How many of you just upgrade and play?

What do you do when upgrading?


  • Total voters
    44
  • Poll closed .

brokenvail

Fractal Fanatic
In the years I have been with fractal starting in 2010 with the Ultra I always see similar topics when a new FW comes out. What are the steps to ? Best practice when upgrading? How do I make the new one sound like a previous FW? I also often see people say when a new FW comes out it is a good time to start fresh with a blank canvas. I am not knocking any of these questions or statement. I have always backed up, upgraded and played. If Cliff says to deselect amp and reselect it I do it, other wise I just play. Between FW updates for Ultra, ii, XL and no AX8 I only ever had one FW ruin my sound. It was FW 4 on the ii. Everything sounded horrible. I did not even attempt to save it. I just started a new preset. Liked my new amp/ cab choice, copied over all the fx from the previous preset and moved on with my life . Other than that to my ears FW have always sounded good so I just rock on.

Post your thought and take the poll. Just wondering who else is like me
 
With all the volume changes in the different FWs, option 1 is simply not possible. You'll need to tweak levels at least.
Now, for me, that means base and boost levels in five presets, where both base and boost have to hit the same volumes compared to each other.

I don't usually need to do much else since the amps I use don't seem to be affected by the FW changes that much.
 
I've been upgrading and just gigging it without changing anything. And you know what? Since about FW13 of the AXII, I can't say I've detected anything remotely earth shattering that changed my patches such that they were no longer giggable. In fact, with the latest FW10, I didn't hear a single thing different about my existing patches. I literally upgraded that morning and went out and played an hour later.

Sure, do backups (I didn't, and don't). But I bet if I snuck into your AX8 late at night and upgraded it, you'd never notice until you saw maybe some new amps showing up.

The idea that the firmware updates cause such major change to volume, gain, and general amp character is, IMO, overblown. Especially of late. Sonic differences between them are damn near imperceptible at this point.
 
What Chris said. I don't update before a gig, only if I have practice time to make sure levels are correct. But usually it's only minor changes if anything.
 
I typically upgrade and play. And for the record, that's not from laziness. That's from confidence in the firmware's. There are other devices that I certainly do backups before updating. I know, anything can happen. Like you I've had an Axe so long that I have my go to presets and don't stray far so even if an update were to screw up, I have backups not too far back as well as each FW sysx saved on my computer.

"If" something catches my ear as off, then I may search for the culprit or just go right to it (obvious vol change for ex). I do backups preiodically but not every FW update. These days I don't do a lot of tweaking so no need really.
 
i replied in another thread and it seemed relevant here:

if you update and it seems you need to turn many knobs in the amp block, do the "amp reset" by choosing a different amp type/model, then back to the one you want. it will get the new default parameters (mostly advanced stuff) and it should probably sound better immediately. watch your speaker volume, as it may get louder or softer due to the defaults changing. but from there, i usually adjust the basic tone and GEQ and that's it.

i don't need to do that often, but maybe any major modeling revisions.
 
Since I'm still relatively new - I backup, upgrade, go through my main presets just to check for any volume differences, then play. I will say though that I didn't have to adjust anything from 9.04 to 10 so I may feel a little more comfortable with any future upgrades and not feel like I have to really analyze anything in depth.

I usually end up making new presets though to just try out any new features that are in the firmware like new amps, etc.
 
I've been upgrading and just gigging it without changing anything. And you know what? Since about FW13 of the AXII, I can't say I've detected anything remotely earth shattering that changed my patches such that they were no longer giggable. In fact, with the latest FW10, I didn't hear a single thing different about my existing patches. I literally upgraded that morning and went out and played an hour later.

Sure, do backups (I didn't, and don't). But I bet if I snuck into your AX8 late at night and upgraded it, you'd never notice until you saw maybe some new amps showing up.

The idea that the firmware updates cause such major change to volume, gain, and general amp character is, IMO, overblown. Especially of late. Sonic differences between them are damn near imperceptible at this point.
So true. I’ve done the same as you for three years now and rarely had to tweak anything unless I just felt like I wanted to. Most of time I can tweak the basic amp knobs on the unit for any basic eq for the room, etc.
 
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