Keeley Metal Zone thru the Axe-FX

Genghis

Genghis

Power User
Yeah it definitely sounds a lot better if I run it through the UAD Pultec EQ with a little highs attenuated. I'll do some more tweaking on the patch to get it right at the source though. Even since posting this I've dialed in less presence and a little more damping to get it tighter with less fizz.

I also started to see how close to the Metal Zone I can get with just the Axe-FX and the Rat into the Energyball seems to get close pretty quickly if you tweak the advanced settings.
 
Try a different amp sim. Twins and most Fenders have a lot of treble by nature and can make drive pedals sound a bit harsh even if they sound absolutely fine when played clean...
 
VegaBaby said:
Try a different amp sim. Twins and most Fenders have a lot of treble by nature and can make drive pedals sound a bit harsh even if they sound absolutely fine when played clean...
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What do you use with your pedals, particularly for hi-gain. I only tried a few and it was between the blues and blackface, both with the treble turned down fairly low and the bright switch off.

I think the noise in the highs is mostly on the one track I did with the switch to the right on the MT-2. I've done most of my tweaking in the middle position and that has more rich upper mids than with the switch to the right.
 
Genghis said:
What do you use with your pedals, particularly for hi-gain. I only tried a few and it was between the blues and blackface, both with the treble turned down fairly low and the bright switch off.

I think the noise in the highs is mostly on the one track I did with the switch to the right on the MT-2. I've done most of my tweaking in the middle position and that has more rich upper mids than with the switch to the right.
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I use mostly Fuzz pedals of all sorts and what I've found over the years is that a Twin sort of 'shows' how a pedal sounds. but doesn't interact well with it. It's almost like the pedal 'sits on top'. It doesn't 'gel' with the drive of the pedal. The same goes for JC120s except if you put a Tone Machine in front and want that Big Electric Cat sound from Belew :lol: .

What I've found works best for me are Marshalls. Plexis for Fuzz and more modern, like 800s etc., for distortion boxes and heavier tones. If an amp can produce a nice sounding break up tone by itself, than it's gonna be beautiful with a drive in front. Fender Deluxes and older Tweeds work great for that too, so do Vox amps, but that sounds a bit too 60s early 70s for my taste :lol: . I usually set gain/drive on the amp quite low and then do the distortion with a pedal....

I'd try the 800 in your case. Set it fairly clean and and with a fairly even/balanced frequency response (almost like a Twin would sound clean) then see what the pedal does and then adjust the amp from there.

The cool thing with the Axe is that you can EQ and set up each amp for every pedal you use and just save that patch. Not like a real amp where one setting has to work with everything. When I use FuzzFaces for example I take a lot of the Bass out of the amp, simply because they produce so much on their own. What I mean is, I tweak the amp for the pedal and not necessarilly the other way around...
 
Thanks for the tips Vegababy. I'll check out the Marshall tomorrow. I got a little closer to what I'm looking for by using the USA clean. The biggest problem with the MT-2 is that it puts out so much highs that you have to dial back the treble and presence on the amp quite a bit to make it sound good. Makes for a muddy clean if you are using it with a clean channel of a real amp.

Edited - I had to go ahead and check it out with headphones tonight and the Marshall is the ticket. Hipower 1 isn't bad either, but the JCM 800 with the gain down really low does the trick. I'll dial it in better tomorrow and do another clip to see what you guys think of it.
 
Genghis said:
Edited - I had to go ahead and check it out with headphones tonight and the Marshall is the ticket. Hipower 1 isn't bad either, but the JCM 800 with the gain down really low does the trick. I'll dial it in better tomorrow and do another clip to see what you guys think of it.
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:D !!!

Glad it worked for you ! I've seen discussions on other boards why certain amps work better with certain effects and no one really has an answer... I have found, like I wrote before, if the amp is capable of a nice breakup on its own then it'll work. A Twin for example does not sound particularly nice on breakup... Of course this all depends on taste...

You're right about 'what happens to the tone when the pedal's off'...Sometimes I have fantastic sounding patches with a drive pedal, but if you'd ever switch off the pedal it would just be a horrible sounding clean sound. That's the beauty I was talking abaout. With the Axe you're not 'wasting' a great sounding clean channel for a pedal. On a real amp you'd either have to live with a grat pedal sound or a great clean sound...on the Axe you just save both of them !

What I sometimes do is to put a GEQ right in the firts block, so to speak right after the pedal. There I take care a little bit of frequencies of the pedal I don't like. Sort of like adding an EQ to the pedal. That way you sometimes don't have to go too drastic on the amp's EQ settings.

This way you can get rid of a TS mid hump, treble harshness of a Metal Zone etc.....

Would be great to hear your new results !
 
OK, I think it's much better now. Just did a test riff with two tracks of JCM 800 (different modes on the Keeley pedal) and one track of the Wrecker. In a real song I'd probably trim a little of the lows to get it to sit with the bass better.

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=7207166

This has been an interesting experiment for me. I dug in a little deeper to the depth, damp and sag settings to get the sounds I wanted for the pedal (and then to try and match the pedal with only the Axe). This in turn got me going back to some of my old patches using just the Axe-FX and tweaking with more extreme settings. I think my overall tones have gotten better because of all the in-depth tweaking I've done in the past 24 hours.

My general conclusion after trying to match the tones up is that the Axe-FX may not get that tone exactly, but when I try to match it I generally end up getting something better from the Axe on it's own. I might keep the pedal around just to have another tone for my rhythm tracks, but if I sold it, I probably wouldn't miss it much.
 
Jase2677 said:
Are you running your MT2 in front of your Axe-Fx or are you running the pedal through the loop???? What are your pedal settings???
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I run it in front of the Axe-FX. Not setting it up for live so I don't need it to be switchable.

The pedal is set to the Ultra mode with the switch in the middle for one track with the JCM 800 and the track with the Wrecker. I set the switch to the right for the other JCM patch. The other settings varied slightly between patches but were roughly as follows: Bass and high level at about 3 o'clock. Mid frequency at about 3 boosted slightly for the recording... but I've done a little more tweaking and like it with the mids up around 2 or 3 now. Also, with the switch to the right I like it better with the treble at about noon, but on the recording it's at about 3, so it is still just a little bit too fizzy on that one track. Oh yeah, the distortion is at around 1 o'clock
 
Genghis said:
This has been an interesting experiment for me. I dug in a little deeper to the depth, damp and sag settings to get the sounds I wanted for the pedal (and then to try and match the pedal with only the Axe).
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Just curious...in which way did you change them to the amp's default settings and why ? Really, just curious. I use these a bit as well, but usually I keep sag around 2 (otherwise it gets too 'spongey'), like to give it a bit more depth, but usually keep damp at amp's default.
 
VegaBaby said:
Genghis said:
This has been an interesting experiment for me. I dug in a little deeper to the depth, damp and sag settings to get the sounds I wanted for the pedal (and then to try and match the pedal with only the Axe).
Click to expand...
Just curious...in which way did you change them to the amp's default settings and why ? Really, just curious. I use these a bit as well, but usually I keep sag around 2 (otherwise it gets too 'spongey'), like to give it a bit more depth, but usually keep damp at amp's default.
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I've never never moved them far from stock in the past. Before I'd do the same as you, a little more depth and the sag and damp generally on the stock settings. Then I'd just manipulate the EQ and such to dial in the tone I wanted. (Warmth and thump too on the newer versions.) Now I go with a little more damp to tighten things up a bit and lower the sag just a little to give it a less spongy feel on the rhythm patches. I like my lead tones a little more spongy, so the sag can go at stock or maybe a touch higher, but I like the sag between one and two on the rhythm patches. Also, I find that by raising the damp on some amps I don't feel like I need to boost the treble and presence as much to get the sound to cut through. It seems to alter the response in a different way than EQing would do. I'm starting to get the bass and overall tightness I like without it sounding quite as scooped in the mids.

Thanks again for the tips. It got me thinking of a lot of ideas on how to use what I have even within the Axe. I've never played around with fuzz pedals much, but now I'm starting to play around with some of the Axe-FX fuzz pedals with the plexi models. I'm just starting to see the beauty of the fuzz, so I'm sure I'll have more fun with that.
 
Genghis said:
I've never played around with fuzz pedals much, but now I'm starting to play around with some of the Axe-FX fuzz pedals with the plexi models. I'm just starting to see the beauty of the fuzz, so I'm sure I'll have more fun with that.
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Fuzz pedals are a beautiful work of art ;) !
 
Genghis said:
OK, I think it's much better now. Just did a test riff with two tracks of JCM 800 (different modes on the Keeley pedal) and one track of the Wrecker. In a real song I'd probably trim a little of the lows to get it to sit with the bass better.
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Could you post the settings you used on the 800 and which cab and mic ?
 
VegaBaby said:
Genghis said:
OK, I think it's much better now. Just did a test riff with two tracks of JCM 800 (different modes on the Keeley pedal) and one track of the Wrecker. In a real song I'd probably trim a little of the lows to get it to sit with the bass better.
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Could you post the settings you used on the 800 and which cab and mic ?
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No prob:
Drive 1.69
Bass 5.98
Mid 6.61
Treble 6.65
Bright Switch Off
Presence 5.43
Depth 6.26 switch on
damp 7.52
Sag 1.61
Mast Vol 6.61
Warmth 2.99
Thump 6.54
Everything else at defaults

Cab 1 4x12 German thru R121
Cab 2 4x12 Metal thru 58 Dyn

Used the room reverb setting from the Wiki for an in the room type sound.

You really got me exploring some things. Started a fuzz into the Plexi patch that sounded nice... added a wah (of course) then added a treble booster before the fuzz. Now I'm about to throw in a Univibe and let the flashbacks begin. Really need to get rid of my GT8 which I'm using for a controller and get something that does stompbox mode for this patch. Since I'm only recording these days it's not a big problem, but it would be cool to be able to foot switch between the various distortion sounds in this patch, and kick in the delay and Univibe as needed. Oh yeah, I can see tracers!
 
Genghis said:
VegaBaby said:
Genghis said:
OK, I think it's much better now. Just did a test riff with two tracks of JCM 800 (different modes on the Keeley pedal) and one track of the Wrecker. In a real song I'd probably trim a little of the lows to get it to sit with the bass better.
Click to expand...
Could you post the settings you used on the 800 and which cab and mic ?
Click to expand...
No prob:
Drive 1.69
Bass 5.98
Mid 6.61
Treble 6.65
Bright Switch Off
Presence 5.43
Depth 6.26 switch on
damp 7.52
Sag 1.61
Mast Vol 6.61
Warmth 2.99
Thump 6.54
Everything else at defaults

Cab 1 4x12 German thru R121
Cab 2 4x12 Metal thru 58 Dyn

Used the room reverb setting from the Wiki for an in the room type sound.

You really got me exploring some things. Started a fuzz into the Plexi patch that sounded nice... added a wah (of course) then added a treble booster before the fuzz. Now I'm about to throw in a Univibe and let the flashbacks begin. Really need to get rid of my GT8 which I'm using for a controller and get something that does stompbox mode for this patch. Since I'm only recording these days it's not a big problem, but it would be cool to be able to foot switch between the various distortion sounds in this patch, and kick in the delay and Univibe as needed. Oh yeah, I can see tracers!
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Thanks !!!

I wanted to try out your 800 settings with a Keeley MZ of a friend of mine. Great starting point considering that i probably have a totally different guitar ;) .

Once you've been sucked into Fuzzland there's no going back :twisted: !!!
 
VegaBaby said:
Thanks !!!

I wanted to try out your 800 settings with a Keeley MZ of a friend of mine. Great starting point considering that i probably have a totally different guitar ;) .

Once you've been sucked into Fuzzland there's no going back :twisted: !!!
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Cool. Let me know how it works out for you. I'm running a Brian Moore with Tom Anderson pickups, so if you have bright pickups, watch those highs. I still don't think I quite have them tamed and my guitar is fairly dark.

This fuzz thing is totally killer. Plus I'm digging the mix control on the Treble booster. Allows me to mix in some unaltered tone so you don't loose all of the character of the fuzz, but it cuts a little more for solos. Sweet! :D
 
Genghis, that second clip sounds great! I'm not even much of a metal head but I really liked that tone.
 
voojo said:
Genghis, that second clip sounds great! I'm not even much of a metal head but I really liked that tone.
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Thanks, glad you like it! I like it for the most part. It still has a little too much sizzling highs... but if I drop them it starts to sound muddy. You know what I mean? Can't find just the right spot. Who knows, it might be OK with bass and drums in a mix.

Jase2677 said:
What is the drive or LEVEL set at????
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Sorry I spaced on that one... the only knob I just set and forget. It's right about noon on mine.
 
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