hi gain formula - so simple but very difficult without a fractal

audemia

audemia

Inspired
So i finally found my zen formula for making hi gain rhythm settings on the fractal, and it is incredibly simple and can be dialed in (for my satisfaction) in under 5 minutes. i'll leave it as brief as possible. ponerse así:

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The first amp you dial in with an ultra violent high gain setting (choose any, they're all sweet in unique ways).
The second amp dial in a very lightly distorted (or not at all) clean amp.

Mix the two so that its maybe amp 1:amp 2 - 60:40 or 70:30 or thereabouts in terms of volume. you want the result to sound like hi gain, but you can just hear the clean amps qualities glistening through.

The clarity that you can get from this is amazing, the note separation you get with big chords is perfect, and (i think) you have much more control over the dynamics through your picking and playing technique which has always been my style. you can get it sounding dirtier by simplying digging right into each note with your pick as hard as you can.

In the last hour or so i just dialed in 5 settings which i'll run through with the band next rehearsal. they are:
fas modern/mr z
recto/brownface
recto/boutique 1
diezel/mr z
energyball/... cant remember

all of these settings were guess and check first time into grin-face, which leads me to believe that any combination will be able to sound great in its own way, leading to hundreds (literally) of 2-amp combos.

The sounds i'm getting, i.e. the warmth, clarity and note separation from this, extremely simple set up are sounds that i've wanted for years. compare how simple this is on axe fx to how complicated a real world counterpart would be. also imagine how expensive.

real world recto and twin reverb, 2x DI box to split and reattach the signals? keep adding those dollars, and this is just one amp combination.

can you feel the nostalgia in this post? the axe-fx has been a frustrating experience due to my lack of knowledge with electronics and how amps work, but i knew that it would pull through in the end with fantastic results and I feel i've made a huge step in that direction.
 
Yes, this works. Another approch is to boost a low gain amp with a drive block and use the mix parameter for adding clarity.
 
I tried things like this with other modellers for a few years well, but the results were NOT the same...sounded good in theory, but they never quite worked out. I think the problem was that they never quite behaved like tube amps, so the cleaner sounds almost always retained too much percussive sound when played hard, while the axe sends the amp into mild drive instead when played hard. BIIIIIIIIIG difference!! It's a production trick that works well, and you hear it on a lot of well known records, but those are typically sounds of real tube amps, so they sound good, as opposed to non-axe 'modellers'
 
DieSchmalle said:
Yes, this works. Another approch is to boost a low gain amp with a drive block and use the mix parameter for adding clarity.
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yes. definitely. but this is the reverse of my method. cleaning up a high gain amp vs dirtying a clean amp. i'll get around to trying it for sure
 
This is nice to hear as it's the exact technique I plan to try when I finally get an Axe. Congrats on making the breakthrough ;)

Cheers
 
nice. i think having that in mind will make your first couple of days with the axe fx really smooth and enjoyable.
 
big question: how bout your choice of cabs, are you leaving these the same and switching amps; otherwise one can go nuts with possibilities. what are your main IR's or cabs/mics? in fact in your example I think you could have 4 cabs and 4 mics, arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg, sounds fun usually ends up a mess!
 
sorry i meant to mention, i havent even started FRFR yet. i use art sla 2 into an orange cab. one step at a time :p i think these settings would take more than 4 minutes to dial in if cab choices were involved haha
 
That's what I ended up doing with a GT-10 a couple years ago and it worked pretty well. It took that much more tweaking of the two amps at first to get it "right" but it sounded pretty good. The only problem was it took away the ability to pedal between two amp tones in the same patch. I was hoping to not have to do this with the AxeII but I'm about at the point of starting to implement that technique for my high gain stuff. Just can't seem to dial in that 'high gain with clarity tone' with one amp yet.
 
I was wondering about that. Haven't even gotten into any of the controller ability yet. So it's possible to fade between X/Y amps with a pedal?
 
Just looked it up and thought I remembered reading it's not possible. At least that's what this sounds like from the wiki: "There's no crossfading when switching between X and Y."
 
i have been using this technique for a few weeks now with the euro uber and the boutique however, i must admit i had already got a pretty awesome sound with just the uber and a peq, but after adding a clean amp...it just gave it that extra definition that i never even knew was missing!
 
justinjcm900 said:
i have been using this technique for a few weeks now with the euro uber and the boutique however, i must admit i had already got a pretty awesome sound with just the uber and a peq, but after adding a clean amp...it just gave it that extra definition that i never even knew was missing!
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yeah. so far euro uber has been my favourite heavy amp. and i'm sure the sorts of tones im getting with my dual amp method can be achieved with some intricate EQ and whatnot, but this way is much quicker and easier for me

simondreyer - thats an axe fx II only feature right?
 
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