracks were recorded with small amps, and later performed with big ones (because volume) approximating the sounds on record. Big amps are a nuisance in the studio, due to the sheer volume at the settings where they sound best....

Perfect example of this is Pink Floyd’s “Sorrow”; Gilmour used this little Gallien Krueger to record the intro, then sent the tapes out to the LA Sports Colosseum where they set up a huge PA and mic’d the arena, pumped the tracks through the PA and recorded the sound of the arena. I mean, you’d have to figure they sat around laughing their asses off at the idea of that!

aboutface_rig.jpg


Should probably include the song-

 
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I think something must be wrong somewhere because I am not feeling that 'juiciness' that people are experiencing, I watch all of Leon Todd's videos but still feels stiff to play (high gain)
One thing you can try is edging up your guitar’s Input Level in the I/O menu to make sure it’s “tickling the red” enough. Having a solid input signal will definitely add some juiciness into your tone. FWIW, I raised mine to 61% for a guitar with lower output pickups and it made a huge difference.

To everyone else, is there an input meter that peaks at “ideal input signal level,” or are you guys just watching the input meter on the front panel and estimating the right amount of “red tickle?”
 
Hi Jon, yes I have reset the amp blocks, dialled in speaker compression, re installed FW 16 twice, reset the amp blocks, wiped everything started from scratch, monitoring through Yamaha HS 7.

Thanks for your reply.
Wanna post up a clip so we can hear what you're hearing?

Also, did you reset system parameters?

I think you can try reducing master bias excursion and power tube grid bias, as per Cliff's recommendation if you want to go back to that FW15 type of sound/feel
 
To everyone else, is there an input meter that peaks at “ideal input signal level,” or are you guys just watching the input meter on the front panel and estimating the right amount of “red tickle?”

I let it tickle more by increasing to about 35 percent.

If i use it at 20, the tickling is only a bit less but still there. From other threads this seems to be the case with many users. A setting that low indeed makes the playing and sound a bit too stiff for my taste.
 
My first amp ! Would love to get one, for nostalgia
Same here... well technically my second amp but my first quality amp. Wish I still had that little guy. I used to walk into jam sessions and blow people away with the tones I got out of that little lunch box. Loud enough to jam with a drummer too!
 
One thing you can try is edging up your guitar’s Input Level in the I/O menu to make sure it’s “tickling the red” enough. Having a solid input signal will definitely add some juiciness into your tone. FWIW, I raised mine to 61% for a guitar with lower output pickups and it made a huge difference.

To everyone else, is there an input meter that peaks at “ideal input signal level,” or are you guys just watching the input meter on the front panel and estimating the right amount of “red tickle?”

It’s basically set so it hits the for a quick second and if I were strumming chords, it wouldn’t hit the red with every single strum in a standard strumming pattern, if that makes sense. Seems to work from a Fishman Fluence active set to a a Duncan SSL-5/Fat 50’s single coils. Both interact the same way with the input meter.
 
That Buddah DuoMaster. The input trim takes it from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hide in no time at all. Actually in reverse order after resetting, but you get the point. Also, it sounds amazing with the rotary on board the amp block in the Power Supply tab. Been playing the intro to Better Call Saul for like two days now hahaha.
 
Perfect example of this is Pink Floyd’s “Sorrow”; Gilmour used this little Gallien Krueger to record the intro, then sent the tapes out to the LA Sports Colosseum where they set up a huge PA and mic’d the arena, pumped the tracks through the PA and recorded the sound of the arena. I mean, you’d have to figure they sat around laughing their asses off at the idea of that!

aboutface_rig.jpg


Should probably include the song-



I'd read it was an EMG fitted custom Steinberger into a Big Muff into a Fender Super Champ which was then played through the LA Forum PA.
There might have been a GK in there too considering it was Gilmour.

That pic looks like the rig he used on his solo tour in '84

Here's a pic of the guitar he used I took when I visited the DG auction in London
1619455696083.png

Gilmourish say the GK was one of the main amps on the Momentary Lapse of reason album and Sorrow was on a Concert, but apparently no real records were kept so they're not 100% sure

https://www.gilmourish.com/?page_id=30
 
Can I ask why resetting the amp block is necessary? Does it have to happen on every preset? What if you start building your own preset? New user here. I updated to the latest and it seems to sound fine to me, but I’ve not really started making a lot of my own presets yet.
All that matters is that you like how your patches sound.

If you dial in your patches, then update to a firmware that changes parameters, and you don't like your tones, then you should consider resetting in order to simplify the process of hunting down your tones again.

(I used this analogy elsewhere) :

Imagine you dial in a tone on a firmware in which bass is non-existent at 5. Then, on the next firmware, the bass at 5 is actually about 50% of what's available. Your tone would be drastically different. Now imagine instead of bass its some random deep parameter that you changed months ago and don't even remember changing. It's easier to start fresh than trying to track that down.
 
Resetting amp block not necessary esp if you are building a brand new preset. The algos are already there. I have presets from 15.1 that are already using Cygnus modeling from the FW update. Resetting block just defaults everything (in particular advanced parms to default optimized for the latest FW) many of my existing presets didnt really change those so they still sound pretty much the same if not better now
 
I thought tickling the red on the input meter was just about optimizing signal-to-noise ratio, and doesn't really affect input gain on the amps or anything like that?

This ^^ - I keep seeing posts where people express huge differences with adjustment in INPUT level, and wonder if I'm confused about how this mechanism works as I understood INPUT level has NO impact on signal within a patch and only relates to the strength of signal Axefx has to lock onto (tickling red is ideal). - guitar signal remains exactly unaffected regardless of INPUT level except if input signal strength were extremely low/high. If I want to make my guitar signal within a patch stronger weaker, I can adjust "INPUT
GAIN" or input block LEVEL which are separate controls from INPUT level.
 
As long as you don't end the posts with, "...and buy my presets and cab packs here!" kind of thing, I think you're fine. The vendor rules are there to prevent vendors from shilling in every single post they make on the board.

I, for one, would very much love to hear what you've done with experiments here. I really like your GeekRB 4x10 IRs but I'm terrible at getting bass tones. Would be great to have a chat with someone who knows more about bass tones like you in a thread.
Cool, I'll start documenting some stuff. Thanks
 
Oh, gotcha. Earlier in the public beta threads Cliff talked about redoing preamps and all that. Vox style amps do sound and respond significantly different so maybe I'm just fooling myself, but I like the illusion.
Since only partially remembering things gnaws at me, I did a search and this is what I half remembered:

https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/you-guys-gals-are-in-for-another-treat.169535/post-2040129

The whole impetus for this was I was doing some critical listening and I noticed that certain amp models didn't have the same distortion "texture" as the real amp. The amps sounded like rubbing two rocks together while the models sounded more like sandpaper. There was also a vocal quality. The amps went "chug, chug, yowwwwww" while the models went "chit, chit, yeeeeee". That led to a complete rewrite of the preamp algorithms. What I learned from that I applied to improvements in the power amp algorithms.
 
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