First rehearsal with the Axe-II

wake911

Experienced
Well, i've had the Axe-II since very early in it's release. And this past weekend I finally had the chance to use it in a "live" setting, at a band rehearsal.

First: My Set-up

Axe-II direct from Out 1 to Mixing board to PA.
Out 2 to my Carvin DCM200L feeding my EV ZX-1 passive cab for my personal monitoring(to compensate for not fully hearing myself in the mix as I'm a background guitarist in this band.)
MFC-101 with 1 Dunlop wah converted to exp pedal for volume (i normally have one dedicated to wah as well, but limited floor space)


Other guitars/bass: They all thought it sounded awesome, and were blown away by the simplicity of just running a mic cable direct from it to the board. The other guitarist uses a Road King through a Soldano 4x12" but has to keep it low volume due to small stages. He was VERY interested, and will likely be an Axe convert. If for no reason that good tones in highly portable package since he sits in with about 5-6 bands from time to time as a guest. I told him i'd come over to his warehouse and crank it up and set him up with a nice realm of tones and let him try it at a show sometime (it'd be a real basic setup of 5 presets, and then some pedals like a normal pedal board setup. with a couple of exp pedals to control some effects as well.

Sound Guy: Easy set-up, sounded good. Loves the no footprint (will be placing on top of Road King for the gig on NYE, so no extra space on floor taken). I looked at the EQ on the board after practice, and there were a couple of increases and decreases across the whole array of the board (Studiolive with tons of eq points, not just Low-Mid-High) There was a little bump in the mids area, and a little drop in the highs/lows, but I had already given a bit of a frown face to output #1 prior to getting to rehearsal, and it looks like it was close to perfect.

Using output 2 to supplement myself in the full band monitor right in front of me was perfect, I barely put any of myself in through it, but mixed nicely and allowed me to hear easily, without affected the band mix, which is obviously fantastic.

Random Issues I ran into: I hadn't done a great job making my presets to account for the unknown, they were all a little too specific. I was asked once "Hey, throw long delay on this part(since i have a switch marked long delay)" But i didn't have Delay 2 on that patch. Same with volume, verb, and a couple other things. I took a few hours after practice re-doing all my patch layouts, insuring they were all correct, that all my volume modifiers were accurate and up-to-date. That all my IA's were available for each preset, just in case I am asked to use it. These were things I never thought about until someone else went "Hey, try this!!" and I couldn't instantly do it.....this is fixed though. Also going to adjust the layout of my IA's after actually using them, my layout wasn't the best, awesome to try out prior to first gig for sure!!


Overall Impression:

WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW.....i NEVER missed my amp/cab/rack/pedals setup. Carried it all in one trip. I was set-up in 5 minutes, and ready to rock. Ran through all 9 presets once to double check volume was accurate patch to patch(perfect..I call pure luck, but i did work hard at it).....and then bam, went through all songs for rehearsal and tore down in another 5 minutes. Got major "whoa!" factor while playing the violin patch, organ patch, and strings patch....with smiles galore. Same with my ODS-100 patch that just thumps, the other guitarist was very jealous of me....which is a total table turn since his gear list rivals some small stores (3 LP Customs, 2 standards, 2 Studios, 2 G&L Strats, 2 G%L Tele's, Taylor 614, 914, Roadking, Dual Rect, JSX, Marshall 1960cab, Soldano Cab) and he was jealous of my set-up!!!

Thanks Cliff, I know I've had it for many months, and I've loved it ever since i got it, but showing it off to other folks who were blown away and had never heard it before was a great feeling for me....and that confidence made me play very well. Might have earned myself more than just a gig at NYE!
 
Can you share your organ, violin, and strings patches? That peaked my curiosity.


I'm a high gain djent djent meedley meedely meedely type player...

Sent from my iPod.
 
Im about to sell my 5150 II... Its gonna gather dust... even tho I love it... But I love the axe more! Once you get used to it youll be able to setup things quickly on spot... I myself already know where to go to add things at the needed moment... its an easy interface and you get used to it quickly.
 
will try to post them tonight when I get home from work. The violin and strings are just tweaked versions of ones already on the forum. The organ is really an organ-ish...my take on an attempt at the Deep Purple rock distorted Hammond organ.
 
Presets

Ok, trying to do my first preset attachments.

Violin is based off the violin preset that is all over the forum...i added a strong compressor to try and knock out the transients on some notes (G was bad for me) (uses acoustic body in user cab 3, also from the forum, i think the huge patch collection thread.

Strings, was from ultra...and someone re-worked it to Axe II as like voorhies or something...i edited it to make it swell faster, which makes timing the playing a bit easier, still have to play a little before the beat, but not too badly.

Organ is my own, i tried to replicate a hammond, like Deep Purple, so quite dirty. I wish i had an open expression pedal to control the rotary, that'd be better than just using tap tempo, but oh well, works for my gig, since i don't have much stage space for an extra pedal anyway. I think it sounds best for playing octaves, really cool sound there, but single note runs are cool too

There are a bunch of non needed effects on each of these, but it matches my live MFC board, so i can always adjust on the fly.
 

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  • Organ.syx
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  • strings.syx
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  • Violin.syx
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