Disappointed :(

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If it's an old unit, loading latest FW and the 6.01 factory preset banks may make a sh*tload of sense too; in addition to the unit level reset. There is no telling how it was dialed prior or for what context.
 
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Yeah If you bought the unit used, definitely do a factory reset. The Axe II is capable of much better and more realistic tones than any modeling product I've ever used. Not only that but the number people around here that have made the switch from premium tube amps and pedals is astonishing. The tones are there, but it does take some time and work to dial in what you want. Don't let the factory presets be the metric by which you judge the unit, although the recently updated factory presets for Quantum 6 FW are pretty good. The learning curve can be a little steep at times, but it's well worth the effort.

The first time I plugged into my XL, I wasn't exactly blown away by the stock sounds either. That quickly changed as soon as I started building my own presets from scratch. With all the firmware updates since, it has only gotten better.
 
First of all, I respectfully disagree with my fellow forumites; you do not have to tweak and tweak to get great tones out of the axe fx.
You can tweak till your hearts content, the axe has the power, but it ain't a prerequisite to excellent tone.

Are you using the latest firmware?

You do have to pick the right amp for the sound your going for and you have to pick an appropriate ir for the cab. Apparently you have a good (great) monitoring system in good working order. So, you need to make sure that the axefx is boinked with parameter, like amp sims off or something. I assume you know all about your recording software, but never hurts to recheck it anyway. Go through the axefx parameters in the global and utility, ect, and make sure something weird hasn't happened. Perhaps a system reset and start over? Global eq?

In my experience, and depending on the amp and ir, you will almost always have to cut the bottom on the axe fx to some degree when going frfr. This is due to the ir's in the cab and how close mic'ing effects highs and lows and all that stuff...search and find many threads. In the cab block switch to -12b and cut the bottom until you loose the boom and have clarity. You may even find that you can cut the highs after that. Like down to 6k or so.

In conjunction with the adjustments in the cab block, you should only need to adjust the bass mid treble presence and volumes to get an excellent sound. If anything else is required something is not right and you need to find it.

Post a preset if you can, and trust me, ...or the multitudes of other people here, the axefx is the state of the art....and it is seriously good. Cut that bottom...in the cab.
 
True. It's not so much that you have to tweak a billion parameters, but rather that you need to start with the amp and cab models that best suit the guitar and pickups you are using and the tone you are going for. 90+% of my tweaking is with the basic parameters that exist on the real gear.
 
I also bought my unit used. Had similar problems. All dark and muddy.
No system reset helped. After an FPGA update (you can't do that by yourself)
All was fine . Maybe that was helpfully.
 
FWIW Once you have done your reset, I recommend downloading a preset which you have heard a sample of the audio (so you know what it should sound like) There are lots of members who have uploaded audio clips and then posted their preset on the forum.
There are also some stellar sounding ones to purchase from the likes of:
Moke.. http://www.custompresets.com/store/c1/Featured_Products.html
or
Fremen.. http://axefremen.blogspot.com/2016/02/fremen-quantum-20-presets.html


I too was quite underwhelmed with the factory presets and still don't use them today.. But honestly once you get a couple of presets which sound right to you and your gear, the musical world of sheer tone & possibilities within this black box is astonishing.:)

Also two things I found to make a big difference with my gear was the length of the cable run, I was running a total of 40 foot...20 foot to a pedal board and a further 20 to the mixer/monitors..... And found I needed to boost the high end frequencies more than I would normally running into a real amp head and cab....Maybe its a trait of FRFR?

The other thing was the quality of the playback monitors, buy the best you can afford, it makes a difference.
 
You mentioned you're not looking for a "Metal" tone ..., so what type of tone are you going for ?

I'd also suggest you get a hold of Larry Mitchell's presets ( here: http://www.fractalaudio.com/accurate.php )

There's an AC-20 ( Vox type ), a Fender Deluxe ( Clean & Dirty ), two Plexi's ( 1987x & 1987x Jumped ), and even a PVH 6160 ....

With those presets alone I can cover a ton of ground ! And using my guitar and monitoring with headphones, it's bloody accurate to what you'll hear in Larry, Cliff & Matt's video !
 
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While the factory presets may not stir your panties exactly like you want, there really ought to be something that makes you go "now that's close" and give you a point for departure. Resetting the unit settings is a must do. Upgrading the firmware and reloading the factory presets is something you probably should do. But quite frankly, the V1 firmware of the Axe II sounded fucking great so with what you have after the reset you should be able to create a basic amp/cab preset from scratch and have it sound pretty darn good.

Let us know how it goes (and maybe tone down the preemptive hostility).
 
If you are running new firmware and 'old' presets...then I'd agree with everything you said. They aren't compatible.

I'm one of the guys that has NEVER liked presets on anything...but the NEW Axe presets, running on the NEW firmware are really good. Almost all of them are great even. I'm having a blast playing with them.
 
Iain Hamilton said:
I tried to keep this brief but it did't work...

I've always been a fan of guitar technology, since the 90's using pre amps by every manufacturer that even glanced outside of the analogue box, Digitech, Line 6 etc. Rocktron were the best by far for me,i tried all of their preamps and had a Prophesy for years and years, my rig consisted of the Prophecy and a Mesa 50/50 into a marshall, nice and simple.

I always recorded the Prophesy direct, i miked it up occasionally but the results were never really better, just unrepeatable :) Though, as i know you're all thinking, that couldn't exactly have been the holy grail of tone, and you're right, it wasn't, always had to dial out a lot of nasties after the fact, though i became very handy with a notch filter :) When i heard the first Axe FX i was gobsmacked, hearing all the great tones people were getting, then the Ultra came out etc etc... I decided to sell my whole rig and invest in one, that was about 6 or 7 years ago now.

It so transpired that the money i got for my gear just trickled in and trickled out, it wasn't even halfway to being enough money anyway even if it hadn't frittered away, so for the next few years i ended up going through every single software amp modeller ever made, for what it's worth, Amplitube 3 is the best in my opinion, TH2 is a close second, maybe followed by LePou with IR's if you can be even remotely arsed to work that hard to get a pleasing sound, which i guess kinda leads me to my point, but not before i mention Bias = Toy.

I did finally get an Axe FX a few months ago, i got the Axe FX 2 XL with the MFC101 mk3.

I'd arrived! Or so i thought.

I expect, i literally EXPECT, that for this amount of money, and all the good sounds i've heard people get with all of the AXE's, to be able to get through the first 100 presets and say wow that sounds great at least ONCE, just once, but nope, massively bassy, muddy, treble bereft sounds that i struggle to see how they would fit into any mix with out so much tweaking that i might as well have miked up an amp.

Now i'll try to nip some preconceptions in the bud because i know the fan boys will be seething by this point. Firstly, look back up to where i say Rocktron Prophesy lots of times, i'm not a technophobe, you can't even work with, let alone love a Prophesy if you are one, it's quite similar in it's complexity but with no software interface, i can twiddle for England! I have fiddled and twiddled my way to through this unit, and the quest for brightness and tightness in the box ends disappointingly every time, just a quick point here, a Fender Bassman with my PRS Custom 24 going through it IS NOT THAT DARK! End of... Usually if it was too dark you could simply move the mic closer to the centre of the speaker, this should have the potential of being waaaaay too bright but i think the AXE is allergic to treble so you don't have that option.

I am running my PRS, into the XL2, into a Universal Audio Quad, both USB and XLR, obviously i've tried both, there is no discernible difference, out of the Apollo and into a pair of ATC SCM20ASL monitors, pretty much as good as it gets quality wise, and i'm sitting here watching Kemper videos and thinking to myself "but what if i want to turn the gain down?" You can't, a Kemper isn't the answer for me either but why am i even looking at them?

Unless i'm missing something really major, i'm just really disappointed, i waited so long for one of these and i'm less inspired now than ever by my guitar tone, and i'm far from the only person making this exact complaint, but the responses these people get either end up being condescending or just plain stupid shit like "have you checked the tone knob on your guitar?" !!!!

i'm not expecting any help from here, but if you have the miracle answer please tell me, if you just want to flame me, keep it to yourself, as well as any questions that might even remotely fall into the dumb fuck category the above question fits so neatly into.

My final point is an example, i'm trying to remix an old track i recorded with the prophesy some years back, I thought it would be great to use my new AXE FX to bring some new life into the track with a higher fidelity guitar sound, but so far, and i've been at a for couple of weeks now, i cannot find a sound that even comes close to sounding as good as what's already recorded, that just ain't right, i sold the Rocktron for £350, i think i might just give up, i do not want a big old amp rig with loads of pedals and wires and shit, i never have, and there are no current viable hardware alternatives.

I suppose i do already have a whole bunch of modelling software, i've resisted until now but i think i'm going to whack an instance of Amplitube onto my project and give it whirl while i think about putting this thing on eBay.

:(
Click to expand...
Why don't you post 20 seconds of the track recorded with the prophesy and a DI track of your guitar and we try to reamp and match that sound with our Axe FXs? ;)
 
The system reset should handle this, but I would suspect Power Amp Modeling and/or Cab modeling could be disabled, or the global EQ(s) may be set strangely.

Also, describing what you are monitoring with would be good. Studio monitors? Headphones?

Also, when you ask for help here, there are no "dumb ass" questions from those offering help. We don't know what you do or don't know. We don't know how much of the manual (fairly outdated) or forums or wiki you may or may not have read. Sometimes the simple, dumb ass question is the right one.

Be patient, be courteous, listen to what people here tell you even if you don't necessarily think they are right... Because obviously you have failed to find the answer and they just might have it :)

Trust me... The tone you seek is almost certainly in the box!

EDIT: I just realized the OP did mention what he was monitoring with...
 
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Count me among the ones who thinks the unit sounds great straight out of the box. Assuming of course that everything is defaulting properly.

I can grab my strat and go to preset 4, the vibrolux, and it sounds great. Switch to my LP, neck pup, rolled back volume, again sounds awesome

HBE, Les Paul, fantastic hard rock tone, zero adjustments needed

Now one can certainly tweak to taste, but the models are dead on. Look at the Larry Mitchell video for example, can't tell them apart from the real amps.

If you don't plug in, and say, wow this sounds just like a fender, or Mesa etc, something is set wrong

Your ideal tone may take some tweaks, but the basic good guitar tone of various amps is there without needing to really adjust anything, pure plug n play
 
lqdsnddist said:
Count me among the ones who thinks the unit sounds great straight out of the box. Assuming of course that everything is defaulting properly.

I can grab my strat and go to preset 4, the vibrolux, and it sounds great. Switch to my LP, neck pup, rolled back volume, again sounds awesome

HBE, Les Paul, fantastic hard rock tone, zero adjustments needed

Now one can certainly tweak to taste, but the models are dead on. Look at the Larry Mitchell video for example, can't tell them apart from the real amps.

If you don't plug in, and say, wow this sounds just like a fender, or Mesa etc, something is set wrong

Your ideal tone may take some tweaks, but the basic good guitar tone of various amps is there without needing to really adjust anything, pure plug n play
Click to expand...

I can throw my agreement in on this. I got mine (new, mind you) almost 2 months ago and I was really surprised at how little I really tweak much. I can make new presets and tweak as much as I like, but almost all presets, while maybe not all my taste of style, sound really great to me.
 
Best thing you can do to get help with tones is to post clips (both your Axe II recordings and examples of the tones you're after) and post your presets. Soundcloud is a good free place to post clips. You'll get plenty of input on how to get what you're after.
 
The cab is literally everything.

No I'm not being spiritual or anything here. The cab is literally everything. It is how the amp feels and how it sounds.

When you find a cab that you like? Then you're pretty much set. Then things will start to happen. Go check out a few custom cabs (I'm not a fan of any in the AFX) like from Rosen Digital or Ownhammer and see how things feel for you.
 
The factory presets are not for me either (that's probably me not the presets) for me they are generally on the dark side and tend to have too much base, I'm not saying that they are not good tones, they are just not what I go for on the whole. Luckily they are just presets. As the others have said, update the firmware, make sure you do a factory reset once updated. It could be something as simple as a global EQ setting that the previous owner had set to take the high-end off and this could be messing stuff up.

If you clear a preset add a JCM800 with default settings and add something like cab 073 — 4x12 USA TRAD 57-121 (ML) and that certainly should not be dark.

Happy tone hunting!
 
You have to listen to the old pros and heed their advice because you simply have no idea what you're doing. Once you do, the world is your oyster, and you'll see why great guitarists and bands swear by the big black box. This thing is smarter and more inclusive than you can possibly imagine. I've been at it nearly four years and still learning new things every time I turn it on, which is admittedly not every day and not for very long (such is life - I am not a professional musician, just a guy with expensive taste and hobbies).

1 - Clean out old girl of whatever mistakes the previous owner made to cause them to (foolishly) sell to you
2 - Install the latest firmware
3 - Install the factory preset banks and cabs (most importantly for the cabs to start with - explore these before you go off and but a zillion cab packs).
4 - Watch the video tutorials.
5 - Build your presets from scratch.
6 - Learn about how to manipulate sag and bias and things like that, which give a surprising amount of character.
 
First, check your Cab block. Find two or three cabs you like and stick with those. The cab block, believe it or don't, is the biggest single contributor to your overall sound, easily. Us amp lovers don't always like to admit that but there it is. Experiment a lot with cabs.

Also, I too don't care for 95% of the presets, but most of them aren't really there for straight up tone, they're there to demonstrate the kinds of things the Axe can do, crazy sound effects and oh-I-never-thought-of-that grid layouts, that kind of thing.
Use them for what they are, an interactive tutorial on how to build patches from beginner to advanced, taught by example.

The secret to the Axe FX is to remember two things:

1) guitar played and heard through studio monitors is VASTLY different than through a power amp and cab. THIS CANNOT BE OVERSTATED. You're used to feeling the room vibrate and your pants legs getting blown back with real amps. Try this: try emulating your favorite artist's tone with the Axe-Fx. two things will happen. 1 - You'll be shocked at how close you can get to that tone if you know what emulated gear to use. 2 - You'll also be shocked at how small that previously huge, walloping tone becomes when you find yourself playing your own guitar to produce it, listening to it through studio monitors. That just the nature of amp/cab vs studio monitor tone.

2) Never use factory default presets... on ANY piece of gear, especially the Axe-Fx. Always start from scratch, a totally empty grid. Your own presets will always sound 500% better than factory presets.

Basically, if you want your Axe-Fx to sound like a real amp in the room, you have to use a poweramp and guitar cab. If you want your guitar to sound like a well-recorded, mic'd up guitar as heard on your favorite albums, you'll want to use studio monitors. And you'll also want to spend time learning the differences between those two approaches, of which there are many.
 
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First things first, simplify the rig and routing. Run the Axe straight into the monitors or headphones as mentioned. Make sure the firmware and presets are up to date. Make sure your input pad and other I/O settings are right for your setup. Build a simple preset with just amp and cab, make sure the IR is what you are after, this will have the largest impact no the final tone. If you don't have your monitors set to cut or some funky EQ, you should be getting plenty of treble from just default configurations on the amp/cab blocks. Once you get the tone right out of the monitors, then try reintegrating the interface.
 
I wouldn't torture myself and sell the damn thing! Luckily for me, my XL and AX8 both sound like a tone dream come true!
 
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