First Impressions (mostly thoughts on presets)

aleclee

aleclee

Power User
Got my AxeFX II about 3.5 hours ago. Take out an hour and a half to go out to dinner and I've just finished two hours of time with the new toy. :)

Let me preface this by saying it's about 21:30 local time and I had a not-so-pleasant awakening with a client calling for support at 5:10 this morning. As a result, my brain is just a wee bit fried at the moment. Not looking for sympathy but offering an explanation about 1) Why I'm not playing any more tonight and 2) Why this is going to be a relatively superficial evaluation. :geek

About all I had time to do was rack it and run up/down the presets looking for ones that I might tweak for my core sounds. I expect that there will be fewer complaints about the presets. The first 35 or 40 are all about showing off amps and their names reflect it. They might have some delay or reverb but that's about it for effects. To make room for the new presets, a number of old ones went bye bye. Sadly, my favorite Ultra preset (Stratified, #298 ) seems to be one of the casualties. I'll see what I can do about reconstructing it when I have more time/energy.

After the amp demo presets, there are a couple dozen (IIRC) presets based on different songs. Beyond that, it's the usual mishmash of FX demos, ambient patches, and what have you. A lot of them are useful for me, many are not. I took notes on which presets I'll revisit during my upcoming patch reorganization. I'm not holding my breath but given the way I like to move things around, it sure would be nice if AxeEdit 1.0 was released soon. Getting my presets set up the way I'd like will be a lot more tedious without it.

Don't worry! I wasn't going to wrap this up without discussing the way it sounds. :) Bear in mind that most of my AxeFX time this evening was with headphones since I only got about 40 minutes playing through the Mackie nearfields before it was Mini Me's bed time.

It should come as no surprise to you that it sounds good. Darn good. I didn't actually A/B them (probably won't 'til I demo the Ultra for an Axe-curious buddy) but I did play the Ultra a bit this afternoon while waiting for the UPS guy. Seemed like there was a bit more clarity to everything. The best analogy I can come up with is it's like seeing through a freshly-cleaned pair of sunglasses. Not very illuminating but I told you my brain was cooked. :eek:ops I dunno if it's the longer IRs, the VVT, or something else but it's tasty. I'm not sure if that difference would come out in a YouTube quality sound clip but it's there. On the other hand, I was able to get some harmonic bloom on sustained notes even when playing through headphones.

While I wasn't planning on getting one so soon, I'm happy to have the new toy. Even after trying it, I could be happy with the Ultra. The only reason I hopped on the early adopter bandwagon was because I was lucky enough to move a couple of PRS guitar the previous weekend. Since I had "gear money" burning a hole in my PayPal account, I scored an MFC-101 last Monday and the Axe II on Thursday. While it's a worthwhile upgrade IMO, the first gen units are by no means obsolete. They sound just as good they did a month ago and are powerful tools. The Axe II at the moment has more of that goodness and, one would assume, more upside potential.

This is more than I intended to write and it's past my bedtime. ;) Hope this makes the wait more tolerable for someone. Goodnight.
 
Awesome of you to take the time! Thanks! Stratified was one of my faves as well. Shouldn't be too difficult to reproduce.

Eating? Sleeping? Attending customers? For God's sake, delivery day is what sick days are for! :)
 
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I just ported Stratified to the Axe-Fx II and it only took about 5-10 minutes really not too bad it's a pretty basic preset.
 
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Hope it's okay to post my quick review in this thread as well. Thought it might be messy to make a whole new thread, especially since I don't have a ton to say at the moment.

I just got my AxeII today. I've been waiting for it so I could lay down my guitar parts for some recording my band has been doing, so I didn't get too much time experimenting with the various sounds in general. But I'll say a couple quick things.

First, dialing in patches was SO much easier. I know it's been said, but I have certainly found it to be true. I never felt like I was particularly skilled at dialing in patches with my Ultra and had to spend a lot more time than I would have preferred trying to get things to sound "right". The patches I used for recording today I dialed in in minutes. It actually makes me a little nervous that I didn't spend enough time really honing the tone I want, but everything sounded so good, it was hard to choose if any adjustments I made were "better". So I stopped when it sounded good and called it a day!

Another interesting thing I noticed. I went through the first 40 or so presets, which are just showing off the various amps and doing so, I found the "high gain" amps to be much more usable than I would have thought or than I experienced previously on the Ultra. I am not a high gain guy at all. I'm more of a 90s/indie rock kind of guy and I rarely need more gain than a middle of the road Plexi will do. But I was actually having fun noodling around with the high gain amps. They were very tamable and had a nice clarity to them that I don't remember them having previously. They're not amps I would use a lot, but I could actually see myself using them (with the gain turned way down...) from time to time.

Only other thought is that I still think the delay doesn't sound as good as I wish it did. Or at least, it's still difficult to get a good delay sound. It was my biggest gripe from the Ultra and I think it still holds here. I'm sure when I get some time with it, I'll manage to get some delay tones I'm happy with, but I still haven't heard anything that sounds as good as the Strymon stuff. And that's a real bummer because I was really hoping to not buy the new Strymon Timeline! DonPetersen has put together some excellent Ultra patches in terms of delay, so I'm sure it's possible to get great sounds out of the II as well (and I'm looking forward to the time when Don is hopefully getting a II and can post some patches!), but I was hoping with the new "types" it would be easier to get great delay tones. So far, my experience is that it's easy to get "okay" delay sounds, but still nothing fantastic right out of the gate. This is as opposed to the amps, which just sounded great with very little work.

That's all for now!
 
gendefect said:
Only other thought is that I still think the delay doesn't sound as good as I wish it did. Or at least, it's still difficult to get a good delay sound. It was my biggest gripe from the Ultra and I think it still holds here. I'm sure when I get some time with it, I'll manage to get some delay tones I'm happy with, but I still haven't heard anything that sounds as good as the Strymon stuff. And that's a real bummer because I was really hoping to not buy the new Strymon Timeline! DonPetersen has put together some excellent Ultra patches in terms of delay, so I'm sure it's possible to get great sounds out of the II as well (and I'm looking forward to the time when Don is hopefully getting a II and can post some patches!), but I was hoping with the new "types" it would be easier to get great delay tones. So far, my experience is that it's easy to get "okay" delay sounds, but still nothing fantastic right out of the gate. This is as opposed to the amps, which just sounded great with very little work.

That's all for now!
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Thanks for your notes on the delay. If you're used to Strymon's Brigadier or El Capistan then I know what you mean. Simple solution- plug the new TimeLine into the effects loop of the Axe-Fx II. :) Of course I have a feeling the TimeLine launch is going to be crazy too!
 
I've been running mine using the 4CM through my XTC Classic. I can duplicate the red and blue channel almost perfectly. The AXE versions are based of the 20th anniversary version XTC so that could account for the very slight and I mean slight difference. They have the same feel though, if I were to close my eyes and have someone go back and forth between the XTC and AXE II I wouldn't be able to tell which is which.
 
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Not sure if it's the new input level setup or the presets but the new presets don't seem overly gated like like some of the presets in the Ultra.
 
gendefect said:
DonPetersen has put together some excellent Ultra patches in terms of delay, so I'm sure it's possible to get great sounds out of the II as well (and I'm looking forward to the time when Don is hopefully getting a II and can post some patches!)!
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He is on the G66 list! :D

His "DM Delay" preset was absolutely beautiful..probably the nicest sounding patch i have heard!
 
I got my Axe II Today and I have to say its a keeper! For the presets my favorite is Mark Day's HBE its pretty much a good sound no adjustment really needed for me although I tweeked the eq on it just a tad. Axe II way is more dynamic and really responds very much to how you pick actually more noticable than a tube amp I have owned probably because my tube amps were cranked so loud to get a good tone my ears ring so bad I cant hear the fine details. Very quiet and I wouldnt complain about fan noise its way quieter than my ultra was. Speaking of quiet the noise level is much cleaner through my speakers too. Much less pickup hum too. I am just touching the surface of it but for sure is worth the hype.
 
aleclee said:
Not sure if it's the new input level setup or the presets but the new presets don't seem overly gated like like some of the presets in the Ultra.
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I think I have the gate off in most, if not all, of the raw amp presets because I found it wasn't needed. The noise RTI on the II is so low that the guitar self-noise is dominant.
 
Still playin' around with presets. Spent some time figuring out which will be a starting point for my go-to patches, then played around with some of the more touch sensitive ones.

Color me impressed! Messing with the AC30 and then the Trainwreck models was crazy. The timbral changes from picking dynamics were off the chain. I'll try to put some clips together later this week but I might ask y'all to sign waivers to hear my hackneyed playing. :)
 
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