How Well Do Real Pedals Play With the Axe-FX III (specifically 60s-80s style fuzz’s)

J

JMP2061

New Member
Hello, I’ve been very interested in the Axe-FX III for the past few years but have had a few questions before making the investment. I tend to try to save money where I can and such have taken to building my own amps and pedals but still see a lot of value in Fractals products and have wanted to experiment with mixing more digital into my primarily analog rig.

One question I did have though is how well analog pedals typically work running straight into the Axe FX III, specifically 60s and 70s style fuzzes. From my experience with solid state amps some pedals and more frequently fuzzes tend to sound weird in comparison to being run into a tube amp. I was wondering whether anyone experienced anything similar with the FX III.

Thank you for any help that can be offered and I would be happy to provide more detail in case I haven’t been clear enough, I hate describing audio “issues” since it’s so subjective.
 
Sorry for accidentally deleting you reply, I can’t get the message box to reset by logging out and back in again as well, so my apologies in advance.

Regardless, that’s nice to know, I’m used to juggling pedal chains since I run a lot fuzzes that don’t play nice with others but the reminder is still appreciated. If that’s the only issue then I’m definitely going to make a jump on a unit when I can. Thanks for the help, it is greatly appreciated!
 
Admin M@ said:
Here's a whole show with a whole palette of new and vintage fuzz pedals into the front of an Axe-Fx III.

Click to expand...

Should have remembered Dweezil uses Axe-Fx heavily and as far as I know he has a LOT of vintage gear as well. Pretty sure he runs four on tour sometimes IIRC? Also, can’t wait to test out his bassman and Blankenship models, kudos to him for giving the community access to such great amps.
 
As stated in the wiki about the fuzz , don’t let that be a huge deciding factor in getting the axe fx (or modellers in general)…

The axe fx iii offers so much more in guitar sound creation/manipulation that you might even find not needing any external pedals!
 
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I have well over 100 analog pedals, including a bunch of handmade vintage circuit fuzzes. It all plays nicely with the Axe Fx III.

With my old non-master volume tube amps, I'd use fuzzes to achieve different degrees of dirt at sane volumes. With the Axe Fx, I can do almost all of that with just the amps. So it really opens up a lot of possibilities. I hardly use any outboard gear now unless there's a super particular thing I'm trying to achieve.
 
Works great. I run an Analogman Sun Face and a couple Bender style fuzzes into the Axe and it sounds killer. For the longest, I wasn’t using any pedals on the Axe because you can make a lot of them by manipulating drive blocks. However, now that I work more and have less time to play, I’m running pedals into the Axe for dirt and fuzz to save tweaking time, and I absolutely love it. Just grabbed an Analogman Bi-Compressor for compression and it sounds absolutely sick too. There’s pretty much nothing this unit can’t handle.
 
Just another note - I run an original Marshall Guv’nor in a loop too. I don’t need to - but again I’ve got it. That works great, I never change the setting on the pedal so it’s tucked in the back of the rack and I switch the loop with my FC6.
 
At any given point I have anywhere from 3-6 analog fuzz pedals running in front of my FM9 and they all sound just as good, if not better than they sound when they're run into a real amp. Give it a try, you won't be disappointed!
 
I run a hoard of drive pedals into the front of my Axe Fx. I even stack some of them from time to time. It’s all pretty great! Just keep the A/D input levels low as others have mentioned in the thread and you’ll have nothing to worry about.
 
I've run a bunch of different pedals in front of the Axe III, including 3 to 4 drives (up to 3 stacked) and a KingTone Fuzz, and it works exactly as you would expect.
 
The tricky part is to find which clean amp in the axe sounds good to you with your pedal as they are many to try.
 
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