Hardest tone to create on Axe..Metal..Blues..Funk..Clean?

I would love to hear other peoples success and failure stories on this. My own demons seem to be others greatness. I read recently on this fine forum members raving about certain boutique amps and others such as the Princeton and Bassman.

I have used the factory preset versions, downloaded and tried creating my own for SRV and blues tones through my single coil guitars. Here is the point. I cannot for the life of me create or use the presets after tweaking. My cleans are near on perfect, my rock ones with usual suspects Plexi and 5150 are pretty good, but trying to create anything on the Bassman or Fender amps and I think the Dumble or Bumble as I call it are total failure for edge of break up sustaining blues.

They are too clean or too gainy, too much bass or too thin, I have tweaked EQ and lowered bass frequency to avoid flabby bass added compressors, tried mid boost, treble boost Tube Screamers but still too clean or too metal.


The winner of them all has to be the Bassman..I havent got a clue how to get near the tones people achieve on it, but honest truth I've seen Youtube footage of the Axe and real versions and some sound boomy and awful. For a start the thing is called a Bassman, I lowered all the bass and Mid, lowered frequncy on bass in amp and it got better, but miles off a good blues tone. The Dumble too. an amp thats meant to cost £20K sounds way to muffled and bassy. I'm sure loads of people on here are great with these amps, would like to know which tones are the toughest to create.
 
Ahmed, don't forget to try plenty of different IRs if you haven't already. They can make or break the tone that you're chasing. Experiment with the cab block is my suggestion.
 
Fair comment but my cleans with chorus, compressor delays, overdrives bordering on rock, and metal are awesome. Just can't get close with the edge of breakup tones. Love the product. Maybe it doesn't like me!
 
Yeah cheers Lionheart, your comment more helpful than the Fractal one! Yeah the whole cab thing is pretty new to me. Before I only used combos so never new what a Marshall 1936 was or the rest. I trawl through the wiki for recommended cabs, but always use what is recommended as I presume them to have a better understanding than me. I still don't know why if using my QSC K12 if a 10 or 12 inch or even 2x12 would be best. Suppose it's down to ears. Cheers mate
 
Yeah cheers Lionheart, your comment more helpful than the Fractal one! Yeah the whole cab thing is pretty new to me. Before I only used combos so never new what a Marshall 1936 was or the rest. I trawl through the wiki for recommended cabs, but always use what is recommended as I presume them to have a better understanding than me. I still don't know why if using my QSC K12 if a 10 or 12 inch or even 2x12 would be best. Suppose it's down to ears. Cheers mate
I would say, "Toss the rules out of the window." Don't be afraid to use an unusual cab, like a 4x12 or something. Just use your ears. Sometimes I find the best sounding IR for a given situation to be something that I'd never expected.
 
At this point all modelers can do clean and distorted well, it's the mid gain area that is still the challenge. The Axe II is the best of the bunch, and recorded it had the mid gain areas covered, but the feel is still off by a little bit IMO. Of course the original mission was to give the end result, studio recorded tone, it was the users that kept demanding an amp in the room experience, that we are slowly moving towards.
 
Yeah cheers Lionheart, your comment more helpful than the Fractal one! Yeah the whole cab thing is pretty new to me. Before I only used combos so never new what a Marshall 1936 was or the rest. I trawl through the wiki for recommended cabs, but always use what is recommended as I presume them to have a better understanding than me. I still don't know why if using my QSC K12 if a 10 or 12 inch or even 2x12 would be best. Suppose it's down to ears. Cheers mate

Have you ever tried to dial in your tones using the looper? Just stick it in front of your chain and create a short loop and then tweak your amp and cab until you reach your desired sound. It's a great way to test out cabs as well. Also, I could be mistaken but I think the wiki is a little outdated when it comes to recommended cabs.

Also, as has been said many times on these forums... Use your ears not your eyes. It sounds like you're almost over thinking things. Plus don't forget with those edge of breakup tones a lot of the sweetness and sustain come from actual volume.

The Bassman really shouldn't be too hard to dial in, with the right cab you can leave it on it's default settings and get a pretty great tone. I do share your struggle when it comes to Dumbles though, I like the clean Dumble turned up to 10 with the guitar volume backed off a bit, but all of the lead ones sound blanketed to me.
 
The bassman is one of the easier amps to get the sounds you are talking about. Here is a recording of a patch that just has the amp, Factory cab #58 and a bit of reverb:


here is the patch for you to try:

http://www.tylergrund.com/patches/simplebassman.syx

Download the patch...don't change any settings... and record something and post it here. I want to gauge what sound YOUR guitar is putting into the axefx.
 
Setting up your guitar correctly is big for dynamic edge of breakup tones ! If the pickups are too close to strings it will be a struggle ! Back em off till it feels right!
 
I found initially I had a lot of problems obtaining clean tones on amp in the axe, while still having the feel. When I really spent time to solve the problem a large amount of it came down to the guitar i was using. The pickups where so hot that it took so much tweaking to find a good sweet spot. Then to also figure what was going on with distortion that was unwanted. The other end after finding the right way to get that guitar setup was finding a cab that worked for me that was distorting in places I didn't want.
 
If you are trying to copy someone else's recorded sound, maybe you don't have all the ingredients with goes beyond the AXE. I dont know what videos or sound clips you are comparing to but many of those may be partially mastered so just because you fire up the same amp, doesn't mean you will get it to sound the same. Amp, Cab, Effects, Guitar, Pickups, Strings, Picks, single tracking, double tracking, quad tracking, post EQ, Comp, Mastering EQ, Comp, how hard to pick/strum, volume/tone knobs and then you realize its not just about the amp. Many of those youtube recordings may have a little post EQ/Comp processing going on to clean or tighten them up, some might have double tracked it. You also don't know where they positioned the mic if it was the real amp/cab they were playing.

I like to view the amp as the base tone stack, gain breakup and behavior type and the cab does most of the shaping to the fullness or lack of fullness in the tone. So if you attempt to match up a cab to someone else's sound because that's what they use realize there are so many mic positions you are going to need to experiment with different IR's if you are searching for the right tone. The mic positioned of the amp you are using may be totally different from what your comparing to. Even if they use say a Greenback or a V30 speaker, there several years, models of those speakers. A factory cab is just one mic position on the speaker but realize one speaker can sound 40 different sideways which is why there are all the cab packs so you can find your tone. I've found that changing the IR can also alter the gain amount since they may accent different frequencies, some sound cleaner, some sound mid gain, some high gain without touching the amp. In the end the amp is authentic, you just need to find the right cab. I found once just dropping a flanger on my patch added the right comb filtering i was looking for. A reverb choice can change quite a bit too in mild quantity. Try tweaking the cab block, set the low/high cut filters to the cabinet specs, heck the motor drive has done some things for me that got me right where I needed to be. Set the cab to Null and add a touch of proximity.

You just need to get out of the box and work the box. I'm no expert but my advice is set your amp to what you want and put everything at Noon. Then set your cab to at least LCut 50 and HCut 8000-10000 and start trying out different cab IR. When you find whats close as possible, then dial the amp to fine tune it. I'm sure you have heard most of what I suggested but that's what seems to work for me.
 
Hardest tone is the one you haven't done before. If you have the prior knowledge of a certain style and have played that style of music, you'll nail it with Axe. I have no idea how to start making SRV tones, but Gamedojo nails them perfectly. I can't make a djent tone either.
 
I think the most difficult tones to get out of any equipment for me is ones I don't normally do or never have done. The Axe Can get any tone imho that you can think up.... Cliff has seen me playing in some video's and he'll tell you that my tones are killer so....
 
With me I can start with a blank preset add an amp tweak the setting and magically I have an awesome sound. I recently set up a Fender Princeton tone and it is amazing. I can not understand why anyone would not love the axe fx.
 
Fair comment but my cleans with chorus, compressor delays, overdrives bordering on rock, and metal are awesome. Just can't get close with the edge of breakup tones. Love the product. Maybe it doesn't like me!

I suspect you're not playing at volume, so you're not getting an apples to apples experience to compare and base your judgment on. A lot of how some people hear a tone is environmental.

The Axe absolutely nails the tones you're looking for. My guess is your edge of breakup tones are fine; you're just hearing them in a different environment than you're used to. When you get edge of breakup on a physical amp, it's fucking loud and coming out of a cab, not in a bedroom under headphones or out of 6" full range desk monitors.

Crank up your Axe (and put it through a cab if you like) :)
 
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