First gigs with the Axe-fx

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wauwter

Member
I'm playing live with the Axe-fx for almost 2 months now. (+/- 30 gigs) The first time I used it live, I got very disappointed. The presets that sounded so great at home, were terrible in a live situation. Way to much high and low. After the first weekend I tweaked my presets during the gigs, bit by bit. I used the PEQ trick that I saw in Yek's presets (Low and high cut). Each week I'm getting closer to the tones I'm looking for. But, there's one thing I still don't get...

My presets are really simple. Amp + Redwire cab and a few effects in some presets. I usually do not tweak the 'advanced' and 'amp geek' parameters. It is said that the characteristics of the amps, cabs and mics in the Axe-fx are almost copies of the original ones. Can someone tell me why I have to ad a PEQ to get it sound right? Or am I doing something wrong? I assumed that an amp+cab+mic should sound good without a PEQ...
 
I've seen a thread somewhere in this forum that they are having some difficulties with their tone during live as well. And it falls under the same scenario as you. I got my Ultra a few days ago and I'm trying to get the best tone out of it for live and recording. So far the solution I saw was to add the PEQ to cut away the lows and the highs. I will cut away lows (around 80-100hz) and highs (8k to 9k hz). This is for me and you don't have to follow exactly. If it's wrong please correct me. I will wish to use it during live soon and experience how it sounds like. Does anyone here got a better solution?

Btw , are you going direct to PA?

I hate using high end gear and suck during live. :evil:
 
wauwter said:
Can someone tell me why I have to ad a PEQ to get it sound right? Or am I doing something wrong? I assumed that an amp+cab+mic should sound good without a PEQ...
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What are you using to monitor the Axe-Fx with?
 
Ok time to get some serious studio monitors. I agree that using headphone really doesn't work well in all situation. But in the meanwhile I will have to stick to using headphones cos Im broke. :lol: Anyway, between FRFR monitors and near-field monitors which will be better for tweaking tone for live?
 
shinodax said:
Ok time to get some serious studio monitors. I agree that using headphone really doesn't work well in all situation. But in the meanwhile I will have to stick to using headphones cos Im broke. :lol: Anyway, between FRFR monitors and near-field monitors which will be better for tweaking tone for live?
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I would try to get as close as you can to the type of speakers that you would be running through live. So my vote goes for an FR monitor, barrow or rent a cab that will get you as close as you can and fine tune EQ globally when your at the gig.
 
wauwter said:
It is said that the characteristics of the amps, cabs and mics in the Axe-fx are almost copies of the original ones. Can someone tell me why I have to ad a PEQ to get it sound right? Or am I doing something wrong? I assumed that an amp+cab+mic should sound good without a PEQ...
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To answer your question:

You are probably used to having a real amp and a speakercabinet, or combo, to play with.
If so, you have been listening to the tone coming directly from the speaker, which is often referred to as a "in the room" tone, which most users are familiar with and accustomed to as being "the" guitar tone.
A guitar cabinet uses only a part of the full frequency spectrum, you won't hear the very low and very high frequencies.

The Axe-Fx emulates the amp part and the speaker part.
The difference is that it emulates a "mic'd" guitar tone. Not the "in the room" tone, but a guitar tone as you hear it in concert through a PA-system, or on a CD.
The frequency spectrum of a mic'd speaker is much broader than that of a speaker cabinet on its own. This works well for recording. To amplify it to full extent, you need a full-range amplifier.

Now if you use that mic'd guitar tone in a band context, it can be harsh and/or boomy because of this. And you may notice that the top end competes with things like the drummer's cymbals, and the low end with the bass guitar. So to bring the guitar back to where it belongs and give it its own place within the mix, you can use a blocking PEQ.

Another approach is to use the amp's controls and Global EQ to accomplish the same thing. As can be seen in Larry Mitchell's presets, posted recently. His amp settings are quite dark (low Presence), and he uses the Global EQ to shave off highs and lows.

Yet another approach is to put the axe-Fx signal through a real cabinet again. Disadvantage is that you can't use the cabinet sims anymore.
 
Sixstring said:
shinodax said:
Ok time to get some serious studio monitors. I agree that using headphone really doesn't work well in all situation. But in the meanwhile I will have to stick to using headphones cos Im broke. :lol: Anyway, between FRFR monitors and near-field monitors which will be better for tweaking tone for live?
Click to expand...

I would try to get as close as you can to the type of speakers that you would be running through live. So my vote goes for an FR monitor, barrow or rent a cab that will get you as close as you can and fine tune EQ globally when your at the gig.
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I think I will go direct to PA and the amp provided will be my monitoring. I will get IEM stuff soon after getting the proper speakers for it.
 
yek said:
The Axe-Fx emulates the amp part and the speaker part.
The difference is that it emulates a "mic'd" guitar tone.
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This is incorrect. The Axe-Fx emulates whatever is represented in the speaker IR. If that is a "mic'ed" tone, then that is what the Axe-Fx emulates. If it is a farfield IR that is free of room reflections and was captured with a calibrated test microphone, it emulates the "amp in the room" sound. I realize the apparent difficulty folks have experienced in getting this sound to their satisfaction, but I have to repeat here that it was an absolute requirement when I bought my Axe-Fx three years ago, and I have been able to get that sound all along. Not only that, I have no PEQs or any other filtering beyond the tone controls in the amp block in all but two or three of my presets.

The frequency spectrum of a mic'd speaker is much broader than that of a speaker cabinet on its own.
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This is not generally true. It can be true, but it depends entirely on the mic placement and aiming.
 
As a person who works in the legal field, I should know better ... Never make any statement without noting possible exceptions ;-)

About them tone controls: does that include the amp's High and Low Cut parameters? I looked at your Plexi preset a while ago, Jay, and those were quite drastically adjusted IIRC.
Was that needed to acquire the 'tone' you were after, or to deal with highs and lows as mentioned in the OP?
 
I've never understood - and will never understand - when guys get upset that they have to use tools to get tones.

Some facts:

A) "Should" you use a PEQ? "Should" you have to use a PEQ? Hint: If it gets you where you want to be, YES. You should use it. If not, then NO you should not use it.

B) What you use monitor wise to get your tones dialed in matters. I see so many guys now using headphones, some PA monitor, etc.. Those are very colored, very specific solutions, but they are not, will not and cannot be reference levels. Good quality flat response studio monitors are your best bet to actually HEAR what you are dialing when we are talking FRFR. The whole "use a PA monitor so it will translate..." is flawed; it is ONLY true if the PA you use is the same model as your PA monitor you tweaked on. And even in that case, your end tone as dialed will be colored by what you heard from that colored monitor. When you record it directly into your DAW, it will not 'translate' well varying by the amount of color you had in your PA monitor you used.

C) Don't fear the tools. The Axe-FX is a toolbox. We are all using the tool box and this set of tools is very rich in feature and range; we won't all use the same sets of tools - though we share the same tool set - because our goals here are not the same and the other sets of tools (our rigs - guitars, monitors, styles, etc) are NOT equal.

D) Jay is the main guy, IMHO, that goes FRFR and does it with the goal of no mic and far-field IR's. I have used that and it works, but have found over time that I return to the 'studio' paradigm of a near mic to ensure cut in a busy mix, which I most often find myself working in. They are different things.

The main point here is - there are DIFFERENT paths to the goals here. We cannot all agree on one 'best' way. If that was actually true, we'd all play the exact same guitar. Imagine that.... nah. Don't bother.

Just have fun with the box. If using PEQ gets you there, then use it and don't sweat out that you 'should' not have to. That's over thinking it. Use what works and get on with it.
 
Global eq settings for output 1 vs output 2???

I tend to use the global Eq as a quick goto tool for solving boominess or excessive harshness. I tried the the PEQ method and found it too difficult to adjust on the fly.
 
At my first rehearsal my tone was a bit bassy (presence was fine). I am trying the "PEQ trick" to remove some bass - but noticed there is a high cut and low cut in the amp advanced page. Stock setting on low cut was 10 Hz, so I tried upping it to 80 Hz which did indeed remove some low end. What is the difference between these two methods?
 
Soopahmahn said:
At my first rehearsal my tone was a bit bassy (presence was fine). I am trying the "PEQ trick" to remove some bass - but noticed there is a high cut and low cut in the amp advanced page. Stock setting on low cut was 10 Hz, so I tried upping it to 80 Hz which did indeed remove some low end. What is the difference between these two methods?
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The amp block removes it from before the preamp, I believe. Someone check me on that. You could do the same with a PEQ before the amp block; the one in the amp block would save you from adding an effects block.
 
Removing low end before the amp also opens the amp up, and gives it tons more headroom and expressiveness, in my experience. The adjustable low cut filter at the start of the pre and the hi-cut at the end of the pre was a genius move by Cliff.
 
Low Cut (Adv. page) is applied at the input stage of the amp sim.
High Cut (idem) is applied at the output stage of the amp sim.
I've been trying to use these parameters instead of the PEQ block in each preset, to get rid of extreme highs and lows.
But I couldn't get the same results, the amp tone suffered IMO.

The Larry Mitchell presets *inspired* me to use another approach: pulling down down sliders in the Global EQ (a lot of 63Hz, less 125Hz, a lot of 8k), combined with less Presence in the Amp sims. So far so good. Still need to finetune things.
 
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