How did you create your "core" tones? How much time you have to invest??

[Billbill]

I prefer a pig nose through a good IR

 

[H13]

Answer:

A fuckload.

 

[H13]

A better answer:

Cabinet is EVERYTHING.

No shut up. I don't give a shit if you're playing through the Dumble or a freaking Line6 Spider with a Metal Zone (ALL THE GAAAAIIN).

If your cabinet\mic sim is shit, then your tone will be shit. The cabinet\mic is what filters everything. Do you want to strain your glorious tone through shite?

OF FUCKING COURSE NOT.

You want that shit to be strained through GOLD. You want that shit to take your shit and cover the stench with perfume so that people will admire it for its form, its texture and its consistency as well as giving your turd a gratuitous shine of polish.

So what you do is you pick a cab that you like.

And you use it for everything. (Except Bass vs. Guitar 'cos...you're not a fuckwit)

I know that a Fender Twin should be a big fuckoff combo. Those Bad Cats are some of the best combos out there. Hell there's probably some obscure blues amp that sounds freaking marvellous with a 1x10.

I don't give a shit what it's meant to be used with. I run it through the same 4x12...monstrosity that I put together by combining a bunch of cabs (Rosen, OH and ML) which to be blunt, has significantly too much of everything (Bass, mids, top end...oh god the top end...)

Why do I use this...monstrosity?

Simple: I know exactly how the fuck it reacts to whatever shite I feed it. I know how the bottom end is going to throb, I know how hairy those mids are gonna get and I know that I need to do some heinous things to kill about 150% of that top end.

So I grab the GEQ and I carve that shit up like Oprah does a ham on Christmas. But with more enthusiasm, viciousness, vengeance and shaved ham flying around the room. Since I know what this cab does, I know what sort of curve to aim for in order to get the sound I'm fishing for. I know what noises occur at 500hz, 2k, 4k etc. etc. etc.

Once I've kinda got the sound I want, I then start fiddling with the BMTP, the Gain, the Master Volume (If you don't have the power amp adding some sag and sloppyness to your tone, then you're not doing rock and fucking roll. You're making robot noises. Lemmy would be upset and why the fuck would you want to upset Lemmy you vicious bastard?!) in order to get the amp to react how I want. Do I want this amp to throb in the low mids like a good sturdy erection? Or do I want this thing to scream in the upper mids like a Ronnie James Dio? Do I want it to thump like a Salvation army drum? Or do I want it to soar quite unlike that paper plane you threw last week?

Once I've got in the ballpark, I start to do minor tweaks between BMTP\GEQ. I also fuck with the Dynamic Presence\Depth and Character control to get the movement where I want it. I might warm it up by messing with the bias of the pre\power amp or swap out the tubes here or there, but this is all for how I want the amp to react.

The tone is in the cab and what you've carved out of that cab with the GEQ. If you have a consistent point of reference (IE: The same cab) then you know what to do with the GEQ.

THAT SAID:

My tone is dogshit.

So this could be complete dick and balls.

But at least I have a scientific method for how I create my breed of dogshit. My dogshit has been scientifically calculated.

 

[Morphosis]

Please! Send the guy a

for his attitude and expression

 

[romanianreaper]

Morphosis on a sidenote, love your country and will always be a second home to me. I spent my high school years in K-Town and the beer, food, culture, attitude, etc. made it such an unbelievable experience.

Back on task, years ago I did a lot of tweaking of presets. I think a lot of that was helping me learn what different things do so was a good thing. For example, I starting learning that the B+ constant was a mod people used in real hard rock amps, how pushing the speaker gives you 60s rock tones, etc., etc.

As mentioned above, that all started changing for me when the firmware started getting better. I barely have to touch anything. I have some "go to" tweaks but those are mostly to get the best tones out of my FRFR cab. I think most of us are probably going to gravitate toward certain amp companies based off of what we have used in the past. I'm a Marshall guy and those type of amps, but I've learned a lot about other brands thru having the Axe-Fx.

The Friedman amps are my favorite in the box. Dirty Shirley 2 is unreal for AC/DC tones! Just such a great amp. I have been using my friend Rob Keeley's "D&M" pedal in front of the Axe-Fx and just using the boost part in front of the Dirty Shirley emulation and can get some great "Cult", "GnR", etc. tones.

 

[Piing]

I have invested many, many years. Since the first version of the Axe-FX Standard.... and I still haven't stopped.

And it is getting worst as I buy more CABS. I am lost in a maze of millions of IR's

 

[H13]

Please! Send the guy a

for his attitude and expression

Heh...I've been home sick for a week with the flu. I haven't seen people or gone outside or...anything except sit in my studio and make noises and mix and work on songs and...

I think I Phil Spector'd a tad.

[

 

[DalGuit]

Pardon my newbie question, what is a IR? I wish there was a acronym dictionary here...

 

[Brownmatthall]

Pardon my newbie question, what is a IR? I wish there was a acronym dictionary here...

Impulse response, it's digital cabinet simulation

 

[barhrecords]

Pardon my newbie question, what is a IR? I wish there was a acronym dictionary here...

In the fractal its an option in the Cab block. It represents a guitar speaker, cabinet, and micing technique. It's the option you change to change speaker cab.

IR's can be separately stored digitally as .wav files or .syx files for the Fractal and uploaded into the user cab area.

The factory cab area is pre loaded with IR's.

You select IR's from the factory or user cab area.

Some 3rd party companies sell IR's for use in the Fractal. FAS also sells IR's separately. The IR's in the factory cab area are part of the firmware and are free.

 

[DalGuit]

Thanks for the answers

 

[Lkdog]

I am probably in the minority.

I use the stock presets in BANK A mostly and do minor adjustments from there.

Sometimes I look at the amp model breakdowns and videos by YEK to make adjustments to settings to get the tone in the videos he has linked.

I use the stock cabs.

When I switch them it sounds different. Sometimes I like it and sometimes I don't.

 

[Morphosis]

I've never made a preset until a few days ago, and I enjoyed your video, it is very timely. Can you briefly comment about how you view mono vs. stereo? If I understood, the amp takes mono, but how is conversion to stereo accomplished, and where should this take place?

Yes, Amp takes / sums mono ,also the drives, for example. There are guys using a stereo Cab-Block setting up two different IRs with panning left/right to get a more wide sound/stereo effect. Other Use a stereo-Block, but pan both IR slots to Noon, uses the block as little "cab IR mixer". I don`t. If i will mix IRs to get a certain sound, i would do it as pre-mixed IR outside the box, which will save me 1) CPU Power (because i just need a mono cab block, instead of stereo-cab block, 2) Handling time. I don`t also use Stereo-Cabs to 2widen" the sound by giving difference frequency responses to the left and right channel. Not my cup of tea. I keep it very simple. amp block+cab block mono. For stereo effects (delays, Reverb, chorus, etc...) i place them AFTER the mono-summarizing blocks, so ... after the mono cab block. From there the signal can be splitted and processed with stereo effects, before leaving the box ...

 

[laxu]

I build a single "master" patch that had everything I needed: the basic effects, amp and cab block with the routing and footswitching as I wanted it to work. Then I replicate that patch and adjust the fx block settings where needed.

Mostly it's Marshall type amps for overdrive and Fender or Vox types for clean.

 

[Perdikament]

I have invested many, many years. Since the first version of the Axe-FX Standard.... and I still haven't stopped.

And it is getting worst as I buy more CABS. I am lost in a maze of millions of IR's

Good Lord Piing, I know.. last look I was well over 10,000.
Out of which I have about maybe 20-30 I really "go to" when I'm starting up a new patch.
I have the CabLab too and one of my favorite cabs is one I mixed using like 4 cabs, you'd think I'd use it more, nope! Wtf is wrong with me!?
Sometimes it's seems like it's too much to think about & manage & instead of trying to microtweak tone, it's better to just play.
But then again, when I'm in the mood to really get under the hood and tweak till I'm happy with every last Hz & dB it's awfully nice to have all these tools.

 

[romanianreaper]

And it is getting worst as I buy more CABS. I am lost in a maze of millions of IR's

Yeah, I think that is why I try to focus on what cabs I would typically use in real life. I also find certain guys make more realistic sounding cabs so I'll use those also. It is great having so many choices but I gotta trim em' down.

 

[Morphosis]

Nice to see the simple approach has become so prevalent really disproves the 'need to tweak forever to get a good tone' naysaying.

I've stopped using Drive pedals in favor of just finding amps with the kind of gain/EQ structure I want to begin with

Me too. Most of the time, i don`t like the own voicing of drives, taken over the voicing from the used amp ... so ...

(...)The only other thing I'll say again is don't underestimate using a Filter or PEQ/EQ Block in place of a drive block and use the Level to drive the amp(...)

I've also found a lot of functionality in setting just a plain old filter block in front of the amp to drive it vs a drive pedalor with a drive pedal as well.

... i do it most of the time like Perdikament, using filters as clean boost and sometimes just their low-cut to tame flubby bass, if preamp of a non-mater amd is driven to hard with the "clean boost" in front...

When playing live which I do a lot) I do not obsess over my rigs. I use a preset that works for the song, and concentrate mostly on playing with the other musicians.

Me too! Over the years i learned to not stress me that much on "give me the last 5% of perfection"... because in the band sound in context changes every rehearsal a bit ... so i did make the best experiences, when keep things as simple as possible, like i would do with a real amp.

Same here. When I first started with the AxeFx I made a couple of different presets with different amps and cabs but I quickly changed to another approach. I'm using one amp + cab now.

This i try for LIVE also to get more consistent tone and overall frequency response not only for FOH to get me better in the mix and don`t get crazy, cause my core sound does change every few seconds by changing amps and speaker sims ... For home, bedroom playing & recording i do of course a lot combinations trying and take, what sounds best for, what i am looking for But also here ... i mostly match Amps with cab sims (IRs), do minor tweaks on the amp block and i`m done .. if this is not enough tweaking to achieve the sound i am looking for, it`s just not the right amp+cab IR combining, IMO ... at least, that`s my approach ... as said: I try to keep things simple these days ...

When I first received my Axe-FX, about 3 or 4 years ago, I did a lot of deep amp tweaking.
On Q8.02, not so much.

Exactly the same here! And i don`t know ... it is the imporvement of the Axe-Fx and better IRs? Or is it the learning curve, working with the Axe-Fx? Maybe both ...

 

[ArtifactsBE]

Ive bought the Axe a few weeks ago as total solution for the band i'm currently playing in.

Having already invested a couple of years in DAW's, digital amps, real amps and such, it was just the next logical step to buy the Axe.

That being said, i started looking for our combined tone (we use it with 2 guitars simultaneously) together with my other guitarist. We both started from amps and cabs we were familiar with ourselves and then started looking for something that complemented each others sound

Me being a real nut on heavy amps (owned a Diezel Herbert and an Engl Invader) and my other guitarist being a big fan and user of both Marshall, Engl and some others, the Axe provided us with very good starting points.

After that we kept it simple: we know what everything does to a signal chain, so our core tone is made of a Noisegate, a Drive, an Amp and a Cab. I can concur to other users saying here that a good Cab IR is 90% of the end result. We fiddled around some with the stock cabs that came with the Axe and quickly decided: they're certainly not bad, but we know that out of a unit in this range we can get a lot better.

So we invested in the OwnHammer Heavies pack and tweaked away! We do basic tweaking (Amp EQ, Spkr EQ and then some cab EQ) not to overcomplicate things and have an already decent sound! We gonna tweak a little more once back into rehearsals and live setups, but for now its pretty good

 

[Rochelle]

Nice to see the simple approach has become so prevalent really disproves the 'need to tweak forever to get a good tone' naysaying.

Absolutely in the same boat here, as simple as humanly possible. The grand majority of my presets these days I'm just finding an IR and amp combo I like and tweaking gain to taste. I've stopped using Drive pedals in favor of just finding amps with the kind of gain/EQ structure I want to begin with, even for lead tones (<3 FAS Lead 1).

I rarely even find reason to tweak amp EQ or presence/depth anymore, my main focus is finding an amp/IR combo that sounds and feels good straight out of the gate.

Hi There,
My biggest problem is finding a starting point. There are so many amps and cabs, I could spend weeks or longer mixing and matching.
I'm trying to get a hard rock sound a la Aerosmith. I'm playing a Paul and an Ibanez 560 series for their more recent stuff (Pump) because I don't currently have a Strat or a Tele. Can you recommend some Amp / Cab combinations that would at least get me in the ballpark?

 

[bradlake]

Hi There,
My biggest problem is finding a starting point. There are so many amps and cabs, I could spend weeks or longer mixing and matching.
I'm trying to get a hard rock sound a la Aerosmith. I'm playing a Paul and an Ibanez 560 series for their more recent stuff (Pump) because I don't currently have a Strat or a Tele. Can you recommend some Amp / Cab combinations that would at least get me in the ballpark?

how bout the Plexi 100W 1970, which is one of the amps Joe has used fairly consistently over the years , paired with a 4x12 TV mix 1 or 2 in factory cabs on the axefxII.