Higher output pickups input level issues

A

AZG

Experienced
I'm having a problem getting a couple of my guitars, one guitar in particular, to sound good with the AX8 especially with low to medium gain tones. With my Suhr Modern there is always a nasty nasually sound when hitting the strings hard, plus dynamics are limited and not natural. This guitar has the hottest pickups of all my guitars. I have tried tried everything, increasing input pad all the way up to 18db, lowering input trim to it's lowest setting, checking pickup height (clearance is actually greater than recommended by Suhr), system reset, latest firmware, etc. I've had the most success with lowing input trim to between .1 and .2, but even then the sound/feel is unnatural and off. This same guitar plugged into my tube amps or Scarlett 6i6 and S-Gear or Native sounds glorious. I'm assuming that the issue is related to input signal levels, because backing off the guitars volume knob helps, but I can't figure out how fix the problem. Are others having issues with hotter pickup sounding shrill and stiff, is this a bug, or is there an easy fix I'm missing?

Thanks in advance!
 
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I have a modern as well, what pickups do you have? Most of the patches sound great, but there are a few that don't. Do you have a patch i can test?
 
The guitar has the standard passive JST SSH+ and JST SSV humbuckers. I guess I should also add that it's most noticeable on low to medium gain patches. High gain covers up the issue pretty well. The only other guitar that I can notice the shrill/stiff issue is a LP Standard also with humbuckers. But it is less noticeable as the pickups are not as hot. My Suhr Telle and Fender Strat (both with single coils) react normally. Definitely seems to be an issue with input levels that padding the input does not help, but turning down the volume on the guitar does. I could load a patch later if it might help, but the example patch is really simple. Just a class a 30 with input trim down to .4, bass 4, treble about 5.5 and high cut about 5.5. Level set by the VU meter. Cab is a matching Vox 212 blue.
 
Try a minus value on the 'Level' parameter in the 'Input/Gate' block. You can increase or reduce the volume level of your guitar at the beginning of the grid. Make a copy of the preset, reduce that parameter, rename it for that guitar?

btw........I have to run the 'Input Pad' at 18 dB to keep from getting a clipping sound on clean tones.
 
Don’t know if you fixed your issues since this thread is a bit older. But lower your pickups in the guitar. I’ve done that with great success when I’m using high output pickups and the Axe
 
Steve Miller said:
Don’t know if you fixed your issues since this thread is a bit older. But lower your pickups in the guitar. I’ve done that with great success when I’m using high output pickups and the Axe
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Thanks for the suggestion. Installing 9.04 seems to have helped. I’m hesitant to lower the pickups since the guitar sounds awesome through all other devices, tube amps and digital, and they are already a little lower than suggested by Suhr. But maybe I will experiment a night when I get some extra time.
 
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