Dumb moments you've had with the Axe?

Bumping the knob that turns off global poweramp modeling while making other tweaks... once at a gig, didn't discover what was wrong until setbreak. The other time was at an audition... needless to say I didn't get that gig ;-)
 
One time everything started sounding weird all of a sudden, jumped through my main presets and they all had this weird artifacts, kinda like it had some chorusing but weird.
All my main presets have a whammy configured. The expression pedal wasnt full heel up. So Whammy was kinda starting to pull up pitch, just enough to mess things up, and just less to affect pitch.
 
Getting rid of the shipping box then years later I wanted to sell my AxeFX and upgrade. No better shipping box than the one it comes in.

Buying a 3U rack case when I knew I’d want power/wireless someday.

Not backing up presets I worked hard on and overwriting them.
 
RamboMadCow said:
Could you give a little detail here? I'm still learning a TON about EQing stuff, particularly to help all band members blend together. I'm very curious on the how/why to use global EQ.

For mine...it happened last night and discovered today lol. My lead guitarist goes "I have volume pedal control but no wah!". I'm not familiar enough with the front navigation and couldn't get Axe Edit to work until this morning...when I saw that I had moved the wah to be disconnected from the line lol.

Went all rehearsal last night wonder why the wah didn't work. Guess I should learn the front panel navigation at some point.
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Thanks for asking, RamboMC. There are two ultimate hints that I would like to share from my experience. The first one, if I could now give an advice to myself 9 years ago, building my first own Fractal preset for live use, it would be just: after selecting an amp and a cab block on the grid, go to the cab block and set the low cut to 85 Hz and the high cut to 6500 Hz to start with. That would probably cost me a whole year less of figuring why everything sounds good on my desk speakers and headphones but it sounds banana during the rehearsal with my band. You know, when all the cleans sound great on high volumes, but you have to apologize to your band members for the presets with more gain. This tip solves that.

The second advice, and to learn that costed me many more years (I just don't want to say that I learned that quite recently) would be to really be aware of the Fletcher Munson Curve. Not to learn theoretical details, but to use your ears when using amplification in rehearsal room or a concert hall (Atomic CLR or the provided PA in my case). Beside the volume, every room adds it's own character due to the echo and emphasis of certain frequencies. Your near perfect presets don't translate well on high volumes and you need to compensate this change in the overall sound with the mentioned global EQ. This is an example of how I invested 10 minutes to tune in with my band and not to think about anything but playing for the rest of the jam (FM3):

1644440935597.png

You can surely use the graphic EQ instead. Just find the sweet spot for every slider.

For mixing in a DAW, I would use something completely different. There you really have to find pockets for each instrument in another way. This worked just fine in that rehearsal room. I would however rework this for some other ambience.

Cheers
 
Forgetting to turn Input 1 Source back to Analog after reamping and then wondering why I'm not getting any input from my guitar. I've done that way too many times to count.
 
JebHowell said:
Being the complex machine it is, I'm sure we've all had a brain fart working the axe. I had one last night playing with an 80's style clean tone. I've had this preset for a while and loved it, but last night it was harsh and brittle and horrible.

After tinkering with my guitar for half an hour, I finally found the wah was engaged.

So what's your favorite dufus moment with the axe?
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Been there with that one more than once.
 
JRod4928 said:
The self-conducted placebo test, I like it.
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I will piggy back mine on this, similar situation.

I am a total IR rabbit hole junkie (RHJ, band name?) and I have spent way too many hours auditioning IRs. I was loading 8 IRs into cab lab and sending either individual IRs or mixes (likely tried every possible combo, because that's what I do). I was just sending them to the Scratchpad I think.

As I am going through them, I am hitting a few chords on each one..."Meh, that one is OK... OK that one is really nice... OMG no way that one is awful!"

Anyway, an hour or two later I realize the Scratchpad isn't even selected in Cab block and I am literally listening to the EXACT SAME tone every time and truly believing I am hearing drastic differences. Serious "Doh!" moment but also learned first hand the power of placebo.
 
mr_fender said:
Forgetting to turn Input 1 Source back to Analog after reamping and then wondering why I'm not getting any input from my guitar. I've done that way too many times to count.
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Exactly! This is my regular error, and I usually spend a bit of time checking cables/routings before I realise what it is!
 
I have had countless moments when trying to sound check (I'm running sound for the band too), and I'm trying to figure out why I'm getting no signal to the board from my Axe. 9/10 times - the tuner/mute is on.

Since I run sound I will also loop a riff so I can go out front with the ipad and mix my guitar with the band.
Couple gigs ago, I must have hit 'save' during sound check because in the middle of the set I went to a preset (where they looper must have been engaged) and everyone in the band is looking at me like...."why are we hearing your guitar playing the wrong song right now". It was one of those moments that was probably 10-15 seconds long but felt like it took 30 minutes to find the mute button!
 
The Output Level controls on the FM3 get me all the time. I really need to pick up a few o-rings.
 
When FullRes IR's first came out I had a hard time telling the difference between my real cab in the room and the headphones experience so I would accidentally leave my power amp and cab on while I was writing riffs at night on my headphones.

My wife didn't think this was as amazing as I did.
 
Tweaking and rebuilding a preset because it sounded bad to my ears without making a backup. Later only to discover I needed to change the battery for my active pickups. I now check the input meter and if its lower than where its supposed to be I know.....
 
JebHowell said:
Being the complex machine it is, I'm sure we've all had a brain fart working the axe. I had one last night playing with an 80's style clean tone. I've had this preset for a while and loved it, but last night it was harsh and brittle and horrible.

After tinkering with my guitar for half an hour, I finally found the wah was engaged.

So what's your favorite dufus moment with the axe?
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I had just received a brand new guitar, sight unseen, with pickups I'd never tried before.

Plugged-in to the Axe-FX and it sounded awful.

I immediately packed-up the guitar and shipped it back to the seller.

The next evening (you know where this is going), I plugged-in another guitar. Same problem.

Wah was engaged. Duh.
 
ProfEmerald said:
I will piggy back mine on this, similar situation.

I am a total IR rabbit hole junkie (RHJ, band name?) and I have spent way too many hours auditioning IRs. I was loading 8 IRs into cab lab and sending either individual IRs or mixes (likely tried every possible combo, because that's what I do). I was just sending them to the Scratchpad I think.

As I am going through them, I am hitting a few chords on each one..."Meh, that one is OK... OK that one is really nice... OMG no way that one is awful!"

Anyway, an hour or two later I realize the Scratchpad isn't even selected in Cab block and I am literally listening to the EXACT SAME tone every time and truly believing I am hearing drastic differences. Serious "Doh!" moment but also learned first hand the power of placebo.
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Hahaaa! This is hilarious! I just did the same thing not too long ago. “This cab sounds way better on clean” One hour later I’m on Sweetwater looking at new monitors because mine are obviously junk and they must be causing ear fatigue.
 
JebHowell said:
After tinkering with my guitar for half an hour, I finally found the wah was engaged.
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I suspect everyone has done that at least once... One benefit of using a spring loaded expression pedal for Wah ;)

My recent moment was trying to figure out why none of changes I was making were having any audible effect only to notice I was tweaking the front panel of my Axe Fx III while playing thru my FM9... I was really confused for a few minutes!
 
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