Completely lost with Cygnus high gain tones

@Oshin
p.s. I use nice cables and I can't tell a difference between mogami and amazon brand.
Some of the premium Amazon cables look good. I use some in other applications and they work well.

Unless there is physically wrong inside the Ernie Ball cable.
The difference was so profound on the one guitar that it gave me a good reason to change out the pickups.
 
The preset uses a user cab. It's no use guessing / advising if you don't tell us what IR you are using.

Also, the Amp Boost in the Amp block is set to T808. Together with the Cut at 400 Hz this takes away all low end.
Thanks Yek, I have mentioned in the thread I’m using the LT MIX 7; I have had to use those cuts and the 808 to try and tightened it up; I got the idea from a Leon Todd video.
 
Have you tried a different guitar cable?

I recently had this issue with my Ernie Ball cable and changed to a Mogami Gold Silent cable.
I was reading about those whom claim the cable doesn't make a difference...they are wrong, it totally changed the high end and cleaned up the low end especially on my darker sounding guitars. It totally changed the way my Majesty and JEM-77 FP2 sounds. Cleaned up the sound on both guitars.

In my case $4000CAD guitar to $20 cable to $3000 AX3. Seems it was the weak link.
No I haven’t considered the cable. It is a dimarzio; had it for a while now.
 
On the Freidman have you tried Leons tips
-use his TV mix
-use the low cut in the amp block has much as you have to
-switch to 5153 impedance curve

check the Negative feedback
turn it up if need be
Yes I watch a lot of Leon’s videos and tried what you mentioned except the negative feedback.
 
Ok, just came out of bass land and am going to play around with this now.

Edit- They're definitely stiff, I agree with ya there. Without knowing exactly what you're going for, it's hard to dial things in on my side, so I just played around with each one and tried not to deviate from the original sound. If you can name off some guitarists/songs that feature tones you're going for, I can help point in those directions a little more.

You've really gotta lay into the strings with these amps, which didn't seem to be the case previous to Cygnus. A light picking hand won't work going for a tight, percussive sound from these, not without boosting the shit out of them. A different IR will definitely lend itself to loosening up the feel a bit, but again, I didn't want to change too far from what you had going on.

Here's a couple minutes of slop and wankery, going through each scene, from 1 to 4. I didn't have a problem with definition and once I backed up the Depth, it cleaned up a lot of mud in the low end. On a couple I used the 5 band EQ in the Amp block to cut some mids. I really only found Scene 2 to lend itself to a more modern metal tone. My only guitar with Evolutions is in standard tuning and is a little stiff with the tension itself.



Post back with some examples of what you're going for and I'll see if I can be of any assistance.

2nd Edit- I plugged another guitar in with Fishman Fluence pickups, world of difference with the stiffness and felt like there's nothing that would stop the notes from ringing out. They play entirely differently as well. Tomorrow I'll try working with the JEM to get it comparable. Man, I'm glad I checked this thread because now I've got this preset ready to go!

Here's the preset with my tweaks-
 

Attachments

  • Friedman BE-100.syx
    48.2 KB · Views: 8
Last edited:
Ok, just came out of bass land and am going to play around with this now.

Edit- They're definitely stiff, I agree with ya there. Without knowing exactly what you're going for, it's hard to dial things in on my side, so I just played around with each one and tried not to deviate from the original sound. If you can name off some guitarists/songs that feature tones you're going for, I can help point in those directions a little more.

You've really gotta lay into the strings with these amps, which didn't seem to be the case previous to Cygnus. A light picking hand won't work going for a tight, percussive sound from these, not without boosting the shit out of them. A different IR will definitely lend itself to loosening up the feel a bit, but again, I didn't want to change too far from what you had going on.

Here's a couple minutes of slop and wankery, going through each scene, from 1 to 4. I didn't have a problem with definition and once I backed up the Depth, it cleaned up a lot of mud in the low end. On a couple I used the 5 band EQ in the Amp block to cut some mids. I really only found Scene 2 to lend itself to a more modern metal tone. My only guitar with Evolutions is in standard tuning and is a little stiff with the tension itself.



Post back with some examples of what you're going for and I'll see if I can be of any assistance.

2nd Edit- I plugged another guitar in with Fishman Fluence pickups, world of difference with the stiffness and felt like there's nothing that would stop the notes from ringing out. They play entirely differently as well. Tomorrow I'll try working with the JEM to get it comparable. Man, I'm glad I checked this thread because now I've got this preset ready to go!

Here's the preset with my tweaks-

Thanks for all your work helping me out, sounded good You are right about having to dig in to the strings with Cygnus, I think it will help improve my playing. I like tones that are not over saturated, in 15 i would run the gain on 3 and use preamp boost on 12 or 14 for rhythm and that would be good. I really like the modded marshall sound with a tight low end. I like that squishiness when you bounce off the strings. I hope this makes sense. I have been trying out different IR to. I think it will be a case of just getting used to it and just playing more.
 
Hahahah I've been playing with this preset all day, using my Ibanez SZ with the Fishman's. I bought ML's Friedman 4x12 pack because I wasn't finding anything quick enough in the 37,000 IR's I already own, but man, this IR pack is GREAT. I normally find one good IR every 10-15, I'm 9 IR's in and every single one so far has been awesome. That's a first.....and I can say with some certainty I have some experience with IR's. :D

I think the midrange in the Evolution's is adding to some of that stiffness in the amp. It wouldn't be the first time I've experienced that with that guitar and I've been wanting to change those pickups out for a long time. You'd think the higher output would lend itself to hitting the front end harder, but it's probably hard with a giant piece of midrangey cardboard taking up most of the space. I have a love/hate thing with those pickups. They've had me so frustrated in the studio in the past with rhythm tones, but then I'll track a lead with it and it's just perfect. Still think I'm going to swap them out with some Dimarzio PAF's, though I'm interested in the Utopia's, because they're supposed to have a little higher output and less mids, which sounds perfect.
 
I’m very new to the AxeFX, but Cygnus sounds great to me. My signal chain is Steinberg GM4T into a ISP Technologies Hum Extractor + Decimator (really poor electrical here) into a Blackstar HT-5 Dual tube distortion into the front panel of the AxeFX 3. I mention all that because when I’ve experienced what you’re describing, it’s been due to poor impedance matching. I thought my Apollo interface had automatic impedance matching, but it turns out that my particular model did not. Going direct made for very poor sound in plugins that usually work pretty well. (Neural DSP) Hitting my HT-Dual first made all the difference.
 
Back
Top Bottom