Clipping the input of the Axe deliberately with a booster?

Bodde

Bodde

Fractal Fanatic
I am experimenting with a booster pedal in front of the Axe II. I am placing a booster pedal before the Axe fx II and using a light gain amp block. Just like you would do with a real amp. It clips the input of the Axe, making the front lights go red. When the lights go red (withou a pedal in front ) normaly it sounds bad or broken. But with that booster pedal it sounds better to me than just using the Axe fx without a pedal. More 'alive' so to say and better overdrive sound. I have this booster always on now.

How many of you do this also? And is it a bad idea to always clip the Axe input with a booster pedal?
 
When the red led lights it isn't actually clipping, it's more an indication of it's just about to clip. That is unless you are really hitting the front hard and the red is permanently lit.
From the wiki: Red light turns on at -6dB of the point where the signal is hard limited / clipped

However, why on earth would you want to purposely introduce clipping at the input? Just seems like a bad idea to me and a way to get digital nasties.
Maybe you aren't actually clipping but the booster pedal is introducing some EQ/tone colouration which then impacts the overdrive characteristics?
 
Until you get to 'actual' input clipping (and you have to try pretty hard in my experience) the AFX amp model will react just like an amp - i.e. more saturated, plus many boost pedals have an eq change that is part of the 'magic'.
 
wouldn't it make more sense to keep the input signal clean and thrash the input to the amp block with something like a VOL / FIL etc..
or just whack up the input-trim??

two reasons why spanking the Axe's input may not be such a great idea:
1 - you could be digitally clipping.. which is un-natural with respect to how amps behave..
2 - if you need a clean tone, you'd have clipped the signal at the point of origin so it'll be dirty before it gets to the grid.. this means you'll forfeit flexibility.. essentially.. you can have any kind of tone you like so long as it's a dirty one..

personally I use a FIL block to do this.. this is so I have set it off / thru on a riffing scene, and then slam the amp block input in the soloing scene..
the additional benefit of the FIL block is that in the riffing scene [FIL = off / thru], the low end may be nice and tight, but when you slam the amp block input with the FIL to get all that extra gain, the lows may go flubby.. so the FIL's low cut parameter can be set to around 700 to keep all that flub under control..
so is therefore a 'cake and eat it' scenario..
more natural sounding
more controllable on a per scene basis so you can kick it in / out
more tonal control regarding which freqs do the slamming and which do not
 
vinnieRice said:
Until you get to 'actual' input clipping (and you have to try pretty hard in my experience) the AFX amp model will react just like an amp - i.e. more saturated, plus many boost pedals have an eq change that is part of the 'magic'.
Click to expand...

if a given boost pedal was the killer tonal component, how about popping the boost pedal in the fx-loop and placing that in front of the amp block..
then you can keep the Axe input nice and clean / red tickly stuff
this means you can call up the boost pedal 'one touch' via the loop with a scene change
 
I boost the front of my Axe FX for my dirty tone since I haven't managed to be able to recreate how my TC Electronic integrated preamp sounds. Apparently its just an EQ, but there must be something more going on. Even keeping it at unity gain and turning up the amp's input trim sounds noticeably different than just turning up the pedal volume, so I assume there must be some kind of additional EQ, or compression or something.

I turn down the input sensitivity (or whatever it was called) when I have the boost in, that way the light isn't perpetually red.
 
i use deadhorse drive pedal in front to boost, but i don't clip it, just barely hitting red is the titsie region for me. I kinda feel if you really clip the input you'll do more harm that way...
 
vinnieRice said:
Until you get to 'actual' input clipping (and you have to try pretty hard in my experience) the AFX amp model will react just like an amp - i.e. more saturated, plus many boost pedals have an eq change that is part of the 'magic'.
Click to expand...

Yes that's what I mean. Somehow the booster pedal adds the 'magic'. Just like you would use a tube screamer in front of a real amp. It makes the amp saturate more and to me it somehow sounds better than using a booster model in the drive block. I see the lights going into red almost all the time but it doesn't sound like digital clipping noise.

Somehow I like certain boost or drive pedals in front of the Axe to give it something extra that I can't find in the Axe itself. Plus it gives me more real time control.
 
Isn't this something similar to what the first type of Fryette/VHT Valvulator (or vulvalator if you're a filthy minded dyslexic) does?
 
clarky said:
if a given boost pedal was the killer tonal component, how about popping the boost pedal in the fx-loop and placing that in front of the amp block..
then you can keep the Axe input nice and clean / red tickly stuff
this means you can call up the boost pedal 'one touch' via the loop with a scene change
Click to expand...

I use the Loop for outboard stereo effects between the amp block and cab block - also I use a lot of boost/overdrive pedals and they react best to the analogue 'secret sauce' on the front guitar input (a nice high impedance/high headroom Class A op-amp I assume). Personally I don't think it's necessary to get the input red LED flashing; It's not relevant - it's the gain of the Amp Block that matters.
 
The instrument input on the front of the axe has special clipping circuitry IIRC, designed to reduce clipping. If you aren't balancing the output to the same level using the pedal in front as when you aren't, then that 'magic' you are experiencing is from the wizard Fletcher Munson.
 
vinnieRice said:
I use the Loop for outboard stereo effects between the amp block and cab block - also I use a lot of boost/overdrive pedals and they react best to the analogue 'secret sauce' on the front guitar input (a nice high impedance/high headroom Class A op-amp I assume). Personally I don't think it's necessary to get the input red LED flashing; It's not relevant - it's the gain of the Amp Block that matters.
Click to expand...

you make total sense to me
personally I 'aggressively tickle the reds' but don't slam the input..
means I have a nice fat signal, well above the noise floor etc..
 
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