AFIII "Father to Son" by Queen w/ Red Special replica directly into AXE-FX III

km 202257

km 202257

Inspired

This is my take of "Father to Son” by Queen, as played by Brian May at Live in London on September 13th, just 49 years ago.
You can hear me on the left, whereas Brian on the right.

This is my first recording since I switched from an external "real" treble booster to Fractal's Drive block.
Treble booster is to me the last thing to go digital, until the recent firmware update with improvements to Drive block. With the right tweaks in input impedance and the low cut frequency, I prefer the Rangemaster model over my Brian May signature treble booster that's been with me more than a decade.
"Class-A 30W" for the Amp block, obviously.

Brian May in the early days of Queen had a dirty, heavy and wild guitar tone which I really like. Brian's playing is really on fire so this is my most recommended recording of Queen's early gigs. You can hear it at:
 
Thanks for your comments everyone.
stm113 said:
Can you share your settings on the Treble boost?
Click to expand...
I've attached a sample preset that include Drive block and Amp block used for this recording. Please refer to that. The keys to the tweaks are:
  1. Set input impedance of Input block to "22k". Ideally it shall be 12kohm to match the real Rangemaster (https://www.electrosmash.com/dallas-rangemaster) but that's not available, so I set it to the lowest value possible.
  2. In Drive block, bring down the "Low Cut" from the default, which I guess Cliff carefully matched to the real deal but find so high that it's taking too much mid/lows. I adjusted by ear to work well with my Red Special replica, but adjust to your taste.
The preset includes some factory cabs that I liked for this configuration. As Brian has used Sennheiser MD421 and Audio Technica's condenser microphones so I mainly chose from IRs that use them.

Here's how the preset sounds like. (Sorry for the rough playin'...!)


I used Redwirez's "AC30-Silver12" IRs for this video by the way.
 

Attachments

  • Treble Boost+AC30 (km.202257).syx
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km 202257 said:
Thanks for your comments everyone.

I've attached a sample preset that include Drive block and Amp block used for this recording. Please refer to that. The keys to the tweaks are:
  1. Set input impedance of Input block to "22k". Ideally it shall be 12kohm to match the real Rangemaster (https://www.electrosmash.com/dallas-rangemaster) but that's not available, so I set it to the lowest value possible.
  2. In Drive block, bring down the "Low Cut" from the default, which I guess Cliff carefully matched to the real deal but find so high that it's taking too much mid/lows. I adjusted by ear to work well with my Red Special replica, but adjust to your taste.
The preset includes some factory cabs that I liked for this configuration. As Brian has used Sennheiser MD421 and Audio Technica's condenser microphones so I mainly chose from IRs that use them.

Here's how the preset sounds like. (Sorry for the rough playin'...!)


I used Redwirez's "AC30-Silver12" IRs for this video by the way.
Click to expand...

Sounds great! Are you using chorus?
 
Darrin66 said:
Sounds great! Are you using chorus?
Click to expand...
No, Chorus block is not included in the preset above. Adding chorus requires two amp blocks with different setting (Morgan AC-20 model might be good); otherwise chorus adds undesirable phase cancelling which I don't like in a mix. Still haven't discovered the chorus setting for Brian May tone that I like, either.
 
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