Front Panel Input Level - Possibly too hot?

J

johnnyg88

Member
Hey guys!

So I've had my Axe Ultra for about a year. I've taken it out to a few gigs but it's mostly been a home/studio thing. I want to start taking it out more often, but I'm having some issues with putting my sounds together.

I have the front panel input level set to about 3 o clock and it hardly ever touches red. I've considered pushing it some more, but I'm having some 'bass' issues.

I'm not getting too much bass coming out of my cab but it sounds like I'm getting too much bass into the Axe FX. I'm using a strat with single coils. The bridge pickup is a bit hotter than the rest, but most of my issues are from the neck pickup.

I like my clean sounds to be on the edge of breakup with just a bit of hair when I play harder. No matter how little drive I use, hitting an open E power chord with the neck pickup is super muddy. There isn't much definition in my bass notes and they seem to distort. Everywhere else on the guitar sounds great. Increasing the low cut doesn't seem to help much until I'm around 100-200, but then I lose too much of the amp sim's character. This and/or turning the bass almost all the way down helps a little bit, but then my other pickups sound harsh.

This happens with most amp models, but I'm mostly dealing with Plexi 2 and Double Verb.

I run the Axe into a Carvin DCM3000 power amp and a Mesa Rectifier 2x12 cabinet. The volume controls on the amp are maxed and I use the Axe Output 1 control to change the output level out of my cab.

Could the Input Level be the culprit? Does it interact with the amp sims?? I just thought of this and I won't be able to experiment some more until tomorrow afternoon.

Also, when I use the Face Fuzz drive model, playing anything with the neck pickup (especially bass notes) seems to 'choke'. Notes have no definition and if I let them sustain, I can hear them open up as the notes fade, like a compressor. Not so much on the bridge pickup (although it still happens). This happens especially when I run the Fuzz into a crunchy amp.

Any help would be awesome guys.

Thanks!
 
No problem when you never hit the Red: Yeks How Tos - Fractal Audio Systems Wiki

Regarding the bass, that's a common thing. The Axe-Fx has a very broad freq. spectrum. Number of ways to deal with that. From the wiki:

- Adjust Bass in the Amp’s properties. Don't be afraid to turn it down a lot
- Use the Low Cut parameter on the amp's Advanced page. Low Cut is a hi-pass filter applied at the input stage of the preamp sim. Start at 80Hz and experiment with values up to 200 or higher.
- Put a "blocking" parametric equalizer (PEQ block) before or after the Amp block to block frequencies below a certain range. Example: use the lowest band to block below 120Hz
- Use the Global EQ and cut the 63 and 125Hz bands
- Turn down Depth in the Amp block for less bass. Depth is the same as Resonance, Fat, Whomp etc. on real amplifiers

Regarding the fuzz: try turning up Low Cut in that block.
 
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I did consider pickup height, but my guitars sound fine through my other gear. I'll consider it a last resort.

I'll keep experimenting with your tips Yek, although those are all things I've been tweaking I've never tried more extreme settings because of some kind of mental block that tells me I shouldn't need to tweak so much and everything I need should be on the first page of the amp sims. I need to get over that :eek:ops

I'm also wondering if it's my cabinet. It's the big closed back Mesa Rectifier 2x12 with V30's. If I lay it down horizontally like its designed, the coupling with the floor exaggerates the bass. Right now I have it on it's side, sitting vertically. It's still bassy, but like I mentioned, I feel like my bass issues aren't in the output but in the input. I have some mid level JBL studio monitors that I'm thinking of experimenting with to see what some kind of FRFR sounds like. I also have two Mesa 1x12 open back cabs with EV speakers. Perhaps I should try those out as well.

Thanks for your help guys, I'll keep you posted.

jg
 
johnnyg88, the pickup height is very important factor in the sound. I foolishly started messing up with my pickups/strings one day, it was shortly after I bought the Ultra, and the next thing I know--the Ultra sounded absolutely horrible. Keep in mind, I didn't do anything drastic to the pickups (and I changed the strings with heavier gauge, another bad thing) but that affected the sound to the extreme! After that I had to quickly restore my previous guitar setup and from then on I don't touch a thing on the hardware. You said that your guitars sound OK with other gear but that is not relevant: the Ultra got a very sensitive instrument input and catches it all, the good and the bad!
 
Hey guys!

Reporting back with my experiments. I got some pretty killer tones at home and I'm figuring out this whole bass thing. Well, actually, I thought I was figuring it out.

I felt pretty confident to take my Axe setup to a gig on Sunday morning and all my sounds were super thin and tinny! I was way bummed that my sounds didn't translate. I messed with the global EQ but all my initial sounds were dialed in with low bass and I could hardly get any fatness back.

Back to experimenting! Any ideas??

Thanks!

jg
 
I too would look at the pickup height. A lot of guitars are pretty boomy and you don't realize it....you can just drop the bass portion of the pickup....not the entire thing....i do this a lot on my strats for that same boomy kinda thing.....drives me NUTS!!! :S

you can also look at using a multi band compressor, and compress the bass.
you might have also have luck with using a crossover.....and set that block to come on/off with an I/A on your controller, so when you switch pickups you turn it on/off

I'd look at the problem from the source, and it sounds to me like the pickup height. Don't think that cuz it came from the factory or a guitar tech that it's right, I do guitar mods and repairs and often have to fix what was done at the factory or a tech. Try it and see, and worst case, you set it back to normal. It makes a HUGE difference tho! :eek:
 
I did use the same exact setup at home that I used at the gig. It was a rather drastic difference, and I even had the cab laying horizontal at the gig as opposed to vertical at home, which usually gives me more bass.

However, now that I think about it, I usually audition my sounds pretty loud at home. They had me turned down pretty quiet and mic'd up at this gig. I'm not sure that this is the culprit because the character of the tone was totally different. Although if I'm wrong, does this mean I have to make "quiet" gig patches as well as "loud" gig patches to get the sounds I want? That seems unnecessarily tedious. I thought part of the Axe magic was getting the killer tones even at low volumes.

Either way, I'm definitely going to try messing with pickup height, now that I'm paying so much to attention to all these details I'm noticing things I don't like even in my tube amp rig.

Anyway, the search continues...

jg
 
thanks for the info yek. i think i might also need a more neutral space to audition sounds because it seems that my bedroom makes everything sound extra bassy. I'll keep digging. Despite these bumps, I'm learning a whole lot. The capabilities of this box are pretty amazing!
 
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