Keeping It Dialed

T

Twister

Member
I'm now one of the people experiencing weird tone from my Axe-FX III. Many things changed in a short period and I'm systematically troubleshooting and looking for where the tone went different. One of the parts of this is trying to figure out how that silicon/code ecosystem inside the Axe works.

1 - I've seen mentions of hard resets and soft resets along the way, usually in the context of firmware updates, and I'm still not sure what they are or the technical reason they need to be performed. What's the mechanism there, and in the bigger picture are there other elements to keep track of or clean up as firmware changes? What's the right "hygiene"?

2 - I just reinstalled my factory presets, if I pull one up can I trust it or are there things to check on? Is the drill different for my own presets?

3 - Should I be careful in some way about interaction between the current version of Axe-Edit and the beta firmware?

Thanks for any help you can offer. In my brain this is about something between a manual and a cookbook for tasty meals...
 
Define weird tone. Provide a recording.

You shouldn’t have to worry about any of the things you listed.

What exactly have you changed recently?
 
A modulated, kind of chorus-y sound where before I had pure clean sparkle. There's a Fender amp model at the core of the preset but I'm going to trust Cliff that everything is fine with those and try and figure out what else changed. (running 5b2).

I'm not asking for help fixing the preset. It's on me to figure out what changed. But I'd really like to understand what a hard or soft reset is. I'm sure I've seen Cliff mention them as advisable for particular blocks in certain firmware update notes.
 
Should also mention - a flurry of firmware updates plus working a lot on that particular preset, so many variables to unwind in figuring out what took it sideways.
 
Usually if an amp/block reset is needed it will be described/identified in the release notes with the firmware.
 
Yeah, but if you have a recently reloaded set of factory presets like I do, and they were from firmware ages ago, then there's no one document telling you what needs to be reset. And while we've talked about amp blocks so far I kind of remember release notes for firmware that specced drive or other effect blocks that needed resetting.

Thanks for the wiki link Yek. I'm partway through the troubleshooting and will post later when I've figured out what's screwing me up.
 
Twister said:
Yeah, but if you have a recently reloaded set of factory presets like I do, and they were from firmware ages ago, then there's no one document telling you what needs to be reset. And while we've talked about amp blocks so far I kind of remember release notes for firmware that specced drive or other effect blocks that needed resetting.

Thanks for the wiki link Yek. I'm partway through the troubleshooting and will post later when I've figured out what's screwing me up.
Click to expand...

The 'Release Notes' included in the firmware downloads, have a complete record of all firmware version notes since the first public release.
 
Twister said:
Yeah, but if you have a recently reloaded set of factory presets like I do, and they were from firmware ages ago, then there's no one document telling you what needs to be reset. And while we've talked about amp blocks so far I kind of remember release notes for firmware that specced drive or other effect blocks that needed resetting.

Thanks for the wiki link Yek. I'm partway through the troubleshooting and will post later when I've figured out what's screwing me up.
Click to expand...
Nothing “needs” to be reset. The presets sound how they sound. If you want to reset blocks and try things, go for it. But you don’t have to.

However, once you update, you shouldn’t necessarily expect things to sound exactly the same.

Update = Change.
 
Moke said:
The 'Release Notes' included in the firmware downloads, have a complete record of all firmware version notes since the first public release.
Click to expand...
Further proof that I'm an idiot. I'd always looked at what the changes for the new release were and didn't retain that the others were there.
 
chris said:
Nothing “needs” to be reset. The presets sound how they sound. If you want to reset blocks and try things, go for it. But you don’t have to.

However, once you update, you shouldn’t necessarily expect things to sound exactly the same.

Update = Change.
Click to expand...
Thanks for that. I'm a pretty technical guy and I ~hate~ the feeling of not understanding the dynamics of the system. Slowly but surely getting there - I apologize for any stupid questions but they're what I need to get a firm base of knowledge that lets me use the thing intuitively.
 
Twister said:
Thanks for that. I'm a pretty technical guy and I ~hate~ the feeling of not understanding the dynamics of the system. Slowly but surely getting there - I apologize for any stupid questions but they're what I need to get a firm base of knowledge that lets me use the thing intuitively.
Click to expand...
The Axe does everything and more for a guitar rig. There is no possible way to know everything. Try to let that go, use what you know, remember to play guitar at some point. And it will be much better.
 
I get that, and yes - remember to play guitar! This all came up when things suddenly went sideways and a preset I'd worked hard on went from really great to awful. That's when having the base of knowledge lets you move directly to the solution instead of floundering around.
 
Twister said:
I get that, and yes - remember to play guitar! This all came up when things suddenly went sideways and a preset I'd worked hard on went from really great to awful. That's when having the base of knowledge lets you move directly to the solution instead of floundering around.
Click to expand...
One thing above all I hope you are doing at least on a somewhat regular basis is backing up your patches? Things do get corrupted from time to time. Not saying that’s what’s going on here, usually when that happens the offending patch freezes, but thought I’d mention it anyway, it’s always important to be able to roll back and you can always roll back FW but ya can’t roll back patches if you’ve somehow lost em all.
Another thing that I do is when I create a patch that I particularly like I’ll copy it to another location. Often times I’ll have 3-4 copies of the same patch as I continue to work on it & as it “evolves” over separate listening & fine tuning sessions. I’ll re-name it with an extra version marker like “a” “b” etc & I can go back & compare where I’m at to the others & what sounded “perfect” yesterday or the day before, then when I’m done I’ll save the final ver to a certain section where I save all the final versions. This also helps when something significant changes in the FW cause I have several, (I lie, a ton, I have a ton) of the same patch(s) that are slightly different so it helps in pinpointing where & what has changed. Now having said all that, for quite awhile now, for the most part if something has changed that much in a FW I almost always will just start creating all new fresh patches. I have a few Templates that I use for the various effects & routings I like & Cabs & Cab Settings, so it’s just a matter of dropping in the Amp(s) and starting the process over. But in doing so, it gets me more & more intimate with each amp & amps in general and how each parameter interacts with the others. Since doing this, it has paid off tremendously. I can hear & feel and dial in & out those things that previously would have been either by dumb luck or wouldn’t have been “just right.”
 
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