selta
Power User
Good day everyone. Warning, lengthy thread ahead!
To start this off, let me give you a little bit of background. I'm likely an atypical user of the FAS Axe-Fx 2 + MFC setup I have. My band is also an atypical project. I am primarily a bass player, and my wife is an operatically trained Soprano and lifelong violinist. We both perform with Ara'Kus Productions - Ara'Kus Productions - Heavy Metal Opera. As the URL suggests, we are an operatic production. We perform in theatres with a large crew (50-60 people most runs). The music is heavy metal (somewhat progressive, somewhat symphonic), however the show has breaks for dialog, acting, medieval combat, fire dancing and so on. Shows typically run about 2 hours, and we draw in several hundred people every night. The effort that goes into a single production is pretty high, as you can imagine.
Both myself and my wife have been looking for "better" ways to amplify ourselves. In Ara'Kus, we have no amps on stage - we have two small side-fill monitors for the actors to hear their cues from, and then the band who mostly uses IEMs.
My electric basses are EBMM Bongo 5 string fretless and EBMM Bongo 6 string fretted. Her electric violin is an NS Design CR-4. Bass itself is not seen as a common use-case for the Axe-Fx, and violin even less so. Not to bash Cliff or anyone at FAS, but I do long for the days when bassists get a little better treatment in this unit "out of the box". The community here is plugging the holes as best as possible, but that has its own drawbacks of course. I never expect violinists to really get FASes attention as I'm sure they're very niche users.
For a unit that is by guitarists and for guitarists, it is actually pretty decent for bassists even out of the box, completely setup as-is from factory. The presets for the most part are gimmicky on bass - some sound "neat" and a tiny handful are useful. For the most part though, as a bassist, look to start from scratch or a preset on AxeChange.
Back to the narrative though. As I mentioned, I've been looking for a better method to amplify myself for my band, and also get something better for my wife at the same time. I needed ease of use, great tone, portability and simplicity.
Of course, I stumbled on the Axe and Kemper pretty much right away. This was right around when the Axe-Fx 2 was released just to give you a time frame. The price tag was a huge turn off, especially since I knew I'd need the MFC as well. I could nearly purchase two new EBMM basses for that cost.
So instead, I ended up going down a different path at first. I borrowed pedals, multi-fx units and rack preamps as much as possible. I think that the pedals were breeding themselves as my pedalboard was just getting enormous. Even with all of that, I wasn't able to exactly achieve the tones I wanted for myself - let alone have a method to get my wife in the chain. I was also starting to get very far away from an affordability, ease of use and simplicity standpoint. Basically, the only goal I nearly met was tonality. So I gave all of the borrowed gear back, and carried on as-is while I did more research.
I kept coming back to the Axe. There was a tiny voice of bass players who use them successfully. I knew I had to take a closer look, and after seeing what I would potentially spend on gear just for me, I knew I could justify the cost. This was about 4 months ago.
I looked and saw the XL had come out - but I didn't "need" the features of it. The II was on backorder (when isn't it?), and I was still hesitant to drop that coin on something I couldn't demo first. I shelved the idea for a little bit while I focused on a few other things, but eventually came back to it. Via this forum, I found a local user who graciously let me into his home so I could twiddle with one for a few hours. Within an hour I was practically sold on it. Within two hours I had a preset that I was starting to like. More knob turning, tweaking, reading and jamming was needed, but I could hardly expect this fine gentleman to let me stay in his house all night. So I went home, and decided I'd just place the order for a new one and flex the trial period if things went south somehow.
Well, shoot. The II is on back order until "at least October". The XL is available, but the cost is just too much. I don't want to really wait until October to even receive the II. My band has a load-in for October 15 to start stage plots for our next production, and having the Axe then would let me give the presets I come up with a good test. So, I dive into the used market. Long story short, end up finding one semi-local - I drive 3 hours to pick it up, and then 3 home. Axe-Fx 2 Mk 2 + MFC101 Mk 3 are in my hands at this point.
I get home and have a few things to take care of before I can plug in and play. I take care of them as quickly as possible, and sit down to play around. First thing I do is a factory reset, followed by updating the firmware from 13.x to 15.07. Both procedures are a breeze and complete quickly and easily. Huzzah.
I've already been reading the manuals, getting started guides, forums and so on for months. Plus, having spent a few hours with it, I was ready to just dive in and start building my own presets. Before that, though, I decided to go ahead and just spend a couple of hours with the factory ones to see if any might be a good jumping platform. 3 hours and 300 some odd presets later, I decide to just start from scratch.
I spend the next few hours building ~10 presets, each with 2-4 scenes. I was pretty happy with how everything was coming together. At this point I've mostly been playing through headphones, so I knew I would be tweaking further once I plugged into my Audio Kinesis FRFR cab. It was surprising how little tweaking I actually ended up having to do. None the less, I got the tones dialed in on those 10 presets, at least at a basic level. I know even now I have more tweaking I want to do on them after playing along with the mutli-track of my bands first album. But I'll sort them out at our rehearsals.
To get back to the reason for posting this thread....
As a bass player, I feel FAS could do themselves a favor and just do a *little* more focus on bass players. While all of the amps, fx and cabs can and do function for bass, having some of the tried and true gear missing from the models / blocks is a little bit of a downer. As I mentioned before, the community is trying to plug those holes, but that is a difficult process. To begin with, taking the B7K as example... if you want different B7K tones, you have to have a Tone Match for every tone you want. That gets a little daunting. If you want G-K, MarkBass, old Acoustic, Aguilar (etc. etc.) type bass amps, well, forget it. They're just not there, and no amount of tweaking the models in there will get you there either. Of course, this could easily explode into a huge, huge undertaking for FAS, and it's not one I expect them to do at all. As I prefaced with, this is a unit by guitarists and for guitarists. It would just be my personal wish list to have some of the most popular bass stuff put in there.
With that said, it is still an absolutely remarkable piece of gear for bassists. While the out of the box experience may be lacking, do not let that fool you or make you think this wont work for you. It will. It just takes more time to tweak and dial things in initially. We, as bassists, would still get to enjoy all of the exciting and enormous possibilities that this unit offers. All of the effect blocks translate well into the bass realm. The amps do fine, for the most part (a lot of the guitar ones get driven easier, of course, due to the nature of the beast). The guitar cabs are surprisingly useful, though I'm finding I mostly stick to the bass cabs, or a blend of a bass + guitar cab setup with crossovers/filters used.
All in all, I'm not saying anything that anyone here will find profound, new or even interesting possibly. I have, however, taken it upon myself to see if I can personally get more bassists on board with this unit via the largest community online for bass players, TalkBass:
Fractal Audio (FAS) Axe-Fx 2 - thoughts, ideas, and use - input welcome! (long read) | TalkBass.com
I'm hopeful that FAS, over time, starts to enter more models/blocks for us bassists. In the meantime, I hope to recruit many more bass players to this fantastic unit. If for nothing else, so we can, ourselves, build the community and do our own IRs, tone matches and so on. I do feel that the entry cost is still high, and without being able to fully "get it" about these units without first having one in hand (or being to play one at Guitar Center), that a lot of bassists will be hesitant to jump on board. We're a funny group of people. To me, we explore odd topics such as extended range, alternate build materials, alternate techniques and play styles very readily. But when it comes to effects and modeling, we seem strangely reserved. I hope to make a bit of a change in that regard.
If you've managed to read this far, thank you for your time. I really would enjoy open dialog around this. The bass forum here is practically dead, so having some flow of conversation about bassists and FAS would be welcome
As I get more comfortable and familiar with this, I'll be posting stuff on my (presently empty) soundcloud page.
To start this off, let me give you a little bit of background. I'm likely an atypical user of the FAS Axe-Fx 2 + MFC setup I have. My band is also an atypical project. I am primarily a bass player, and my wife is an operatically trained Soprano and lifelong violinist. We both perform with Ara'Kus Productions - Ara'Kus Productions - Heavy Metal Opera. As the URL suggests, we are an operatic production. We perform in theatres with a large crew (50-60 people most runs). The music is heavy metal (somewhat progressive, somewhat symphonic), however the show has breaks for dialog, acting, medieval combat, fire dancing and so on. Shows typically run about 2 hours, and we draw in several hundred people every night. The effort that goes into a single production is pretty high, as you can imagine.
Both myself and my wife have been looking for "better" ways to amplify ourselves. In Ara'Kus, we have no amps on stage - we have two small side-fill monitors for the actors to hear their cues from, and then the band who mostly uses IEMs.
My electric basses are EBMM Bongo 5 string fretless and EBMM Bongo 6 string fretted. Her electric violin is an NS Design CR-4. Bass itself is not seen as a common use-case for the Axe-Fx, and violin even less so. Not to bash Cliff or anyone at FAS, but I do long for the days when bassists get a little better treatment in this unit "out of the box". The community here is plugging the holes as best as possible, but that has its own drawbacks of course. I never expect violinists to really get FASes attention as I'm sure they're very niche users.
For a unit that is by guitarists and for guitarists, it is actually pretty decent for bassists even out of the box, completely setup as-is from factory. The presets for the most part are gimmicky on bass - some sound "neat" and a tiny handful are useful. For the most part though, as a bassist, look to start from scratch or a preset on AxeChange.
Back to the narrative though. As I mentioned, I've been looking for a better method to amplify myself for my band, and also get something better for my wife at the same time. I needed ease of use, great tone, portability and simplicity.
Of course, I stumbled on the Axe and Kemper pretty much right away. This was right around when the Axe-Fx 2 was released just to give you a time frame. The price tag was a huge turn off, especially since I knew I'd need the MFC as well. I could nearly purchase two new EBMM basses for that cost.
So instead, I ended up going down a different path at first. I borrowed pedals, multi-fx units and rack preamps as much as possible. I think that the pedals were breeding themselves as my pedalboard was just getting enormous. Even with all of that, I wasn't able to exactly achieve the tones I wanted for myself - let alone have a method to get my wife in the chain. I was also starting to get very far away from an affordability, ease of use and simplicity standpoint. Basically, the only goal I nearly met was tonality. So I gave all of the borrowed gear back, and carried on as-is while I did more research.
I kept coming back to the Axe. There was a tiny voice of bass players who use them successfully. I knew I had to take a closer look, and after seeing what I would potentially spend on gear just for me, I knew I could justify the cost. This was about 4 months ago.
I looked and saw the XL had come out - but I didn't "need" the features of it. The II was on backorder (when isn't it?), and I was still hesitant to drop that coin on something I couldn't demo first. I shelved the idea for a little bit while I focused on a few other things, but eventually came back to it. Via this forum, I found a local user who graciously let me into his home so I could twiddle with one for a few hours. Within an hour I was practically sold on it. Within two hours I had a preset that I was starting to like. More knob turning, tweaking, reading and jamming was needed, but I could hardly expect this fine gentleman to let me stay in his house all night. So I went home, and decided I'd just place the order for a new one and flex the trial period if things went south somehow.
Well, shoot. The II is on back order until "at least October". The XL is available, but the cost is just too much. I don't want to really wait until October to even receive the II. My band has a load-in for October 15 to start stage plots for our next production, and having the Axe then would let me give the presets I come up with a good test. So, I dive into the used market. Long story short, end up finding one semi-local - I drive 3 hours to pick it up, and then 3 home. Axe-Fx 2 Mk 2 + MFC101 Mk 3 are in my hands at this point.
I get home and have a few things to take care of before I can plug in and play. I take care of them as quickly as possible, and sit down to play around. First thing I do is a factory reset, followed by updating the firmware from 13.x to 15.07. Both procedures are a breeze and complete quickly and easily. Huzzah.
I've already been reading the manuals, getting started guides, forums and so on for months. Plus, having spent a few hours with it, I was ready to just dive in and start building my own presets. Before that, though, I decided to go ahead and just spend a couple of hours with the factory ones to see if any might be a good jumping platform. 3 hours and 300 some odd presets later, I decide to just start from scratch.
I spend the next few hours building ~10 presets, each with 2-4 scenes. I was pretty happy with how everything was coming together. At this point I've mostly been playing through headphones, so I knew I would be tweaking further once I plugged into my Audio Kinesis FRFR cab. It was surprising how little tweaking I actually ended up having to do. None the less, I got the tones dialed in on those 10 presets, at least at a basic level. I know even now I have more tweaking I want to do on them after playing along with the mutli-track of my bands first album. But I'll sort them out at our rehearsals.
To get back to the reason for posting this thread....
As a bass player, I feel FAS could do themselves a favor and just do a *little* more focus on bass players. While all of the amps, fx and cabs can and do function for bass, having some of the tried and true gear missing from the models / blocks is a little bit of a downer. As I mentioned before, the community is trying to plug those holes, but that is a difficult process. To begin with, taking the B7K as example... if you want different B7K tones, you have to have a Tone Match for every tone you want. That gets a little daunting. If you want G-K, MarkBass, old Acoustic, Aguilar (etc. etc.) type bass amps, well, forget it. They're just not there, and no amount of tweaking the models in there will get you there either. Of course, this could easily explode into a huge, huge undertaking for FAS, and it's not one I expect them to do at all. As I prefaced with, this is a unit by guitarists and for guitarists. It would just be my personal wish list to have some of the most popular bass stuff put in there.
With that said, it is still an absolutely remarkable piece of gear for bassists. While the out of the box experience may be lacking, do not let that fool you or make you think this wont work for you. It will. It just takes more time to tweak and dial things in initially. We, as bassists, would still get to enjoy all of the exciting and enormous possibilities that this unit offers. All of the effect blocks translate well into the bass realm. The amps do fine, for the most part (a lot of the guitar ones get driven easier, of course, due to the nature of the beast). The guitar cabs are surprisingly useful, though I'm finding I mostly stick to the bass cabs, or a blend of a bass + guitar cab setup with crossovers/filters used.
All in all, I'm not saying anything that anyone here will find profound, new or even interesting possibly. I have, however, taken it upon myself to see if I can personally get more bassists on board with this unit via the largest community online for bass players, TalkBass:
Fractal Audio (FAS) Axe-Fx 2 - thoughts, ideas, and use - input welcome! (long read) | TalkBass.com
I'm hopeful that FAS, over time, starts to enter more models/blocks for us bassists. In the meantime, I hope to recruit many more bass players to this fantastic unit. If for nothing else, so we can, ourselves, build the community and do our own IRs, tone matches and so on. I do feel that the entry cost is still high, and without being able to fully "get it" about these units without first having one in hand (or being to play one at Guitar Center), that a lot of bassists will be hesitant to jump on board. We're a funny group of people. To me, we explore odd topics such as extended range, alternate build materials, alternate techniques and play styles very readily. But when it comes to effects and modeling, we seem strangely reserved. I hope to make a bit of a change in that regard.
If you've managed to read this far, thank you for your time. I really would enjoy open dialog around this. The bass forum here is practically dead, so having some flow of conversation about bassists and FAS would be welcome
As I get more comfortable and familiar with this, I'll be posting stuff on my (presently empty) soundcloud page.
