Johan Allard
Power User
Hi guys, I had my first rehearsal with my band using my Axe Fx 2 yesterday and I'd thought I'd write a couple of lines with my experiences with it.
Everything went reasonably well, or rather, I think it went as well as I could expect. The thing I'm still missing is powered monitors so I used my Line 6 Spider Jam, which has a tweeter in it to make it full range:ish but it's definitely not flat response and the quality of the speakers is not fantastic, to be polite. Overall it sounded a bit too bright and harsh, I tried to adjust it a bit with the global EQ but didn't spend too much time since I knew that my Yamaha DXR10's should arrive next week. I have bought an almost new pair from eBay from a shop in the US and haven't decided if I should keep them both or sell one locally yet. They cost way more in Australia than in the US so I should be able to sell one of them for close to what I bought the pair from. And while in rehearsal, it might be good to keep one as a wedge for me, and one for the rest of the band. Haven't decided yet.
Most of my base presets sounded really good. The clean and on the edge sounded at least as good as anything I've had before. The high gain lead tone I had dialled in was almost there. Very happy with that. My crunchy rock rhythm tones needs to be dialled in further as they lacked a bit of punch. Better monitors might just solve that without any adjustments though. We have a few of songs where I have dialled in individual presets with special tones and about half sounded really good and half sounded crap and I ditched them instantly for the generic presets.
What I struggled with the most was relative volume levels. I'm the lead guitarist in the band with another guitarist/singer, base player and drummer. I often have small fills and riffs that I want to stand out and need a bit of boost so I had setup a Filter block that when engaged would give me a 4 dB boost. This was about right in heavier sections when everyone else was playing loud, but too much when playing primarily in clean presets so I adjusted that to give me a 2 dB boost instead for those presets and that was better.
I have a Mission EP-1 connected as a Volume pedal for overall level adjustments and I had set it with a 300 ms spongy delay to be able to adjust the volume smoothly. That was very annoying as the delay with the adjustments made it hard to know where it was going to end up. I'll ditch that for know. I'll probably make the sweep range shorter as well to make it easier to do finer volume adjustments on the fly.
I had setup the MFC 101 with a combination of presets and scenes, with buttons 1-5 as presets, buttons 6-9 for scene 1-4 and button 10 as my boost. I hit the wrong button once in a 4 hour session when I went for scene 4 and instead pressed the preset 4 button. I'll probably change this for next time and see if I can set it up with just scenes on button 1-5 instead. Or, just thinking out loud here, maybe setting up scene 1-4 on button 1-4, scene 5-8 on button 6-9, and have button 5 and 10 for 2 different boost levels. Hmm, sooo many things to try.
Overall, the good so far:
Overall, what I'm struggling bit with with:
I think that's it. Overall, I'm a very happy camper being new to the Axe Fx world and I can see its awesome potential and how it's just going to improve over time as my understanding improves, and Cliff and the FAS team releases new cool stuff for me to play with.
Everything went reasonably well, or rather, I think it went as well as I could expect. The thing I'm still missing is powered monitors so I used my Line 6 Spider Jam, which has a tweeter in it to make it full range:ish but it's definitely not flat response and the quality of the speakers is not fantastic, to be polite. Overall it sounded a bit too bright and harsh, I tried to adjust it a bit with the global EQ but didn't spend too much time since I knew that my Yamaha DXR10's should arrive next week. I have bought an almost new pair from eBay from a shop in the US and haven't decided if I should keep them both or sell one locally yet. They cost way more in Australia than in the US so I should be able to sell one of them for close to what I bought the pair from. And while in rehearsal, it might be good to keep one as a wedge for me, and one for the rest of the band. Haven't decided yet.
Most of my base presets sounded really good. The clean and on the edge sounded at least as good as anything I've had before. The high gain lead tone I had dialled in was almost there. Very happy with that. My crunchy rock rhythm tones needs to be dialled in further as they lacked a bit of punch. Better monitors might just solve that without any adjustments though. We have a few of songs where I have dialled in individual presets with special tones and about half sounded really good and half sounded crap and I ditched them instantly for the generic presets.
What I struggled with the most was relative volume levels. I'm the lead guitarist in the band with another guitarist/singer, base player and drummer. I often have small fills and riffs that I want to stand out and need a bit of boost so I had setup a Filter block that when engaged would give me a 4 dB boost. This was about right in heavier sections when everyone else was playing loud, but too much when playing primarily in clean presets so I adjusted that to give me a 2 dB boost instead for those presets and that was better.
I have a Mission EP-1 connected as a Volume pedal for overall level adjustments and I had set it with a 300 ms spongy delay to be able to adjust the volume smoothly. That was very annoying as the delay with the adjustments made it hard to know where it was going to end up. I'll ditch that for know. I'll probably make the sweep range shorter as well to make it easier to do finer volume adjustments on the fly.
I had setup the MFC 101 with a combination of presets and scenes, with buttons 1-5 as presets, buttons 6-9 for scene 1-4 and button 10 as my boost. I hit the wrong button once in a 4 hour session when I went for scene 4 and instead pressed the preset 4 button. I'll probably change this for next time and see if I can set it up with just scenes on button 1-5 instead. Or, just thinking out loud here, maybe setting up scene 1-4 on button 1-4, scene 5-8 on button 6-9, and have button 5 and 10 for 2 different boost levels. Hmm, sooo many things to try.
Overall, the good so far:
- Basic sounds was there or thereabouts, this will definitely and easily be able to replace my previous tube amp + pedalboard and I'm very impressed given that this was only the first time I used the AF2 and my monitor was not any good. This will just improve over time.
- The MFC 101 is an awesome way of staying in control. Super easy to navigate and see what was going on at any given time. The guys in the band made comments like "wow, that's a lot of buttons", but in reality it doesn't take up more floor space than what I had previously, or what the other guitarist pedalboard uses.
- I was not saying anything but smiling wide on the inside when the other guitarist had a problem with a cable somewhere on his pedal board and he was pulling cords in and out - never again will that happen to me
- The ability of having the same equipment when I'm at home practicing is just awesome. Most of the time I play at home and now I have the same awesome sound as I have when playing loud with the band. Before I tried to get to rehearsals early, hoping that the room was free so that I could get 20 minutes dialling in some new sounds at gig level. I'm hoping that when I understand the relative levels I won't need to do that any more. Maybe just some eq:ing. We'll see.
- I had brought my laptop to be able to run Axe Edit to tweak things but never hooked it up. I'm happy that I spend quite a bit of time on the front panel and was able to quickly do any adjustments needed there without having to use the laptop. The Save, doubleclick Enter feels very natural now
Overall, what I'm struggling bit with with:
- It was annoying that global blocks doesn't also include settings for external controls. I had a global block for my boost and volume pedal and I still needed to adjust each external control setting individually for each preset.
- The number of options is just staggering. Driving home from rehearsal last night thinking about my crunch sounds I was tossing up the options of if I should try different amp/cab models or keep adjusting the ones I had or both. From now on, I'll probably setup audition presets/scenes, so I keep my existing preset/scene and then setup an alternative as a potential improvement and when I think it's better, keep the audition one as the main and start dialling in a new audition preset/scene. And yeah, at the same time I know that this is probably the best problem in the world to have
I think that's it. Overall, I'm a very happy camper being new to the Axe Fx world and I can see its awesome potential and how it's just going to improve over time as my understanding improves, and Cliff and the FAS team releases new cool stuff for me to play with.