kostein's Axe FX II Firmware 12 High Gain Showcase (28 amp models) & Metal presets

kostein

Inspired


Done! Finally done! :D

After months and months of working on this I'm excited that I can finally share it with all of you. I started this project back in December just before v9 was to be released and it went through various iterations with all the firmware updates. I was 99% finished with it last week and then v12 was released. That meant I had to check each and every tone to see if they needed any tweaking and if they did I would have to reamp, remix and remaster for the zillionth time. Fortunately the patches didn't require any tweaking at all, they just sounded better than v11 and that made the process go faster. Hence you get this vid a few days after v12 landed upon us.

This is a 38 minute vid in which I'll bore you to death by playing the same riffs through 28 different amp models. 38 minutes might be too long for a video like this. I thought of doing it in smaller segments at one time but, in the end, I felt that having it all together in one video would allow the listener to hear all the tones. I know that my style might not be everyone's cup of tea, especially the intro song which is pretty intense. There are a few moments in which I change it up a bit to keep it less boring but I won't spoil that for you here. ;)

All the stringed instruments that you hear are AxeFX (guitar/bass/etc). You will probably find that some guitar tones might sound similar or even "the same", but, with 28 different amp models, and my leaning towards a certain type of tone, it is a possibility. The song that I used for the showcase has two guitar tracks, one panned hard left while the other is panned hard right. For the sake of consistency the guitar tracks were recorded dry and reamped later with each one of the 28. This also saved me the trouble of getting perfect takes for each of the amps. All of the music is original except for a cover during the intermission, which I think you'll recognize.

This time around there's a part in each of the amp showcases where you'll get to hear the raw sound coming from the Axe without any post processing in the DAW; first a mono track and then a dual track. The signal chain went like this -> Schecter C7/crappy bass of doom -> AFX2 -> FF800 -> Cubase 5. I used SD2 with the Metal Foundry kit for drums. On the master track I only used Ozone 5.

Presets:
I'm sharing all of my presets, and I mean all. There are two zip files that can be downloaded on my blog, one includes my Axe FX 2 guitar/bass presets and the other my SD2 Metal Foundry preset. There's two folders of guitar presets, one of them has all the presets I used on the showcase while the other has all the presets I kept tweaking before I got them right. There's a readme in there and I recommend that you read it. I will try to update the Axe presets with every major FW update and share them. No promises though.

Here's the link to my Presets | Kostas Charalambous - The search for bro0talz

Here's some fun facts for you:
Total file size of the project folder after completing the final render is 97GB with 1,593 files. It was rendered with the H.264 codec in 1920x1080 at 30fps, VBR 2 pass with a target of 4mbps and a max of 8mbps. The audio is AAC at 320kbps, 48khz. Rendering time was roughly 31 hours with the file size being 1.1GB. Uploading time to YT was about 5 hours.

Lastly
I never really ask for anything other than feedback from fellow guitarists and this is the first time I'm doing this. If you enjoy this video and like my presets please share this with anyone that might be somewhat interested in guitar playing/tone/etc. I spend a lot of time making these videos and tweaking the presets. If you find them to be valuable and would like to contribute then you can donate something to my Paypal donation account which I just opened for my "Getting a Decent Bass" fund. I've set up a donation button on my blog for this.

Feel free to ask any questions, I will be glad to answer them.

Thank you for your time and I hope you enjoy and have fun watching this. :)


-DISCLAIMER-
My goal with this vid is to show merely a glimpse of high gain tones that the Axe can do now with all these different amp models just right out of the box. To achieve this, I tried getting the best possible tone (to my ears) with each amp and I used whatever means (drives/eq/cab IRS/etc) I deemed necessary to get there. My goal is not to compare these amps against one another even though that is kind of inevitable. If you own an Axe, you can have all of these tones and a lot more so I don't really see the point of comparing. Also my goal is not to try and get as close to the real amps as possible because I've simply ever owned any of these amps so I have no clue how they sound. There will probably be some people arguing that I should have maybe done it in a different way, for example: using the same cab, not using drives, all settings at noon, etc. That kind of thing is not for me. I strive to get the best possible tone to my ears and I use whatever can to get there. At the end of the day, that's what really matters, right?
 
That's excellent Kostein ! Thanks for this huge work !
And thanks for having used the factory cabs !
I really love the Thordendal preset though it used to be one of the most hated ampsim for me...
 
This is awesome, a great job! without reamping in more. Congratulations dude.
My favorite preset is also thorental that I find well balanced.
(also greats interludes!:encouragement:)
 
+1. Your video should be a fixed part of the fractal PR engine... This is also a great promotion video for YOUR skills as metal producer and guitarrist! What about this idea: "Send me your dry tracks - and I give you back High End Metal Mayem!!! I think you would reach your goal to get a better bass in a few weeks.....
 
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