I have had my AXE III for a couple of days now and thought I would post back. I have never owned anything as amazing as this piece of kit, and I have owned something from all the previous Fractal generations. I haven't picked my jaw up off the ground yet and doubt I will for a long time (but will review in the appropriate section another time and in more detail).
But I wanted to say that I am no longer confused about the JP2C! It turns out it is easy to dial in if you have any experience at all with other Mesa Mark amps and to get an amazing tone. In fact, while I needed to futz with controls all the time with previous Fractal products (which sounded great after much tweaking) it is hard to make the III sound bad! I just can't get over how good this thing is.
Anyways, I have built a JP2C rig I am happy with already (Clean, Crunch and Lead) which has a lot of the vibe of the JP clips floating around where he demo's the real JP2C and also the mini mark V. I have attached the patch to this post (created with a JP BFR 6 String, monitoring through Eris 8 monitors at a reasonably loud volume). Feel free to check it out yourself.
A few notes on the patch:
- The Cab Block uses 4 different IRs - 3 are factory and 1 is from Leon Todd (https://axechange.fractalaudio.com/detail.php?cab=625). This is probably overkill, so if you just want to use factory IRs then mute the 4th cabinet. Although it shares some of the same mics of the factory cabs I also included in the patch, I tried out a bunch of different combinations of factory, free and premium IRs and this combination of 4 IRs sounds best to me. Leon's cab adds a little more girth to the tone.
- The delays settings are pretty spot on to what JP demonstrates in the JP2C channel 3 solo video:
)
- To get the full force of the delay multi-bouncing effect going on just turn the feedback master up to 100%. Sounds cool for some things but gets a little wet for others. Play with the feedback and mix to change things up to your liking.
- The Presence control is very powerful, as it is on other mark amps. I agree with @2112 that this knob seems to have a different taper and a lot more usable range than the iic++ model. As such, I ride this from 4 to 7 depending on what I am going for. Experiment and see what you like.
- There are a bunch of effects which are not turned on in any of the 3 scenes. I just turn these on and off manually depending on what I feel like. Some of these effects have settings in their other channels (B, C, D) which are worth checking out too. Most are just slight tweaks.
I pinched and adapted a bunch of settings and ideas from other members of the forum, including
@ccroyalsenders,
@2112 and
@Bakerman, so thanks to this awesome community for all the tips!
Unfortunately these is no beard, bicep or talent setting on the III...yet.
Hope this helps someone.
EDIT: Hmmm...probably should have put this in the Preset Exchange section. But it is related to this thread. Might have to cross post.