I kept the same effects and put the them in the loops of a pair of Peavey Classic 50 combo amps (1 1x15', 1 4x10") and that became "my" sound after I learned how good a Classic 50 combo sounded with a TS9 in front of it.
Those little guys ought to be in the Axe, but I've got mine stashed safely away.
My rig right before getting the axe fx Ii in late 2011 was the Randall MTS preamp and the Boss GT-Pro. I sold the Randall. I still have the Boss. It’s really a cool unit, I wonder if I could convince anyone to buy that since I am getting out of the rack game all together.I had that gear in the 80's and 90's, including Eventides, Egnater M4 modular rack preamp, Tri-Axis, JMP-1, Art SGX2000... tons of shit.
I replaced everything with the Axe-FX Standard back in 2006
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You forgot loose, wiggly cable jacks on the back of the rack units.If you really want 80's type rack sound from the Axe FX3, degrade the signal quality until it sounds right. Its important to degrade the signal quality of the signal in appropriate ways to sound authentic. Add in noise (pink or white) and hum appropriate to the number of effects in use, so you have a noise floor about 15db to 20db below the output level. You probably also want to make regular use of reducing bit depth and slew rate where possible in blocks that have that as an advanced parameter. Use filters to compromise frequency range and LFO for some modulation wobble. I don't miss the 80's era rack stuff any more than I miss recording to cassete tape or ADAT, or the horrific sounding PAs of the era. 90's era rack gear was much more useable, but still, way too much time tweaking and programming instead of playing guitar. The sublime tones from distorting tubes and saturating transformers and tape, or the harmonic richness from the inherent instability of vintage components in a Moog or some other synths aren't salient features of most rack gear, thus there's not many that offer anything that the high fidelity of today's tech can't emulate or accomplish much better.
Man, that takes me back to when I had Neal Schons old 3+ preamp, a VHT Classic, and a Rocktron RSB12. I remember the switches on the foot controller being the loudest I'd ever heard.Here's my rack from ~89/90. It grew a bit after (don't have a photo of final version). The last version added Nady 650, Second Quadraverb, Rane SM26, Alesis 3630, and the ADA amp died/was replaced with a 2 space Rocktron Velocity 300.
The signal chain went something like Nady > Bradshaw > Kasha Rockmod II > Hush Loop > Mono Loop out to Rane > Quadraverb (x2) , IPS-33B > Rane Stereo out > Bradshaw Stereo In, Bradshaw stereo out to BBE > BBE > Velocity 300 > DL Monsuen 4x12 wired as 2x12 stereo with G12T-75. The Alesis was in a mono loop for clean sounds. The dual Quadraverb set up was done so I could change patches and have delay/reverb tails. The Bradshaw provided analog channel switching for the Kasha as well as midi for the Quadraverbs and IPS-33B. Occasionally I'd throw a Crybaby in between the 650 and the first Bradshaw input.
The weight of the rack got to a point where I split the power amp off to it's own 4 space so I wasn't killing my back trying to lift it in/out of a hatchback.
Never quite got the clean sound I wanted (Rocco's 80s clean patch nails it), but the dirty/lead sound was great.
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And all that unbalanced RCA cabling. And phono preamps. There was a lot less EMI back then though. Some of the rack gear from the mid and late 90's on is worth playing or having though: and I am referring to guitar centric gear: Lots of cool pro audio recording gear in every era.You forgot loose, wiggly cable jacks on the back of the rack units.
Nice McIntosh!
Cool! Didn't know Revox ever made speakers. Just know/knew their tape recorders, which were great.Thank you. It's a MA6900, connected to a pair of these
These are a pair of vintage 1987 Swiss-made ReVox loudspeakers. Amazing stuff.View attachment 91551
Did you even try having smaller feet?I used to tape bottle caps over every other button to prevent myself from accidentally stepping on the wrong button since the buttons were soo close together.