Droptune with AXE FX II -----> FX II vs. ULTRA vs. Morpheus droptune

lukenukem

New Member
Dear All, I know that on the axe FX II it is possible to virtually drop the guitar tune like on the morpheus.

As per my knowledge, this feature on the ultra is not so good but I have no info on the II where the 2 processors can do a better job.

So, is there anyone with experience of droptune on the II? I don't need to drop 4 or 5 semi-tones but just 1/2 step for some van halen stuff.

Do you know if any video comparison FX II vs. ULTRA vs. Morpheus droptune????

Thanks!

Lukenukem
 
If it's that important to you, get a VG-99 or a variax. I use a VG-99 with my II for alternate tunings and did the same with my Ultra. Works really well.
 
After reading the comment my question is: how could it be that with the most powerful fx processor like the II I need to buy an other device?

I assume the II can smoke every morpheus pedal or roland station.

Fractal, is there any chance to really improve the drop tuning function of the pitch shifter? Is it so bad compared to other polyhonic drop tuning devices?

LukeNukem
 
I thought this was the only real weakness of the Ultra when I had it. I tried the Morpheus and it's ok at 1/2 and even one step, but after that I thought it was horrible. And to be honest it wasn't really good, but merely usable those two settings. I've got an old VG8 I bought back in 1995 and a Roland Ready strat that I paid a ton of money for and while its ancient it is still very good at pitch shifting. I'd assume the newer VG stuff is significantly better.

But real time pitch shifting with polyphonic material is just a real big task for anything; that's why the stuff that does individual strings via hex pickups works the best IMHO.
 
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Comparing the polyphonic pitch shifting of the II to the monophonic pitch shifting of the VG-99 is not a fair comparison. The II, or any other standard effect processor has to deal with the signal of all 6 strings at once which is a huge task. The alternate tuning of the VG-99 requires you to use a hexaphonic pup, which is actually 6 pups in one.... one for each string. This means that it never has to deal with more than one note at a time. It simply does monophonic pitch shifting, which is much less complicated, for each of the 6 strings separately. A fairer comparison would be the II vs the wammy effect in the VG-99 using a standard pup. In that respect they are about the same.
 
There are inherent problems when pitch-shifting any musical instrument. These problems physically prevent a a digital (or analog) drop-tuning from sounding completely real. Some of them are discussed here.
 
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