Bought a new Strat - Some observations regarding Axe-Fx II

slinky005

Power User
This is my second Strat (A sig Jeff beck in Olympic White).

My first I bought new in '78 - always found the trebley tone too harsh for my taste so I eventually put in Seymour Duncan Rails.
This gave me what I was looking for in overall tone but I lost the classic strat brightness that is so iconic in clean tones.
So 36 years later I have recovered what I lost in Strat tone with my Beck model.

I own a Gary Moore Les Paul and an American Tele as well.
With the Paul I pretty much go to any amp that suits the moment, change the IR and I'm happy.
Same with the Tele - it responds amazingly well to high gain amps and doesn't sound too harsh either.

My new Strat however takes some taming to get good high gain tones.
If I go to the Freidman HBE which is one my go to amps for high gain, there is a fizz there with the Beck Strat that I never had before.
This was expected so what I am doing as a really great quick fix is to choose my cab and bring the high cut between 3 o'clock and 2 o'clock depending.

For cleans I also find that any of the Fender models sound soooooo good with the Strat. Like they were made for each other.
Also some of my homemade modern clean sounds are stunning with the new Strat.
This really helped sell the guitar since I brought the Axe to the store when I first tried out the guitar.

Since the advent of the UR IRs I pretty much only use those with the odd exception of some Qwnhammer stuff (don't have Cab Lab yet so they are still Hi Res)
I just bought the Fractal Cab Pack 5 and those are my first go-to's now.

With the new Strat I also find that I'm getting back into some the stock cabs as I find they are not as bright and automatically tame the high end fizzle that I don't like.

All in all for my playing style and my classic rock cover band, I pretty much have all the bases covered thx to Fender, Gibson and Fractal.
 
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you might enjoy this - scene 1 rhythm, scene 2 lead, other fx as you see fit...

no idea how it sounds with a bridge single coil, but good in all other positions
 

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hadn't tried it since updating to 15. it sounds a little bright to me. easily cured by dropping the tone on the tape drive :)
 
I find it odd that this was moved to the lounge.
I posted helpful tips directly related to the Axe.
Do the mods only read the title of a post?
 
You might try wiring the bridge pickup to the bottom tone pot. I do this to all of my strats and it really helps cut the nasal fizz from higher gain tones, or even brighter amps like the Plexi 50W. The cool thing is that you can dial in the amount of high end that you need for the moment/volume pot setting.

You might also try a more blues oriented bridge pickup. I have a Dimarzio Heavy Blues (DP409) in my current favorite strat and it works great for anything from Vox cleans to heavy mid-oriented high gain tones.
 
you might enjoy this - scene 1 rhythm, scene 2 lead, other fx as you see fit...

no idea how it sounds with a bridge single coil, but good in all other positions

Nice tone in that preset.
Forgot about the Tape Dist.
 
You might try wiring the bridge pickup to the bottom tone pot. I do this to all of my strats and it really helps cut the nasal fizz from higher gain tones,

Yes! I really don't understand why strats are wired stock with the tone pot only for the middle pickup. The bridge pickup is the one that's needs the most taming. I play for 90% of the time on the bridge single coil pickup with the tone knob set to 7 or so. You can also wire it so the bottom tone knobs controls both bridge and middle pickup.
 
This Strat has the tone control wired to the bridge pickup.
I tend to use the Axe to shape my tone with more control.
 
My Strat is wired volume/tone/tone. The bottom tone is shared for bridge and middle and the top is for the neck only. The bottom one for the bridge/middle is also a no-load so when it's wide open the pot is actually removed from the circuit. I now want to add this to all my guitars with tone controls.
 
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