AXEFX2 thin sounding through poweramp...any suggestions.

schlagdog said:
Bill,
I could care less if I get any attention on a message board. I only posted on here to try and find solutions to my problems I have had with the AXEFX. If I bought it and thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread then I would be on here back slapping and high fiving with everyone else. I'm using the exact patch I used to duplicate my Triple Rec pretty closely when going direct with my IR of my cab. Through the recto2:100 poweramp I have it is pretty week sounding. I've gone trough and tried every high gain model on the Axefx in the last 4 hours and have the same result. So uploading a patch isnt going to help. Just take any high gain model and put a tube screamer in front of it and turn off the cab sims and leave the poweramp sim still on.
You said you aren't experienced enough to help so how about keeping your stupid message board opinions to yourself. I'm not the only person who has gone from real amps to the AXEFX and hasn't found a poweramp combination that sounds like an actual amp head. I spent $2300 on the unit and I'm not giving up yet like other people I recently talked to that just sold their Ultras because they gave up and went back to heads and gave up on the board after just being attacked by members because they weren't enamored with the AXEFX just yet.
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Hey schlagdog,

Looks like I touched a nerve - LOL!

First of all, since I live in a free-speech/capitalist country (U.S.A.) I WILL NOT KEEP MY STUPID MESSAGE BOARD OPINIONS TO MYSELF!

Second of all, just because I've only owned my Axe-FX II for a couple of months does NOT mean that I have no clue! I just know that there are far more experienced users on here than I, who would be glad to help you. That's all.

I was just pointing out that you weren't truly showing your full range of settings. That's all. You're using amp-sims=ON, so that means for each amp-model, you have two-pages of Basic-Parameters AND a LONG-PAGE of Advanced-Parameters to use/tweak. How can you say "just stick a tube-screamer block in-front of any high-gain amp and you'll see." There are A LOT of variables there man! That's all I'm pointing out... There are many generous (and smart as hell!) users on here who might be able to help you, but those three pages of parameters leave a LOT of wiggle-room for tweaking - LOL! ...Are you using ONLY default amp-settings, or are you tweaking the advanced-paramters (page 3) AND the first two pages of basic-parameters also? Those are questions these experienced forum-users want/NEED to know IN ORDER to help you...Just sayin'

Look, I even said in my last post (if you read enough of it) that NO TOOL is for EVERYBODY! I was serious about that. I would be nervous if the Axe-FX II was ALL-THINGS to ALL-PEOPLE, because (IMO) that would mean it probably isn't great at anything - LOL! Seriously, if the Axe-FX doesn't work out for you in a live scenario, perhaps you can just use it for direct-recording, and then use your tube-amps for live-applications (although that won't solve your trying to lighten-the load of your live-rig...) Also, $2300. is admittedly a LOT of $$$$ to tie-up just for direct-recording (unless you do a LOT of it?!?)

If you do end up finding some sounds you like, BUT you still like your tube-amps for some of your sounds, you could experiment with using the Axe-FX II WITH your tube-amps using the "four-cable-method" (4CM.) Before I got my Axe-FX II, I was using the 4CM with a BOSS GT-10 and my Blackstar HT-40 for smaller/pub-gigs, and once you get your levels right, you can get some damn fine results that way! However, you'd STILL will be lugging a LOT of gear around...

I'm actually in a similar scenario as you (although I'm getting some very-good/excellent live results - haven't tried direct-recording yet - I'm only using it for gigging right now) in that I have NOT settled on my exact live power-amp/speaker-setup yet. For now, I'm just using what I can afford (which is what I already own - H&K VS-250 or the output of my Blackstart HT-40, (although the Blackstar only offers one channel of power!) feeding some OLD ADA 2x12 cabs with Celestion 50's...I might try an FRFR setup (like a Matrix GT800FX) when I can afford it...

BTW, I AGREE with you about that it's wrong for forum-members to attack others solely based on their gear-opinions. It's OK to NOT like the Axe-FX II! I've said that so many times in these forums...NO SINGLE PIECE OF GEAR can make EVERYBODY HAPPY - and that's OK! I really believe that! I'll tell you what, if I wasn't happy with my $2300. investment, I'd sure as hell be honest about it too!

I also said that I hope that you achieve YOUR ultimate sound. You know how it is, it's way more fun (and easier to play well) when your sound makes you happy!

Best of luck...

Bill
 
three said:
Why don't you go out of the preamp of the Triple Rec into the Boogie Poweramp. Record it. Then go out of the Axe sim that you did before with the Power amp modelling off, into the Boogie Poweramp and record that. I would like to hear the difference. Is your global EQ set flat? Or have you been playing with it?????
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three,

+1.

Great idea for "apples-to-apples" comparison! Then he could see how that power-amp sounds with his known pre-amp. That said, I think there are so many variables inside the Axe-FX II (especially with power-amp sims enabled!) that it just might need more tailoring to match what he wants to hear?

Bill
 
billmeedog said:
three,

+1.

Great idea for "apples-to-apples" comparison! Then he could see how that power-amp sounds with his known pre-amp. That said, I think there are so many variables inside the Axe-FX II (especially with power-amp sims enabled!) that it just might need more tailoring to match what he wants to hear?

Bill
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I think he messed with his global EQ and forgot, and that is why he thinks all of the patches are sounding thin. He seems to have a good set of ears on him, but as you said there are soooooo many variables to get into with the Axe. There are also a few settings in the Boogie Poweramp like Modern..... There are two sets of inputs and one of them is designed only for the Recto Preamp. So we don't know which one he is using..... That is why I would like to hear the Triple Rec pre out into the non Recto input and then hear the Axe into the non-Recto input. No IRs just microphone direct.
 
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I never touched the global eq. It's all flat just like it always is and my poweramp it used exactly how it should be used. In modern mode, which is the only way anyone should ever use a Mesa poweramp or head and not using the recto pre inputs just like I always do. I have a house full of gear and tried the AXEFX into the power sections of all my heads and it just lacks. Digital preamp is just never going to replace real tube when you can sit and a/b. Solid state poweramps are even worse, at least the ones I own are. I have a qsc, carvin, and a tube works mosvalve 500 and digital to solid state is even thinner. Tomorrow night I'll spent doing some creative eq'ing to try it get it better. I ran through every option in the amp block and wasn't able to fix it up.
 
I don't actually own an AxeII yet... but courtesy of my pal Chris I managed to spend an afternoon with one through my backline...
my backline is a Marshall 8008 stereo power amp [2:80W] through a pair of 1960b 4x12 cabs...

Chris was at the controls [front panel and AxeEdit] and I just called out the fx chain, fx choices and settings..
Global eq wasn't touched [so I imagine it was flat - but didn't check]..

within 20 minutes we had a huge sound...
I'm one of those types that prefers to have cab sims on even when running through cabs [and then eq out the difference] because I think they smooth things out a little...

ok so I'm by no means an expert with the AxeII, but I have been using multi-fx units for a long long time...
the approach to tone creation in an fx-unit is a little different to jacking a guitar into an amp head and throwing in a few stomps for good measure..
you need to do a little more thinking / planning up front and be more systematic in your execution..
yes it takes much more time to sort out but like anything, the more you do if it the better you get...
which is I guess why I got a killer tone out of the AxeII in a relatively short amount of time...
I'm guessing [@schlagdog] that your problem may be - and I mean this with the utmost respect here - a lack of experience when it comes to tone creation / signal processing in fx-units like the AxeII.

a few things:
- if you've not messed with the global eq, have you checked it's settings to make sure that it is at least flat [cos this will be a good starting point]?
- if you are running two amp models simultaneously in parallel check that one is panned to the left and the other to the right [because they tend to be less effective sat one on top of the other, dead centre in the mix]
- It looks to me like you are placing a tube screamer before a high gain amp model [if I've understood you correctly]. In my mind this is not a great idea. You are in effect adding high gain [from the amp] to a signal that is already saturated [already overdriven by the tube screamer]. I would expect this to thin out the tone, kill off the dynamics and destroy the definition. My personal approach to high gain is to do it once and nail it there either by using a 'stomp' [the screamer in your case] or a high gain amp [which I personally prefer], but never both. Multiple staged overdrive tends only to work well in recording studios where you start with a slightly driven tone, re-record it adding a little more drive, re-record again adding a little more drive and so on [because it is a more controlled environment - and also this approach tends to work better with synth lead tones rather than with guitars]..

Suggestion:
- If you've got presets that you've created that you adore, save them via AxeEdit.
- Then restore your unit to it's factory default [just in case you've configured yourself into a blind alley].
- Find a preset that you really don't care for or think you will never use and empty all the blocks out [time for a blank canvass].
- Check your global eq settings are all flat [pre-flight checks so to speak]
- add an amp block and a cab block [leave the cab bypassed at first]
- in the amp block start surfing the amps. Ignore their names. Just play and tweak and listen. No joy?? move on to the next..
- when you start getting somewhere close to what you like, add in the cab and try a few cabs out. Depending upon your rig and your personal preferences you may think that adding this will make the tone improve of deteriorate [your choice..].
- if you feel that the cab block improves the tone but upsets the eq, place either a GEQ or a PEQ after it and start fine tuning.
Note: if you're new to signal processing you may find the PEQ fussy so this would not be a good situation to learn how to use one. So use the GEQ.
My guess would be that the cab block would scoop the mids a little to you can put them back by making a little 'hill' in your GEQ from around 800Hz up to around 2KHz.
- if by now we're really getting somewhere, try adding other tone enhancing toys one by one [reverb / delay etc]..

The art to signal processing is to be methodical, do one thing at a time and little by little develop the tone..
 
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I run my Ultra with the power amp section engaged and with the sag at minimum (0.04)...then i tweak the master.
 
Schladog, with all due respect, if you can't get at least close to the sound of the actual amp, you are quite frankly doing something wrong.

Start with nothing but shunts in a preset, and put in an amp block. ONLY an amp block should be in there, and nothing else.

If you find the tone to be thin, bump up the mids and bass. Also the master, depending on the amp. If you are using hi gain, keep the master low. If you're using a tube poweramp, you can leave the PA sims off, but I prefer them on unless I'm cranking that poweramp, just as Nikki said.

If you still find it to be thin, go to the next page/s and dial up some depth and thump, and start adjusting the speaker resonance - it makes a difference. Palm mute the low E and just chug away slowly, adjusting it as you do, and when you hear the cab resonate (you will know it and feel it when you do) you will have it.

Some other things that you might want to try: set the tonestack to active, or set the capacitor to a higher value.

Honestly, you're the only person I know who can't get a great sound from the axe thru a cab, so I am inclined to think that you need some more experience and time with the axe.

Again, without clips, or a preset posted, we are all taking stabs in the dark, and will not be able to help you effectively. Post a preset or clip, and people here will be able to diagnose the issue or problem. Without at least one of these things, do NOT expect the issue to be resolved easily.
 
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Man I'm in the same boat as schlagdog so I hope to learn from any solutions as well. Not only do I wish I was an expert at signal processing but also at simply hooking up all the gear properly!
I got this feeling though that if schlagdog gets happy with his axefxII tone then I will. :)
gl schlagdog
and gl to those that can help him!
 
I just find it hard to believe that tweaking a few parameters and adding a GEQ or PEQ to the chain won't get you at least close....
 
@ billmeedog - what blend of Red Bull and coffee are you drinking, and how much? And where can I get some? LOL! (j/k)

Schlagdog, I'm not just jumping on the bandwagon b/c I don't struggle with the AxeFx as you do, but I have to agree that (unless you have a defective unit or some other weirdness going on outside the AxeFx) there is help on this forum, and the quickest way to getting their expertise and a possible solution is to make the recordings as requested and share the settings via .syx files of the presets. Forum members have been down this road with unsatisfied users many times before, and unfortunately, it is the same story: "Please post recordings and share your presets so we can dissect them".....and then the person seeking help WILL NOT do it. Ok, then. Game over. Next. The fact that people are still willing to help you out here displays the patience and true desire to help you find what you're looking for, which is quite sincere.

clarky is 100% spot on with his assessment of the situation. There comes a point where you need to fully deconstruct and start from square one, and use a tight logic and methodology as you proceed. With digital processors such as these, there ARE better ways and worse ways of getting from point A to point B. And sometimes, if you make an unfortunate decision near point A, it will haunt you the rest of the way down the road and you'll NEVER get to point B. Please heed this advice.

Again, as with clarky, 1 hour of hands-on time with an experienced user of the AxeFx could cut through days worth of toil and B.S. schlagdog, we don't know where you are located, but if I were you, I'd try to locate someone else near you who owns and AxeFx and is willing to help (of course, short of sharing recordings and presets on this forum). Experts here are willing to help those who take proper measures to help themselves first.
 
I suggest inserting the looper and recording a thirty second clip and tweaking while that loops. It will help eliminate the whole left brain right brain switching thing and let you focus on just the sound. This has taken my patch tweakery to new levels and is completely indispensable. You obviously have to play through it to gauge the feel when you get it close. This should help tremendously.

Please post some sound samples man. You're crippling the ability of the community to help you akin to asking someone to drive with blinders on.

I have to agree that there is always the possibility of you having a defective unit. You should not rule that out but Fractal will likely want sound samples too before honoring any warranty I would assume so please post some ASAP.

We feel your pain bud, we've all been there to some degree but your experience is so extreme that I think we are all pulling for ya to resolve it. And if not someone will gladly take the unit off your hands so don't sweat it.
 
jimfist said:
1 hour of hands-on time with an experienced user of the AxeFx could cut through days worth of toil and B.S.
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to add to this... it's not just experience with the Axe, but experience with setting up guitar fx-units and general signal processing...
In my case... I know processing but very little about the AxeII's inards, and my pal had the AxeII long enough to know how to navigate the menus and configure it...
so essentially I was making the config / settings calls [add one of these, set it to this, route it to that etc] and my pal was at the helm driving the AxeII..
between us we nailed several really interesting 'rough' presets in an afternoon.. to be honest it was a total blast...
sounded great too.. good enough to change my mind from 'want one' to 'need one'.. lol..

like most of you guys, I was once a guitar -> stomps -> amp user...
and a long time ago I made the transition to guitar fx-unit [Roland GP-16] -> power amp
ok.. so the GP-16 is a very early unit and is not close to the AxeII in complexity.. but compared to what I was doing before it was a quantum leap and as you'd expect, took me a long time to come to terms with....
unfortunately for you guys that are making the transition I did but to an AxeII rather than the GP-16, you're moving into a system that is far more sophisticated..
and the one thing you new fellas have that I didn't back then.. is this place and us lot....
all I had was the manual.. and many frustrated months of button pushing and knob twiddling...

you simply need to learn a new approach that has a little more in common with a studio engineer / producer..
initially your headaches will be many, long and painful.. but stick with it.. it's worth it...
 
Maybe this is just some stupid comment.... but I was like this as a previous AxeFX ultra user, I checked and tried a lot of things and asked for help here in the forum and I manage to "fix" my patches in some way with the recommendations... but the most improvement I made was to change the power valves on the amp, in this case a VHT2902. Remember that valves behave weird sometimes and they loose a lot of their sonic marvel any day without warning...... I used also that "thin" word tone and swapping new valves was the solution... using overdrive pedals seemed to helped since valves were dying already and OD pedals pushed a little bit out of them... ... HUGE tone after that.. just check em I would say...
 
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Not sure it helps but i just compared two Ultra's firmware, the FW5.26 and FW11. I'm using the JCM800 without the bright cap with a les paul swamp ash and P94. (no tone, no volume so..no suck & great sound) While the FW5.26 sounds a little bit loosy the FW11 is more rich and has more grit but....the FW5.26 sounds like a real amp into a cab so in your face, the FW11 sounds far into the cab it's like listen the radio whatever the level i set. Not sure you've got the same feel with your Axe II. By the way i would like to get the FW11 sounds like the FW5.26 into a cab with my Ultra. The cab is the top cab of my JTM45/100 anniversary stack. It's a Ferrari. (carriage return does not work with firefox..again, sh.t!)
 
i think the round tone your talking about is why i still use a tube amp live with the axe fx for effects ...i would'nt say the axe fx is thin but it lacks something in low mids and round tone for me too when i try to use it live ...i played out with the ultra for a year and never could get that tone and feel so gave up and starting using a tube preamp and there it was the tone l like to hear when playing live without all the tweaking ...got the axe fx II now and it's still the same thing ...to me the amps sims sound great when i'm recording but live they just don't cut it ...believe me i tried everything ...frfr, solid state, tube, stereo rig, wdw rig, it sounded good but something was always missing i felt and all i did is tweak instead of playing enough... i got a feeling you might go through the same thing i did and i don't think it matters how you set the eq are anything else on the axe that roundness i expect is just not there when i play it live
 
Strange how everyone's experience is different. I've never been happy with a modeler into a tube amp before, but I just got my Axe II (my first Fractal product,) 3 days ago and went ahead and used the Modern Eddie prest on my New Years' gig. For the most part I just went through my Mark V into my Bogner Cab, but on three tunes I used the Axe into my Mark V, .. Power Amp sims on... And my whole band was blown away by the clarity and punch... I haven't tweaked anything else yet, but I think with a clean power section like the Mesa does in 90 watt mode the power amp sims gave the extra beef.. I was floored......
 
Audiounity said:
Strange how everyone's experience is different. I've never been happy with a modeler into a tube amp before, but I just got my Axe II (my first Fractal product,) 3 days ago and went ahead and used the Modern Eddie prest on my New Years' gig. For the most part I just went through my Mark V into my Bogner Cab, but on three tunes I used the Axe into my Mark V, .. Power Amp sims on... And my whole band was blown away by the clarity and punch... I haven't tweaked anything else yet, but I think with a clean power section like the Mesa does in 90 watt mode the power amp sims gave the extra beef.. I was floored......
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it is so different. you basically used a stock preset into your mark v and it sounded great (at a gig too!), while people are spending hours adjusting things at home and it just doesn't sound good... i've definitely gone in circles at times making tones, but maybe we are trying too hard at times?
 
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LOL... Begginners luck... I'm sure once I start tweaking and trying as I am wont to do, I'll encounter circles of my own. On the other hand, through headphones I feel that most settings would require a lot of tweaking to make me completely satisfied (at least when I tried them with my Tele tonight.) Also, there is more to the story. My first experience of the Axe II when I got it was through my H&K Zentera at rehearsal on Friday. It sounded great but once the band played it didn't cut like a tube amp (The Zentera is SS,) and while my drummer thought is sounded better than my Mark V, I knew it wasn't cutting or focused like my Mark V... There was a shrill high end that I always hear out of the Zentera anyway. That night I bumped the mids a bit on Modern Eddie and took down the treble or presence, can't remember which, but it was a quick on the fly tweak. But when I plugged it into my Mark V, I was floored... for this one preset.. My other presets may vary in immediate satisfaction.... While with the Zentera pushing the Axe I was very happy but not floored to the same degree while in the mix, and through headphones I feel it will take some work...
 
If everything is sounding thin makes me think there is a phase issue. You may want to try reversing the phase of the outputs and make sure it not summing the output ala Output mode L+R.
 
Audiounity said:
and through headphones I feel it will take some work...
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just remember that headphones put speakers less than an inch away from your eardrums... that's not a lot of air to be moved and headphone tones will be different than speaker tones. it's always recommended to adjust your settings using the same gear and volume (or as close as possible) to what you'll be performing with.
 
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