My Background
I’ve been playing and writing since 1973, and engineering/producing since 1979. My intention was to be a musician and songwriter, but I got seduced into engineering and producing. As an engineer I started in the 1” MCI eight track realm; I worked for 5+ years on Music Row, mostly in 2" 24 track studios. I did everything: cutting, overdubbing, mixing, and in a multitude of genres from Reggae to Rock and beyond; recorded everything from drum kits to bullhorns in the stairwell (yep, someone called the cops! :twisted ), 24-piece string sections, 100 member choirs. I made masters for actual vinyl records, jingles, demos, you name it.
Nope, I don’t have any gold or platinum records to my credit, or Grammies – I was just one of hundreds of experienced engineers working in Nashville, making things happen.
During that time, I primarily played keyboards, but, whatever I could do for a gig in the studio, I'd do. I picked up some project work in the computer realm, and soon 100% of my energy was focused on writing code and building electronic things – from analog audio to digital data acquisition. I’ve written x86 and z80 assembler code, basic, pascal, fortran, perl, etc., built networks, installed routers and servers, sysoped bulletin boards....
Then, there was the long hiatus...
In 2003, my oldest friend talked me into playing keys for a band he was in. I quickly realized I'd lost sight of something really important: music. Soon, I was recording rehearsals, and of course I simply had to have all the “right” mics and such to make decent multitrack recordings. With the ability to hear what was happening after-the-fact, we became really tight. However, in 2007 I caused the band to blow up when I started pushing for doing some marketing & promo, using those recordings, to get some gigs going... Wups... so, I decided to reinvent myself and trim things to stay performing solo, so I started by focusing on guitar. If a song works with only acoustic guitar and vocal, it’ll really kick butt when there’s a band.
(Plug alert!) I recently completed my first CD "Signpost" – 100% played, written, sung, recorded, mixed, etc. by me – (yes, Todd Rundgren’s “Something/Anything” has had something to do with all of this).
Where the guitar fits in, and what I’ve worked with
I have a basic collection of electric guitars – my primary players are a stock Fender Highway one strat, a heavily customized Fender 1983 Japanese strat with Bill Lawrence electronics (among other things), an Epiphone Baritone Les Paul, and a PRS SE singlecut.
Since 2003, I’ve tried a variety of electric guitar "amp stuff", starting with the V-amp, then the Fender and Line 6 modeling amps (my most recent modeler prior to the AXE FX II is a POD HD300), and plug-ins. The primary purpose of this was for recording, getting the tone I want for a particular part in a song. As an engineer, I’ve always known that the tone that works in a track might not be the tone you’d want to listen to all by itself, so I’ve just tinkered until I had something “that worked”, then "fixed it in the mix". After further research, I realized that there wasn’t anything as satisfying as a tube amp –cranked where appropriate-, and so my go-to studio setup for the last year has been a Randall RM100, a number of the MTS preamp boards (Blackface, XTC, Ultra, Modern, and Recto), and a selection of four or five cabinets.
When the AXE FX II was announced, I heard about it on Gearslutz, and based what I read there, and various youtube videos, I emailed to join the waiting list. (I wanna say it was late June, or July? ) When the “we’ve got one with your name on it” email rolled in, I wasn’t quite ready to pull the trigger, but I did so as soon as I could. A few weeks later, there was UPS knocking on my door!
My Audio Environment
I have a room with some basic acoustic treatments that serves as both a recording and mixing space. I have Mackie 824 monitors as my primary speakers, and I use Sonar on a PC with an RME Fireface 800. I use pro outboard preamps (Great River, John Hardy, Chandler, and various 500-series modules) for anything I have to mic; mics I have range from SM57s to U87’s and almost everything in-between. Any line level sources go right into the Fireface. This is the setup that my CD was done on. (the very few electric guitar parts on the CD were done with the Randall and the Cyber Deluxe).
Thoughts from this first week
I didn’t have any startup problems, and it came with firmware 3.01, dated November 13, 2011. I have a sidecar rack with all my mic preamps and audio interface installed, and the unit is sitting on top of that so the AXE FX is basically at chest level when I’m sitting down. It’ll get relocated after I’ve lived with it for a while and make various decisions about how and where I’m going to use it.
I mention the location because I can clearly hear the fan. This one varies in pitch (mentioned by other folks in the forum, too). My thinking right now about this particular issue is that (for now) I will simply shut the unit off when I’m doing any critical mixing or recording in-the-room with live mics. Otherwise, if I’m playing something through the AXE FX, I’m typically listening at 80-90dB SPL, and I don’t hear the fan. I would *prefer* for the unit to be completely silent, but in truth the Randall has a louder fan noise (which is why the Randall ended up somewhat inconveniently located just outside my control room).
Before the AXE FX, what I would say about all the modeling I’ve experienced is this: initially convincing, but upon repeated exposure, anything with distortion became seemingly one-dimensional (although to be fair I think the POD HD 300 might or might not fall into that category, as I’ve only had it for a couple of months).
Every day since I’ve had it, I’ve wanted to get up early and play electric guitar right away, and that hasn’t happened in a while. I went through that with the Randall, but many of the tones were impractical -- like my wife wouldn’t appreciate hearing screaming guitar early in the morning or late at night, for example. Yes, I have *some* acoustic treatments, but for a variety of reasons I haven’t torn the walls down and rebuilt them for better isolation (that’s further down the projects list, though).
Blown away by:
Holy [Insert superlatives/expletives here], does this thing sound great, or what?!
First, the AXE FX II seems to be much more forgiving (than my experiences with real tube amps) in terms of accommodating different pickups and output levels, where the guitar volume or tone controls are, or what stomp boxes are in the chain. I believe the design of having an input gain adjustment (I/O button, Input tab, “A/D input levels”) independent of the modeling environment itself avoids a lot of the trial and error and experimenting to find “the sweet spot”. It also allows me to accommodate variation between guitars, so my strats can crunch nicely too.
Second: somehow, that sweet spot works for almost every "layout", whether there are pedals first in the preset or the amp is the very first thing and all the effects are downstream. And, bonus!, seemingly regardless of amp model(s) selected (I haven’t loaded the 4.0x firmware yet, but I’m looking forward to that in this regard, based on what I’ve read in the forum).
Third: wow, almost all of the presets have reasonably comparable output loudnesses (and again, I haven’t loaded 4.0x firmware, which seems to address this as well). I don’t know how many devices I’ve started working with and realized to my annoyance that I was going to have to “fix” every dang preset in the thing just so I wouldn’t blow my ears out while dialing through the sounds. And for some older ones, whose design has some of the presets hard-coded in ROM, that problem existed every time I fired the device up (hello, fender cyber deluxe?). Time is very valuable, so not having to ride gain on the final output wins bigtime (and saves my ears, to boot). Fractal has set the bar high, and for that additional work, I very sincerely say “thank you!”
This device has serious "depth" to it.
Lastly: the forums and people on here are very cool.
Misc
There’s a lot of sophistication in the user interface, yet it’s subtle, and after a little orientation and homework it’s pretty easy to navigate around and find what I’m looking for. The out-of-the-box a/b/c/d knob strategy is inventive, and makes sense after getting used to the idea that they ‘float’ to different parameters, depending on which particular page and device is being edited.
The on-board tuner is really nice, significantly better in accuracy and usability than the ones in any of the other modelers I’ve worked with. (I have a Peterson VS-II as a part of my studio setup, and move it around to wherever it is needed at the time). About the only nit-pick I have about it is that I’d like a second push of the tuner button to switch from tuner back to whichever screen it was on before I pushed the tuner button the first time. Fortunately, hitting recall from the tuner screen doesn’t wipe out any changes in a patch. I like having a choice of whether tuner mode mutes the unit or not.
It’s truly exciting to have such fine control over how much distortion there is across all the amp models, and to have it be so responsive to dynamics and playing; I’m totally spoiled for anything less than this, now. I’m going to be dumping all the other modeling stuff I have lying around, with the exception of the Cyber deluxe (because it’ll be the only small combo amp I have at that point). (I will be hanging onto the randall & cabs, tho)
(more to come...)
I’ve been playing and writing since 1973, and engineering/producing since 1979. My intention was to be a musician and songwriter, but I got seduced into engineering and producing. As an engineer I started in the 1” MCI eight track realm; I worked for 5+ years on Music Row, mostly in 2" 24 track studios. I did everything: cutting, overdubbing, mixing, and in a multitude of genres from Reggae to Rock and beyond; recorded everything from drum kits to bullhorns in the stairwell (yep, someone called the cops! :twisted ), 24-piece string sections, 100 member choirs. I made masters for actual vinyl records, jingles, demos, you name it.
Nope, I don’t have any gold or platinum records to my credit, or Grammies – I was just one of hundreds of experienced engineers working in Nashville, making things happen.
During that time, I primarily played keyboards, but, whatever I could do for a gig in the studio, I'd do. I picked up some project work in the computer realm, and soon 100% of my energy was focused on writing code and building electronic things – from analog audio to digital data acquisition. I’ve written x86 and z80 assembler code, basic, pascal, fortran, perl, etc., built networks, installed routers and servers, sysoped bulletin boards....
Then, there was the long hiatus...
In 2003, my oldest friend talked me into playing keys for a band he was in. I quickly realized I'd lost sight of something really important: music. Soon, I was recording rehearsals, and of course I simply had to have all the “right” mics and such to make decent multitrack recordings. With the ability to hear what was happening after-the-fact, we became really tight. However, in 2007 I caused the band to blow up when I started pushing for doing some marketing & promo, using those recordings, to get some gigs going... Wups... so, I decided to reinvent myself and trim things to stay performing solo, so I started by focusing on guitar. If a song works with only acoustic guitar and vocal, it’ll really kick butt when there’s a band.
(Plug alert!) I recently completed my first CD "Signpost" – 100% played, written, sung, recorded, mixed, etc. by me – (yes, Todd Rundgren’s “Something/Anything” has had something to do with all of this).
Where the guitar fits in, and what I’ve worked with
I have a basic collection of electric guitars – my primary players are a stock Fender Highway one strat, a heavily customized Fender 1983 Japanese strat with Bill Lawrence electronics (among other things), an Epiphone Baritone Les Paul, and a PRS SE singlecut.
Since 2003, I’ve tried a variety of electric guitar "amp stuff", starting with the V-amp, then the Fender and Line 6 modeling amps (my most recent modeler prior to the AXE FX II is a POD HD300), and plug-ins. The primary purpose of this was for recording, getting the tone I want for a particular part in a song. As an engineer, I’ve always known that the tone that works in a track might not be the tone you’d want to listen to all by itself, so I’ve just tinkered until I had something “that worked”, then "fixed it in the mix". After further research, I realized that there wasn’t anything as satisfying as a tube amp –cranked where appropriate-, and so my go-to studio setup for the last year has been a Randall RM100, a number of the MTS preamp boards (Blackface, XTC, Ultra, Modern, and Recto), and a selection of four or five cabinets.
When the AXE FX II was announced, I heard about it on Gearslutz, and based what I read there, and various youtube videos, I emailed to join the waiting list. (I wanna say it was late June, or July? ) When the “we’ve got one with your name on it” email rolled in, I wasn’t quite ready to pull the trigger, but I did so as soon as I could. A few weeks later, there was UPS knocking on my door!
My Audio Environment
I have a room with some basic acoustic treatments that serves as both a recording and mixing space. I have Mackie 824 monitors as my primary speakers, and I use Sonar on a PC with an RME Fireface 800. I use pro outboard preamps (Great River, John Hardy, Chandler, and various 500-series modules) for anything I have to mic; mics I have range from SM57s to U87’s and almost everything in-between. Any line level sources go right into the Fireface. This is the setup that my CD was done on. (the very few electric guitar parts on the CD were done with the Randall and the Cyber Deluxe).
Thoughts from this first week
I didn’t have any startup problems, and it came with firmware 3.01, dated November 13, 2011. I have a sidecar rack with all my mic preamps and audio interface installed, and the unit is sitting on top of that so the AXE FX is basically at chest level when I’m sitting down. It’ll get relocated after I’ve lived with it for a while and make various decisions about how and where I’m going to use it.
I mention the location because I can clearly hear the fan. This one varies in pitch (mentioned by other folks in the forum, too). My thinking right now about this particular issue is that (for now) I will simply shut the unit off when I’m doing any critical mixing or recording in-the-room with live mics. Otherwise, if I’m playing something through the AXE FX, I’m typically listening at 80-90dB SPL, and I don’t hear the fan. I would *prefer* for the unit to be completely silent, but in truth the Randall has a louder fan noise (which is why the Randall ended up somewhat inconveniently located just outside my control room).
Before the AXE FX, what I would say about all the modeling I’ve experienced is this: initially convincing, but upon repeated exposure, anything with distortion became seemingly one-dimensional (although to be fair I think the POD HD 300 might or might not fall into that category, as I’ve only had it for a couple of months).
Every day since I’ve had it, I’ve wanted to get up early and play electric guitar right away, and that hasn’t happened in a while. I went through that with the Randall, but many of the tones were impractical -- like my wife wouldn’t appreciate hearing screaming guitar early in the morning or late at night, for example. Yes, I have *some* acoustic treatments, but for a variety of reasons I haven’t torn the walls down and rebuilt them for better isolation (that’s further down the projects list, though).
Blown away by:
Holy [Insert superlatives/expletives here], does this thing sound great, or what?!
First, the AXE FX II seems to be much more forgiving (than my experiences with real tube amps) in terms of accommodating different pickups and output levels, where the guitar volume or tone controls are, or what stomp boxes are in the chain. I believe the design of having an input gain adjustment (I/O button, Input tab, “A/D input levels”) independent of the modeling environment itself avoids a lot of the trial and error and experimenting to find “the sweet spot”. It also allows me to accommodate variation between guitars, so my strats can crunch nicely too.
Second: somehow, that sweet spot works for almost every "layout", whether there are pedals first in the preset or the amp is the very first thing and all the effects are downstream. And, bonus!, seemingly regardless of amp model(s) selected (I haven’t loaded the 4.0x firmware yet, but I’m looking forward to that in this regard, based on what I’ve read in the forum).
Third: wow, almost all of the presets have reasonably comparable output loudnesses (and again, I haven’t loaded 4.0x firmware, which seems to address this as well). I don’t know how many devices I’ve started working with and realized to my annoyance that I was going to have to “fix” every dang preset in the thing just so I wouldn’t blow my ears out while dialing through the sounds. And for some older ones, whose design has some of the presets hard-coded in ROM, that problem existed every time I fired the device up (hello, fender cyber deluxe?). Time is very valuable, so not having to ride gain on the final output wins bigtime (and saves my ears, to boot). Fractal has set the bar high, and for that additional work, I very sincerely say “thank you!”
This device has serious "depth" to it.
Lastly: the forums and people on here are very cool.
Misc
There’s a lot of sophistication in the user interface, yet it’s subtle, and after a little orientation and homework it’s pretty easy to navigate around and find what I’m looking for. The out-of-the-box a/b/c/d knob strategy is inventive, and makes sense after getting used to the idea that they ‘float’ to different parameters, depending on which particular page and device is being edited.
The on-board tuner is really nice, significantly better in accuracy and usability than the ones in any of the other modelers I’ve worked with. (I have a Peterson VS-II as a part of my studio setup, and move it around to wherever it is needed at the time). About the only nit-pick I have about it is that I’d like a second push of the tuner button to switch from tuner back to whichever screen it was on before I pushed the tuner button the first time. Fortunately, hitting recall from the tuner screen doesn’t wipe out any changes in a patch. I like having a choice of whether tuner mode mutes the unit or not.
It’s truly exciting to have such fine control over how much distortion there is across all the amp models, and to have it be so responsive to dynamics and playing; I’m totally spoiled for anything less than this, now. I’m going to be dumping all the other modeling stuff I have lying around, with the exception of the Cyber deluxe (because it’ll be the only small combo amp I have at that point). (I will be hanging onto the randall & cabs, tho)
(more to come...)
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