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

you're not going to get close to srv or john meyer, or any of the other tones you've posted, because they're all played on a strat. you're basically bootstrapping yourself right there. and expecting the axe to sound good plugged into the aux return of a cube is just ridiculous. i don't think it' for you. return the axe before you waste any more money, please. i know that's not what you want to hear, but get the right amp and the right guitar (something with a bridge humbucker and two single coils, so you can cover the VH stuff and the blues stuff) and you'll be happier in the long run.

mr tennant sums up my feelings perfectly

DrWhoFacepalm.png
 
rich2k4 said:
That's another thing that may be a big factor. I got the Axe also for the ability for low volume playing while retaining good tones. a lot of my testing so far has been fairly low volume. If I were to crank the monitors it would probably feel much fuller. Thing is, that wouldn't be my normal playing volume. This is strictly a home recording/practice machine for me.
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here's the thing…
with the Axe you can get the sounds you'd expect from a real amp that's running real hot but at low volume..
I do this every day in my lil' studio through my studio monitors and through headphones..
but… it'll never feel the same for two reasons..
- the volume in my lil' studio is nowhere near high enough
- my HS7 monitors and headphones are no guitar cabs

to add to this..
when I play live, I use a power amp and a pair of 4x12 cabs..
at gig / rehearsal levels it's wonderful… sounds and feels just as it should
however, even through the 4x12 cabs, when you turn the power amp volume down, things change..
the feel changes because the guitar and speakers are not interacting the same way..
and the tone changes.. partly due to the way your ears work [the Fletcher Munson effect] and partly because the speakers are not working anything like as hard..

it is possible to get the 'amp up to 11' tone at low volumes through FRFR systems and studio monitors
but the feel will never quite be the same because the missing ingredient is the volume itself..
 
1- Volume is crucial to feel.

2- The funny thing with open-back cabs is they radiate not only to the front, but also to the back. To get that feel there is no other option than to use an open-back cab. There have been experiments with two speakers, one out of phase and putting them back-to-back, so the second speaker is simulating what is coming from the rear, but that is going overboard I feel.

3- for the last clip: get a cheap telephone and record at such level that it gets distorted...

OK. Kidding. See #1 again. There is no way to get that feel without the volume. You can get close, though. Use some compression, a well chosen amp-on-the-virge, up the master volume in the amp-block, invest time into searching which IRs work for you and you can get the sound pretty close. But the feel... needs volume.

You might try to find a couple of midfield or farfield IRs. IRs taken from speakers at a greater distance than the usual close-miking. Although, the ones I tried sounded even more distant and honky than the worst of the close-miked... Still. You might like them.

Even at the times I was playing amps, I have always been looking for the awesome tones I heard on my fave records. I could never find them. Until the AxeFx.
Horses for courses...
 
Oh yeah. There's also the string coupling thing. Speakers throw out sound that makes your strings vibrate and add to the sustain. Get it loud enough and it's called feedback, but at lower gain it just sustains. It's all part of this laws-of-physics-thing we're all annoyingly subjected to...
 
Rich those tones are amazing. John Mayer is a master for sure. Bloody gorgeous.

Try one of the IR's I stumbled upon recently.
F016: 1x12 Brit G12H30 (RW)
That's a single 12" G12H30 speaker in a mahogany cabinet apparently shot with a nutural microphone made by Redwirez.
This is what people told me anyway....but it's a nutural IR so you could use the mic colouring options if you wanted but crucially it's not meant to be so "microphony"
Maybe that kind of IR is what your after? The speaker IRs without the mics backed in...
Give it a try at least.

I hear what your after and it sounds amazing. I'm even thinking of buying a strat standard as I've just had to send my new PRS off to repair some dodgy finish. :(

As I think about it actually I recorded this video.
I spent a long time trying to get that John Mayer tone (slow dancing in a burning room) with a bit of Mark Knopfler (telegraph road) thrown in. I have since refined it but this is what I had at the time...
 
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fractalfuzz said:
Wow love this tone :)

I am not able to manage this with my PRS and AX II but I keep trying.
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I have 85/15 pickups which seem to have a really wide spectrum. Position 4 on the selector is the strat mode.
It was recorded a little while back so listening to it now I'd get a multiband compressor in there to tame the harshness of the open top strings. Or use any number of other tricks I've recently learned of like the high cut, or high/low pass filter, proximity with null mics etc.
...but that's the axe fx all over, infinitely tweakable to an almost never ending degree and every single day I read these forums I understand more and more. I've learned so much in the last 3 months just about the science of sound itself but I'll never stop being a slow learning noob.
 
rich2k4 said:
I think a lot of it has to do with me not being aware of the difference in the FRFR sound. I assumed I would be able to get all the cool tones I like hearing but it would feel bigger, etc. While the tones are possible, they are just more "contained" for lack of a better term. Through recording, as demonstrated above with the John Mayer clip, it can sound pretty damn close if not identical. But it won't feel "in the room" and its a completely different feel when playing.

Just something to get used to I guess.
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I play mine through the CLR Neo's, but I have also played it through a Behringer EuroLive B112D Active monitor and it sounded great throught that (its only like $250 at GC). That might be an inexpensive test for you to try, heck you could even return the monitor afterwards if you want to get a more expensive one.
 
The OP indicated "a lot of signal from the AX and it's loud at '1'". Not sure it's been mentioned but you could try setting the AX amp block output lower until it starts to get loud at '7' or even '10'.
 
rich2k4 said:
One thing I haven't head the Axe do yet in any recording is to capture that "thump". Sometimes in recordings, you can actually "hear the cabinet" if that makes sense. It's as if someone put a microphone in the middle of the room, with a loud amp far away from it. It captures the room feel as well. You can hear it in both clips above, but the second one more. You can hear if a lot in the following clip:
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All of those clips sound like they're playing at higher volumes. That might be the common denominator.
 
i see those videos and the thing that immediately comes to mind is using the reverb block with a high mix to emulate the sound bouncing. the ambient type is the one i use, the studio rec verbs would also work well. the kicker about this is you can literally shape the characteristics of the room right in the box and set how much room sound there is. using the null mic setting in the cab block and playing with the room parameters is also a solution
 
Jason Scott said:
All of those clips sound like they're playing at higher volumes. That might be the common denominator.
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yeah but technically since that sound is recorded. Shouldn't you be able to recreate it in the unit? I've been told that if you can hear it in a recording, it can in theory be recreated by the axe fx.
 
Like that one of Philip Sayce, yeah, Rock'n Roll !! You can absolutely get that sound from an Axe Fx using a correct floor monitor.
 
rich2k4 said:
yeah but technically since that sound is recorded. Shouldn't you be able to recreate it in the unit? I've been told that if you can hear it in a recording, it can in theory be recreated by the axe fx.
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Try adjusting the Low Res parameters in the Speaker tab within the amp block as well as the Depth setting in the Basic tab. I'd also suggest the Null mic setting in the cab block and adjusting the Proximity setting (within the cab block) to taste.

Cliff's recommendation:

"Put a Filter block in front of the amp. Set Type to Lowshelf, Q to 0.707, Freq to 50 Hz. Adjust gain to taste."

That said, you're posting clips of amps in a room recorded using an on-board mic rather than mic'd amps.
 
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rich2k4 said:
yeah but technically since that sound is recorded. Shouldn't you be able to recreate it in the unit? I've been told that if you can hear it in a recording, it can in theory be recreated by the axe fx.
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Yes and no.

The interaction of loud soundwaves with the guitar creates some dynamic frequency boosts and cuts. The AxeFX can near perfectly replicate the amp's output of the same input signal, but without the acoustic coupling of high spl's, it's not going to interact 100% the same. It really comes down to physics at that point.
 
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