input level and sustain?

I

IronMan

Member
I can't find anything about this so I thought I might just aswell ask it here.

I got the Axe for a few days and I like it alot. One thing I noticed though is that my sustain is almost gone. I'm playing on a Gibson LP and normally I have a sustain for days. When I set the input level to max my sustain is there but the input is clipping, especially when doing chords. When I lower the input level to 12 o'clock it sounds a lot better when playing chords but the sustain for single notes is almost gone. Yesterday I replaced my strings with brand new strings so it can't be an old strings issue.

Any idea what I might be doing wrong?
 
If you go to layout, then press 'page right' once or twice, you'll see "gate". It's not a global setting persay (as you assign it per patch), but it is seperate from the gate block.
 
Because it hasn't been mentioned, what's in the patches you're using?

I've had no problem with sustain with my LPs of any other guitar I run through the Axe-FX. I also use the noise gate but it doesn't affect sustain because of how I set it.
 
I had the same problem. One thing to try (didn't necessarily work for me) is to reverse the output phase. It's in there somewhere, I'm not with my Axe to find it. Also, as other posters have suggested, make sure the gate isn't cutting off the tails of your notes. In my experience, usually these two settings are OK out of the box.

I found that sustain is in the patch. If your guitar is sustaining "acoustically" (not plugged in, which I'm SURE an LP will), it can sustain with the Axe-FX, giving you the sympathetic feedback you are looking for. It's all in the patch settings, IMHO. Early on, I made several that sucked. Eventually, you'll get it - keep tweaking. Good luck!
 
Fikealox said:
If you go to layout, then press 'page right' once or twice, you'll see "gate". It's not a global setting persay (as you assign it per patch), but it is seperate from the gate block.
Click to expand...

Cool! The patch with this issue had the gate enabled. I think this actually solved it :cool:

Matt_B said:
Because it hasn't been mentioned, what's in the patches you're using?

I've had no problem with sustain with my LPs of any other guitar I run through the Axe-FX. I also use the noise gate but it doesn't affect sustain because of how I set it.
Click to expand...

What do you suggest as input level? Should the orange LED be on all the time? Or should I lower the levels so that the orange LED is not on.

Mark P. said:
I had the same problem. One thing to try (didn't necessarily work for me) is to reverse the output phase. It's in there somewhere, I'm not with my Axe to find it. Also, as other posters have suggested, make sure the gate isn't cutting off the tails of your notes. In my experience, usually these two settings are OK out of the box.

I found that sustain is in the patch. If your guitar is sustaining "acoustically" (not plugged in, which I'm SURE an LP will), it can sustain with the Axe-FX, giving you the sympathetic feedback you are looking for. It's all in the patch settings, IMHO. Early on, I made several that sucked. Eventually, you'll get it - keep tweaking. Good luck!
Click to expand...

Thanks! I will continu tweaking :mrgreen:
 
Did you read the manual?

Don't worry, not biting your head of here, reading the manual can be a daunting task. But the Axe is not a plug in and play machine.

From the "getting set up"-chapter, section "front panel" item 5: level controls: "For best signal-to-noise ratio adjust the levels until the top red LED just barely lights on the strongest peaks. For example, adjust INPUT1 so that when you strum your guitar loudly with its volume all the way up the red LED should light only occasionally. Setting the level controls too high may result in clipping of the input causing audible distortion. For guitars with humbucking pickups the INPUT1 control will normally be around the 2:00 position. For single coils you may wish to set this control slightly higher."
Best S/N ratio also means most profitable processing by the Axe. I indeed need to set my HB guitars to 2:00, my sss needs full up to get it to light occasionally.

The Noise Gate is the first effect in any row and the first effect to be mentioned in the "Effects"-chapter. That is not the gate-block, because that's called an expander/gate-block in the Ultra and sadly not even available in the Standard.

I know just asking gets faster answers with less work, but we get quite a number of new people here and we like to encourage a diy attitude so not to get swamped with easy questions as those above sadly were... It's been a problem before.

Lots of info available here, just browsing around in applicable sub-forae, in the search and on the wiki (including a searchable manual).

Welcome to the forum and happy Axe-ing!
 
Dutch said:
Did you read the manual?

Don't worry, not biting your head of here, reading the manual can be a daunting task. But the Axe is not a plug in and play machine.

From the "getting set up"-chapter, section "front panel" item 5: level controls: "For best signal-to-noise ratio adjust the levels until the top red LED just barely lights on the strongest peaks. For example, adjust INPUT1 so that when you strum your guitar loudly with its volume all the way up the red LED should light only occasionally. Setting the level controls too high may result in clipping of the input causing audible distortion. For guitars with humbucking pickups the INPUT1 control will normally be around the 2:00 position. For single coils you may wish to set this control slightly higher."
Best S/N ratio also means most profitable processing by the Axe. I indeed need to set my HB guitars to 2:00, my sss needs full up to get it to light occasionally.

The Noise Gate is the first effect in any row and the first effect to be mentioned in the "Effects"-chapter. That is not the gate-block, because that's called an expander/gate-block in the Ultra and sadly not even available in the Standard.

I know just asking gets faster answers with less work, but we get quite a number of new people here and we like to encourage a diy attitude so not to get swamped with easy questions as those above sadly were... It's been a problem before.

Lots of info available here, just browsing around in applicable sub-forae, in the search and on the wiki (including a searchable manual).

Welcome to the forum and happy Axe-ing!
Click to expand...

Sorry, I skipped through the manual but couldn't find what I was looking for. I did however search for an hour or so on the forums and in the wiki but nothing came up. It also doesn't really help when some words are not allowed because they are either too small or too common. I think I will just read the entire manual next weekend from beginning to end, as you say it is really worth knowing your equipment.

Thanks for the detailed response!
 
IronMan said:
Dutch said:
Did you read the manual?

Don't worry, not biting your head of here, reading the manual can be a daunting task. But the Axe is not a plug in and play machine.

From the "getting set up"-chapter, section "front panel" item 5: level controls: "For best signal-to-noise ratio adjust the levels until the top red LED just barely lights on the strongest peaks. For example, adjust INPUT1 so that when you strum your guitar loudly with its volume all the way up the red LED should light only occasionally. Setting the level controls too high may result in clipping of the input causing audible distortion. For guitars with humbucking pickups the INPUT1 control will normally be around the 2:00 position. For single coils you may wish to set this control slightly higher."
Best S/N ratio also means most profitable processing by the Axe. I indeed need to set my HB guitars to 2:00, my sss needs full up to get it to light occasionally.

The Noise Gate is the first effect in any row and the first effect to be mentioned in the "Effects"-chapter. That is not the gate-block, because that's called an expander/gate-block in the Ultra and sadly not even available in the Standard.

I know just asking gets faster answers with less work, but we get quite a number of new people here and we like to encourage a diy attitude so not to get swamped with easy questions as those above sadly were... It's been a problem before.

Lots of info available here, just browsing around in applicable sub-forae, in the search and on the wiki (including a searchable manual).

Welcome to the forum and happy Axe-ing!
Click to expand...

Sorry, I skipped through the manual but couldn't find what I was looking for. I did however search for an hour or so on the forums and in the wiki but nothing came up. It also doesn't really help when some words are not allowed because they are either too small or too common. I think I will just read the entire manual next weekend from beginning to end, as you say it is really worth knowing your equipment.

Thanks for the detailed response!
Click to expand...


It is in the WIKI as well. I did a search on "input level" and got this with a little bit of reading.

5. Level Controls INPUT1/2 - These controls set the input levels to the A/D converters. For best signal-to-noise ratio adjust the levels until the top red LED just barely lights on the strongest peaks. For example, adjust INPUT1 so that when you strum your guitar loudly with its volume all the way up the red LED should light only occasionally. Setting the level controls too high may result in clipping of the input causing audible distortion. For guitars with humbucking pickups the INPUT1 control will normally be around the 2:00 position. For single coils you may wish to set this control slightly higher. For best results when plugging line-level devices into an input set the controls at midpoint and adjust the output level of the device so that the red LED barely lights on the strongest signal peaks. The LED’s indicate the signal level at the A/D converter. When the red LED lights the signal into the A/D is 6 dB below full-scale (6 dB headroom). OUTPUT1/2 - These controls set the output level of the Axe-Fx. Adjust these to suit the equipment connected to the outputs. Setting the levels too high may result in clipping of the attached equipment. The Axe-Fx is capable of delivering about +18 dBu maximum with level controls at full.
Click to expand...
 
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