Axe II for Broadway Production

[pitmonkey]

Now THAT is cool. Next level sh!t for setting up a show (plug and play guitarists...same tone every show). I'm impressed.

Yeah, Axe FX's are pretty much standard on London's West End shows these days. Also makes it much easier for those of us who dep as we can just get the chairholder to email over the patches to learn the show with.

 

[Jbmetal]

I've used the Axe on more than a few musicals since I got it 4 years ago. I firmly believe it was made for musicals. Haha The scenes feature is perfect for this. I look through the music and make note of the effects I need. It usually goes like:
Scene 1 - Clean
Scene 2 - Modulation (Chorus or Phaser w/ light delay)
Scene 3 - Tremolo w/ Slapback
Scene 4 - Lead w/delay
Scene 5 - Envelope Wah (because I only have one expression pedal, and EVERY musical I've played makes use of a wah on at least one tune)

That's all I can set up on my controller at once, so anything else I just use IA switches to activate. I generally just use one amp, that generally being the Carr Rambler. I also have an acoustic tonematched preset setup so I don't have to bring an acoustic. Can't avoid the banjo most of the time though.

 

[Cagey]

So I just found out this morning that I'll be playing guitar for the traveling Broadway production of "Motown: The Musical." I'm going to show up to rehearsal with my AXE II and see what happens. In the meantime, I'm on a mission to nail the tones of that era. 60 songs to cover from the heyday. If anyone out there is familiar with the music, and has some patches to help me get going, I'd be much obliged. Cheers!

Having grown up in Motown during the '60s, I remember all those tunes. You say you have a list of 60 songs; I imagine most of them would be on this list. If so, I can tell you that guitar was not heavily featured in that music. I mean, it was there, but it wasn't the prominent interest. They were mostly what I call "story songs", where they spend 3 to 3 1/2 minutes making a point vocally, and that's it. Very few lead breaks, and they were short when they occurred, and featured keyboards more often than not. These were tunes you sang and danced along with, not arena/glam/album rock stuff designed around a stage show. So, presets will be very simple. Most of the effects we're used to now either didn't exist or were sparsely used back then. You plugged a Strat/Tele/ES335 into a Fender/Vox/Oddball amp and added some subtle strings to the tunes. Clean and simple will be the name of the game for you.

 

[ETOLKIEN]

Wow thanks Cagey for your first hand advice!