Disappointed :(

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the learning curve is constantly getting longer, but when you finally figure out which knobs do what, even if you barely hear a difference, eventually you can start from a blank page on axe edit and make a whole patch in like 10 minutes because you know what to tweak for your desired tone, the guitar you're using, the speakers you're coming through.. took me like a year, but now I feel like I've somewhat mastered MY tone. It still takes a little longer if I want to copy another tone I heard that I'd like to nail, but I pretty much know where to go now to get closer to it. Also - cabs.
 
I can make most of the tones on the presets work for me. Sometimes I just take my time and go through them one at a time and play with them. I have to adjust the way I play to give them life and make them work. But for me that's the fun. More left hand force, less, more or less right have, alternate, not, legato, leads or rhythm, picking every note. In each, if I spend time, I will tweak some. Turn off the effects. Save in different scene configurations. But it's good practice. I updated my Axe Fx II mk I to a XL+ and also go a AX8. So I've been changing up a bit, when I have time. Not just transferring my old presets. I wouldn't say the presets that came with are useless at all. But each and everyone of them I tweak some.

I really do think a significant portion comes from your own technique. I know nobody wants to hear that. But the learning curve is daunting. I can only do so much at one time. I'm still auditioning amps and cabs. It's a long road. I don't always know what type of sound and for what context I'll be creating. I certainly have my backlog of songs to prepare for. But then there's general studio use: funk rhythm, blues, jazz effecty and modern, jazz traditional, country-ish, many, many rock styles. , ambient, fusion styles, pop styles.

And yeah, you're monitoring is crucial as a factor. I have really nice studio monitors with a sub in addition to my two Xitones 12 wedges.
 
Its a bit too easy to always feel one needs to tweak that last 1%, which can be a pretty daunting task. Its like you find a cab IR you like, it sounds good, you rock out for an hour, life is great. Then you start thinking.....what if there is another IR that sounds even better..... So then you buy a cab pack, or two, or five, or twenty lol, and then you've got over a 1,000 IR's to try out and you spend days doing that, finding a few that sound good at the time. However, then you go back later and try it again and your not so sure, so you flip back to the original you liked and it sounds better, so then you search some more. Its a never end process

It goes from sheer enjoyment, thinking "this is the best my guitar tone has ever sounded, I love this box" to "it sounds pretty good, but what if I could make it even better...."

Not saying there is anything wrong with tweaking, but there is something to be said for enjoying playing something that sounds darn good, verses never being happy with anything because your just always looking for something better.

Simple fact is this, most any great player sounds great though darn near any rig. The reason some guys who have great tone sound so great isn't because they found some needle in the haystack IR after trying a 999 other ones and suddenly they became a guitar hero. Its because they can play.

Back when I worked for Kerrang! magazine in the UK as a photographer (fun times, fun era) I was shooting 3 to 5 shows a week, so I got to see a lot of guys live sets. Depending on the show, time slot etc, bands didn't always get to load in their own gear, they just had to play with the backline gear provided, or the headliners gear in some cases. This is fairly common especially at festival style gigs where there are a lot of bands and the logistics just don't allow for getting one touring set off, another on, and having room for all the other bands gear. Is what it is, and most guys always seemed cool with it. Heck, some couldn't of been happier as they picked up a flight in, good paying festival gig, with little logistical problems.

Point being, the guitarist always sounded like themselves, even when playing a different rig. Its simply not that huge of factor if they normally played with creambacks in a 4x12 slant and had to do a gig with an oversize v30 loaded cab. Somehow the show went on, the audience was happy, the band sounded good, and they went on to play another city.

I think some people here get way too caught up in small, small things like if an IR captured with a given speaker 0.5 inch from the cone or 0.75 inch from the cone.

Its like guys who have a TS9, TS808, TS10, modded TS9 reissue, mini TS9 etc all on their boards, buying, selling, rebuying them, trying to find that magical tone. Just doesn't really matter that much, and none of them are going to make you play any better or worse. There is a point where the time and energy spent swapping stuff out could of been used actually playing and improving your chops.

I think sometimes we put way too much time, effort and money into looking for answers that we probably know deep down aren't really going to matter, and ignoring the obvious, though more difficult answer of just learning to play better.

If I want to play like SRV what is going to make that happen ? Spending 15 hours on Ebay searching for OD pedals, reading about OD pedal mods, reviews, listening to youtube clips of pedals etc, OR, learning a few of his licks, and practice, practice, practice til I can actually pull them off halfway decent ?
 
I've always been a little adverse to too much tweaking just because I'm so much into actual playing and practicing. When I'm mainly tweaking and looking for tone I'm not really working on my guitar playing. But I'm coming around.
 
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I abandoned the factory presets years ago, lol.

I use mixer blocks; clean signal to real cabs out output 2 and effects to FRFR out output 1 live.
 
shredi knight said:
I think Iain Hamilton realized he did have the tone knob on his guitar turned all the way down and is just too damned embarrassed to post back and tell us. :D
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WHo knows. :D Everybody has different things they hear I guess, but I think it is pretty easy to get good sounds straight away from stock presets as a starting point.
 
When I see long posts about how terrible the AXE is, and then the OP disappears with no more info, I immediately think it is the competition trying to sway opinions. Fortunately for most of us, it does nothing. I agree with the factory settings sometimes do not sound good. I use a PRS Custom 22, and usually have to adjust anything factory or downloaded. So I learned from others to start from scratch, pick my amp and cab, get the tone I want and add the rest. Been working flawlessly for me.
 
Too much choice can be a bad thing..... ( to me, as regards the Axe; it's a wonderful thing. but not for everyone I guess)

Don't make life hard on yourself:

1} Pick a cab

2) Pick a amp.

If you don't like that combination / cant get the tonez you wanted out of it; you can be 100% certain you wouldn't have liked the amp/cab it was modelled on ...so on to the next one.

I actually think an Axe Edit 'lite' would be very useful for a lot of people - just basic controls only.

That would save some the anguish of going down the time-suck blackhole of how much 'coil bias' etc etc is appropriate......

The Axe with Q7 beta is f**in glorious - but I've been saying similar for the past 5 years at least.
 
zack said:
I actually think an Axe Edit 'lite' would be very useful for a lot of people - just basic controls only.
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My brother's been saying that ever since the Axe Fx first came out. "Why not use that technology to build a simple amp that looks/adjusts/sounds just like a given real-life amp, just with no damned tubes in it? I know how to work one of those."

He's got a point. If you could get a '59 Bassman clone that behaved exactly like the original but without actual tubes and all that entails, you'd make a helluva lotta people happy. Maintenance issues would go away, and it would probably lose about 50-60 pounds. Then, for your next trick, make a JCM 800. Then a Mark V. Then an AC30. Then... whatever.

Of course, it would be a helluva waste of technology to have all that capability and limit it to a single expression, but lotsa stuff is that way. Look at aluminum. There's a million things you can do with it. Doesn't mean if you buy some aluminum you have to do everything that it's possible to do with it. Maybe just make a wheel, or a cooking utensil, or a baseball bat.

Plus, people like to collect amps :D
 
Cagey said:
Of course, it would be a helluva waste of technology to have all that capability and limit it to a single expression, but lotsa stuff is that way. Look at aluminum. There's a million things you can do with it. Doesn't mean if you buy some aluminum you have to do everything that it's possible to do with it. Maybe just make a wheel, or a cooking utensil, or a baseball bat.
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Yeah, but in the early days of aluminum it was extremely expensive. More valuable than gold. That's why the Washington Monument is capped with it. So this is a really, really good analogy.
 
Cagey said:
My brother's been saying that ever since the Axe Fx first came out. "Why not use that technology to build a simple amp that looks/adjusts/sounds just like a given real-life amp, just with no damned tubes in it? I know how to work one of those."
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Sounds like a great idea - especially if it had a 5 way rotary switch so you could choose from Bassman, JCM800, Plexi, Twin, HBE for instance...... and maybe an extra control for sag...... maybe one to......... ah.......!
 
Imagine a device that:
- a) would use modern fractal modeling algorythms
- b) would be designed as the first line 6 pod "bean" with a few amps (5-6), a few excellent effects and... KNOBS.
- b') wouldn't have a gazilion settings but "optimized" settings (you select the Twin, then you automatically get the 2x12 Twin cab and the Twin reverb, etc..)

They couldn't build enough of these.


PS
Rereading my post, it's just so obvious that the first pod with fractal sounds would be KILLER!
 
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Jean-Philippe JASON said:
Imagine a device that:
- a) would use modern fractal modeling algorythms
- b) bould be designed as the first line 6 pod "bean" with a few amps (5-6), a few excellent effects and... KNOBS.
- b') wouldn't have a gazilion settings but "optimized" settings (you select the Twin, then you automatically get the 2x12 Twin cab and the Twin reverb, etc..)

They couldn't build enough of these.


PS
Rereading my post, it's just so obvious that the first pod with fractal sounds would be KILLER!
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I'm guessing you also envision a POD price tag in that picture?
Problem is that those awesome Fractal algorithms are useless without a couple of kickass DSPs to run them on. And that is one of the things that contribute to the higher price.
Memory, to hold all of those 222 amp models, OTOH is pretty cheap nowadays.

So, cutting back on the number of amps inside the unit won't save much. And people are already cramped trying to build a pedalboard inside the AX8. Less effects is not going to fly either.
However, an amp-only device could cut cost significantly. That could cut one DSP.

Still won't be what many consider cheap, though. It still has to live up to Fractal quality standards... And reputation.
 
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.

:(
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first of all, do not expect any preset to sound any good that's not made by yourself!

the AXE FX II is very powerful when it comes to creating tones, it has practically no limits, however
i recently made a discovery that was pretty shocking to be honest.

in the past i could always create "OK" tones with the AXE F II but it actually never sounded perfect to me,
there was always something that bothered me, no matter how much i tweaked the parameters,
in most cases i would end up with a bad tone, rather than something usable.

the i realized that you can get a great tone by almost no tweaking, choose the amp model that might
give the tone you are searching for, set up two things, gain and volume to be right, then leave the amp block alone!

here's my discovery, the main thing that gives bad or, preferably great results is the IR, the fitting correct IR!
do not chose IR's by their name, or what they are supposed to represent, chose by ear.

of course you can narrow it down, for example if you are looking for a heavy tone then it's advisable to start with
something like a "mesa os 4x12 V30 SM57" IR.

browse through different IR's without chaning the amp settings, sooner or later you will have an IR that will give you
a pretty good result. remember this IR. now repeat until you hava a FEW good sounding IR's. they do not have to sound very similar,
but they have to sound "pleasing". for example if you chose an IR that's extremely boomy, leave it and proceed to the next one
until you find an IR that may not be balanced, stillvery bassy butt not completely bad sounding.

when you have a bunch of selected IR's, sirt them from bright to dark and then start mixing them.

that's it basically the key to a great souund is finding good sounding IR's and mixing them until
you have something really good sounding.

in this case you can go back to the amp block and start "fine tuning" the sound. most of the parameters will
either make the sound brighter or darker, find the perfect balance...

one more thing, i recently started creatng tones using headphones directly plugged into the AXE FX II.
most of us do not have a acoustically treated room, so basically everything will sound much worse as it actually is from the beginning, because the room acoustics play a big role here. when using headphones, preferably some of good quality you will hear the actually sound that's coming out of the AXE FX II, without the "bad room acoustics colouration"
 
just saw the first post and thought i might share my experience, didn't look at ther whole thread to be honest! :)

well, at least...it mightbe useful to somebody else
 
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