Can't get good recording tones, what am I doing wrong?

Maybe a very stupid question, but ill ask anyways: Did you turn cab and power amp modelling on in global settings while recording?

Because your live setting is thru a real power amp and real speakers, you may have turned these two off on your afx and forgot to turn them back on?
 
When we first plugged in the Axe, the quality/tone was terrible and that was because we didn't turn the cab on. Once we realized that a couple mins into it, we turned it on and the quality improved a ton.

We are definitely heading in the right direction, the test recording isn't bad. The tone is there, it's just muddy and lacks the punch and 'proness' that the UberRectro studio recording has.

Thanks for everyone's input, we will update you guys as we go and if we find out what we are doing wrong, we'll post it here so that it can help others in the future. I'll keep the parallel compression on the back burner for now and see if we can get the tone where we want it without it as suggested.
 
Yea, exactly. There's definitely a muffled/muddy sound in our recording.

Anyone have any good links or info about Andy Sneap's parallel compression technique for mixing guitars? I heard it can help shape the guitar to create a full tone.

We recorded to a mono track using the left side from the axe as our input on the track in Pro Tools. We can try all of the suggestions on this page and see what we get.

Thanks!
yeah, i wouldn't dive off into mixing tricks and stuff yet, they aren't necessary to get a great tone on it's own, but more for helping it sit in a dense mix.

also, you mentioned you lowered the master volume, that can have a big affect on tone. lower the level instead and push the master back up.

in all honesty, i'd start from scratch, though. i've never had any luck with any preset i've downloaded. too many variables...from fw version to guitar to pups, to player, etc. FW could be the biggest issue here, aren't those presets pretty dated?
 
They can be purchased on the fractal site in the cab pack section, you can also check out ownhammers stuff on his website (not sure start the link is)

Do you recommend any? For high gain stuff, #14 interests me the most b/c of all the v30 4x12s. Numbers 7, 9, 12, and 13 also interest me, but are single cab packs. And maybe #15 for cleans.. or not needed for cleans? I'll narrow it down to 1-3 packs for now, which should be plenty to mess around with! :D
 
I would recommend giving

073 — 4x12 USA TRAD 57-121 (ML)
— Mesa traditional Recto cabinet with four Celestion V30 speakers, UltraRes (Cab Pack 7). Mix of Shure SM57 and Royer 121.

and/or

074 — 4x12 USA TRAD 906-421 (ML) — Mesa traditional Recto cabinet with four Celestion V30 speakers, UltraRes (Cab Pack 7). Mix of Sennheiser e906 and Sennheiser MD 421.

of the factory cabs a chance. These both Cab IRs are part of FAS CabPack 7 and the sound is ok so far.
 
everything is panned centre, so you may be getting some phase cancellation. do another mix of that test track, but pan two of the rhythm guitars hard left and right and the other two about 50% left and right. it will sound massively different. post the result.
 
Do you recommend any? For high gain stuff, #14 interests me the most b/c of all the v30 4x12s. Numbers 7, 9, 12, and 13 also interest me, but are single cab packs. And maybe #15 for cleans.. or not needed for cleans? I'll narrow it down to 1-3 packs for now, which should be plenty to mess around with! :D
13 and 20(which is new but) are considered by mikko to be some of his best shoots and we're purpose made for high gain with peripherys guitarist
 
All of the feedback has been absolutely fantastic, so thank you! The help is much appreciated!!

We'll try the pan option and upload what we get to start off. Thanks!
 
Also - We did update the firmware to the latest when adding the preset. (The update was needed otherwise we couldn't transfer the preset.) So as many of you stated, that could be the problem right there alone. The presets are from the end of February I believe.

I did contact the studio who made the presets directly and they were really helpful with providing info. They said their sample recording of the preset has 100% no post-processing. It's USB into SPDIF, but he commented and said USB will sound the same anyway. he then said it's just 2 tracks doing the same panning as what Simeon suggested.
 
He also said he picks VERY hard and mostly all down strokes. He explained that the input trim level might be the issue as a lot of people using their presets need to set it as high as it can be just before clipping.

It's a bit frustrating because we have top of the line equipment more or less. Axe FX II XL, playing with an ESP ex1000 with EMG 81/85 pickups going straight into Pro Tools 12. So with that being said, it must be just a matter of time until we get an awesome result with this gear. We'll keep 'picking' away at it as we go :)
 
He also said he picks VERY hard and mostly all down strokes. He explained that the input trim level might be the issue as a lot of people using their presets need to set it as high as it can be just before clipping.

It's a bit frustrating because we have top of the line equipment more or less. Axe FX II XL, playing with an ESP ex1000 with EMG 81/85 pickups going straight into Pro Tools 12. So with that being said, it must be just a matter of time until we get an awesome result with this gear. We'll keep 'picking' away at it as we go :)
i don't know about the input trim thing, i don't too many people who set it as high as possible.

my guess is it's simply firmware/gear/player differences along with the panning issues.
 
I've only skimmed this thread so apologies if I'm going over ground that's already been covered.

I downloaded the patch you mentioned and tested with a number of guitars and despite not having any guitars particularly suitable for your style of music the results turned out fairly well.

The first thing I noticed is the patch is in stereo. If you're recording in mono you've got a couple options, you can reduce it into mono by adjusting the balance in the PEQ blocks, and then either record the combined signal as mono or if you'd like more control record each amp on it's own. If you're recording in stereo I would pan each amp hard left/right and make have them record to two mono tracks in your DAW.

It also sounds like you've got some phasing issues. Could be because you're trying to record a stereo track in mono, could be because the tracks aren't quite in time or just because the panning isn't quite right.
 
Hey Talus, thanks for taking the time to download and test out the preset! I'd love to hear the recording you managed to do! Any chance any of you guys recorded some of your own stuff with good results using that preset? I'd love to compare it with our test! I'll add your notes to my to do list and try em next time we're sitting in front of the Axe
 
In general I go for more treble ! less bass ! less gain, this often works, I don't use a mic on the cab in the cab block and go direct to PT, be cautions on IR selection. I am Beta testing the AX8 right now, just did a quick preset from scratch and recorded it directly into protools at rehearsal last night and it sounded stellar with hardly any tweaking. I am always rolling off bass and treble in the cab block much like someone would do when they mix you live.

With your specific clip though, the highs are harsh and it is too scooped, first thing is try a different cab IR, you need more mids, and rounder highs, but I think it is more a matter of the cab IR. You also have to hear the clip in the full mix to really know. Hope this helps.
 
Another question: Any metal heads here that could share a Bass guitar preset for getting bass guitar tones similar to stuff in albums from bands like As I Lay Dying, August Burns Red, All That Remains etc.? Going for that 'metalcore' sound. Once we tackle the guitar tone, we will start testing out some Bass stuff so if any of you could point us in the right direction for that as well, that would be appreciated!
 
Looks like we have a good starting place. I'll get cab pack 13 and we'll do more tests when Will and I get together this weekend, and post some of our results. We'll start a preset from scratch and try some of the above suggestions, like proper panning, the possible phasing issue, possible stereo/mono issue, different amp EQing, volume settings, test different cab IRs, etc. Thank you for the feedback so far, it's really helpful! It's probably really basic stuff to most of you, but we are learning a lot with the Axe-Fx along the way.
 
Are there any plug in's in the set up? It sounds like there is a reverb on somewhere, but that could be a latency issue as well.
 
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