Got my Axe Fx.....but not impressed so far.

if you're cube sounds better then something isn't right.....modeling/amp/frfr whatever. Cubes are pretty terrible, even for a solid state practice amp. Only way it's sounding better than the Axe is something being jacked up.
 
clarky said:
it took me a while to dial my ears into the Axe.. and like yourself, a few weeks in I was wondering if I'd made a mistake..
the penny dropped for me when I realised just how crucial matching the cab IR's to the amps was in my studio [with Yamaha HS7 monitors]..
in an FRFR setting [either studio <with near field monitors> or live <with FRFR monitors>] you'll always get the "mic'd cab" tone and feel which is not the same as being stood next to the real thing.. it's more like playing in the control room with your amp in a studio or booth..
but that's not a bad thing.. it's just a different thing…
live, I use a Matrix power amp [which is very powerful and very transparent] and a pair of Marshall 4x12 cabs..
and that delivers the whole pants flapping experience.. which when on stage I adore..

I know that the Axe is not for everyone..
a few pals of mine have switched between the Axe, other modellers, real amps, back to the Axe and then back to a variety of real amps and cabs several times over.. some of them ended up going back to real amps, found what they were looking for and stayed there…
in my case I stuck with it, found my sweet spots with the Axe both in the studio and live.. and now cannot imagine life without it..
horses for courses as they say…

anyways… whatever you choose to do..
best of luck and I hope you find your tone utopia..
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Unfortunately I don't have weeks to play around. I have to make a decision by the end of this week. You're right its a completely different feel entirely. Honestly, it's my fault because I failed to listen to my gut again. I know what I tend to do in regards to tone. Find 1 or 2 good sounds and stick with it. for clean tones I like the bell like SRV Lenny tone. For lead, I pretty much search for the EVH brown sound. Which for me is a good high gain amp with some delay and reverb, thats it. I don't need the Axe Fx to get that stuff. What I was considering before the Axe was a 5150 3, 50 watt head. That amp sounds amazing. Unfortunately it is too loud for a bedroom/apartment scenario.
 
jlynnb1 said:
if you're cube sounds better then something isn't right.....modeling/amp/frfr whatever. Cubes are pretty terrible, even for a solid state practice amp. Only way it's sounding better than the Axe is something being jacked up.
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With the Cube I am able to get very close to the following tone. It sounds much better in person than it does in the video. I am unable to get anything like this on the Axe, with the same feel. (person in the video is not me by the way. Just an example of what I am able to get.)

 
rich2k4 said:
With the Cube I am able to get very close to the following tone. It sounds much better in person than it does in the video. I am unable to get anything like this on the Axe, with the same feel. (person in the video is not me by the way. Just an example of what I am able to get.)

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what amp model have you tried?

that tone doesn't sound really good to me. i can hear the COSM modeling high end, typical of Boss products.
 
rich2k4 said:
With the Cube I am able to get very close to the following tone. It sounds much better in person than it does in the video. I am unable to get anything like this on the Axe, with the same feel. (person in the video is not me by the way. Just an example of what I am able to get.)

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Another way to check out sounds is to record to your daw and then listen back to them which will give you a chance to hear the tones from a different perspective. If you put some recordings up on Soundcloud you can listen to them from a lot of different devices to get a feel on things without being limited to your current guitar amp and speaker set up.
 
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If you have a decent relationship with your music retailer, take your axe fx there and ask to demo a couple of different powered PA/monitor type speakers and/or a good ss power amp running to a guitar cab.

As far as the axe fx being "hype", I think it the centerpiece of enough pro, semi-pro, and amateur musician's rigs to not be hype. It might not be for everyone, but the word hype implies that it's not capable for anyone and theres plenty of examples of it being capable of stellar tones out there.
 
Chris@AxeFxTutorials said:
what amp model have you tried?

that tone doesn't sound really good to me. i can hear the COSM modeling high end, typical of Boss products.
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I guess everyone's ear is different. That tone is perfectly acceptable to me. I would be satisfied with having that as a SRV tone to play around with.

On the Axe I tried the typical SRV setup. 2 vibe verbs or super reverbs. one set dirtier, one set cleaner. with reverb. Basically what Tyler Grund showed in his SRV tone tutorial from a few months ago.
 
I have to stand with the others here and suggest trying a PA or other FRFR setup with cab modeling on - and then spend some time spinning through the various IRs. That's what made the difference for me. I now also run it through my JC-120 (not quite a cube, but still a Roland clean amp) with cab modeling off, but with a PEQ or GEQ block in front of it just to tweak it to taste - and I'm VERY happy with it. This thing is head and shoulders above any modeler I've had, and I've had a ton of them.

RR
 
rich2k4 said:
With the Cube I am able to get very close to the following tone. It sounds much better in person than it does in the video. I am unable to get anything like this on the Axe, with the same feel. (person in the video is not me by the way. Just an example of what I am able to get.)

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So you're right, everyone's ears are different, and we all have our own ideas of what sounds good. To me, that tone has a bit of high end fizz and too much reverb...but you can definitely hear the characteristic Strat neck pickup. I happen to like the tone here much better:



Less fizz and reverb, and overall more balanced - and done with an Axe.

Here's another one that sounds more balanced to me. Cooper is an Axe user as well. The Cutlass is basically an EBMM modern Strat.



RR
 
Big question to me is if your 1) apparently happy with the tons of your Cube, and 2) on a bit of a budget, since you didn't purchase a decent monitor, why did you buy the Axe in the first place ?

You already had a tone you liked, and $2500 extra in your wallet

Now you have a tone you don't like, your in the hole $2500, and your going to have to spend more money, which you may or may not want to do, in order to make the Axe sound decent, and even then, you might still think your Cube sounds better.

I personally think my Axe sounds better than the Cube by a good margin (and I've owned several Cube models) so for me it was totally worth the hard earned cash, but in this case, just seems like you'd come out ahead sticking with what you've got.

Me, I can't go "cheap", the Axe has spoiled me. If I could be happy with a Cube I'd honestly sell my AxeFx as I could use the money, but I know I won't be happy. Axe sounds too good to me, but for you...there is still time to go blissfully back to what you've got and be happy with it.
 
rich2k4 said:
welp. The studio monitors helped a little but I'm still not satisfied. Ultimately I feel like this modeling, FRFR stuff isn't for me. I plugged in direct to the roland cube, and got a much better tone that way than through the axe. I think it is the amp in the room feel that I like. With the Axe and the monitors, It feels like the sound isn't really there if that makes sense. And I guess that's correct since it is simulating a mixed amp in another room.

I am thinking that I will return the Axe. $2000+ is a lot of money and for me and what I like to hear it's not justified. kind of sucks because I will be losing money on all of this. The monitors have a 15% restocking fee. I bought some XLR cables that cannot be returned, and I will lose out on shipping with the Axe, and perhaps the rack case.

It will be an expensive lessen for me to not believe the hype, listen to your heart when it comes to how you typically use gear, and if you have something that already sounds good, don't try to fix it.
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Sorry, I have to call BS. GC should take everything back without restocking fee:

http://www.guitarcenter.com/pages/satisfaction-gurantee

This thread smelled fishy from the start.
 
Here is a quick 30 second noodle I did with the 1959SLP Treble amp. I think I have some ideal tone, or a misrepresentation of how the Axe should be sounding, and I am disappointed that its not sounding that way. Thing is that I don't really know what I am looking for.

I got the Axe because I was coming out of a hiatus with the guitar and wanted something to inspire me to practice seriously again. I wanted to be able to recreate any tone I liked from a recording. I wanted something that was easy to record with, and allowed me to also jam along to backing tracks with good tone.

 
rich2k4 said:
Here is a quick 30 second noodle I did with the 1959SLP Treble amp. I think I have some ideal tone, or a misrepresentation of how the Axe should be sounding, and I am disappointed that its not sounding that way. Thing is that I don't really know what I am looking for.

I got the Axe because I was coming out of a hiatus with the guitar and wanted something to inspire me to practice seriously again. I wanted to be able to recreate any tone I liked from a recording. I wanted something that was easy to record with, and allowed me to also jam along to backing tracks with good tone.

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You mention recording and listening to music. What equipment do you use for that? How do you currently listen to music?
 
Ok, I'll be the one to address the big ass elephant in the room, not that I really wanna be that guy, but enough is enough already.

This fellow has flip-flopped 1,001 times before he even got the unit, had it for a few hours, realizes it's way above his head, (like we didnt see that coming) and we're still trying to convince him otherwise, while he's trying to convince himself of what I'm not even sure anymore.

The bottom line, there are literally 1,000's of VERY talented artists that swear by Fractal Audio & have NO problem dialing in some of the most beautiful tones in ANY genera of music. I do not see any of them using a Cube. Not that you couldn't but by comparison, there simply is absolutely no basis for any kind of valid argument here on earth or in this solar system, galaxy or universe, period. You can try & convince yourself all ya want, but there obviously is some other issue at hand.
Either your in over your head, spent too much for your musical abilities, (which I'm sure we've all been guilty of at one point in time), or some other issue.
You've had more than enough reassurance, guidance/advice, seen more than enough vids & heard enough clips to know the capabilities of the unit.
Don't blame the unit, when it's user error & IMO a total lack of trying, not to mention expecting it to sound great out of a Cube.
Glad ya got the monitors but ya already gave up on those? Cause you didn't sound like SRV? can ya play like him? I mean do you know how to get that SRV tone going with your pick dynamics and how you dig into the strings, heavier strings help a lot coaxing that vibe out. Just a few questions, things that I had to learn while I was buying tons of different tube amps & guitars back when I was in search of nailing that "holy grail" of blues tone back in the day. What I learned it's not really the gear, sure it makes a difference, but that tone I guarantee is in there, IF you know how to get it, but the box ain't gunna do it for ya, no gear will.
 
I suck at blues, but like I said earlier: throw some lovely verb and delay on there and it's pretty easy to match that tone. That glassy, Fender breakup is there in spades in the Fractal gear. I used a Double Verb Vibrato model in to a 2x15 Doubleshow IR (factory IR 31). I find the Redwirez IRs are usually pretty fantastic when I went glassy edge on my tones.



First half is amp-only, second half is with a drive block. 15 minutes, start to finish, with maybe 3-4 of those minutes spent on the tones and the rest spent trying not to sound like a total turd playing the bluez. :D

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