Need help with my Axe Fx Ultra setup.....

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daretosoar

Member
I got my Axe Fx Ultra the other night and hooked it up to my equator D5 studio monitors with the unbalanced outs left and right and was able to get a KILLER prog metal/petrucci type tone and couldn't have been more pleased. The leads and response with the noise gate and quality of the delays is just stellar. However, I plan on using it in a live situation with a solid state power amp and a cabinet while also going direct to the PA. I took my 412 cab and my solid state power amp to the practice room today and set it up as followed: Guitar going into instrument jack on front of axe fx- the left and right unbalanced 1/4 outputs going from the axe into my power amp's input 1 and 2- output 1 going from the power amp into my 4/12 cabinet. I'm not very familiar with setting up gear this way since for the last couple of years I've been going direct into our rehearsal PA via line 6 pods.....

The problem I'm experiencing is that the super awesome petrucci tone I made before on my studio monitors now sounds dull. It's like it's coming through a wall. This is of course because I had the cabinet simulation on. I knew that in this setup it should be turned off so that I'm not stacking the tone of 2 cabs together but when I turn it off it sounds thin and just plain terrible. It's like I can hear the the nice rich tone being constricted and choked to death while a cloud of fizzy, thin, fuzz pisses on it from above. I'm positive that the axe fx is not supposed to sound this way. If so, this was a total waste of 1500 bucks. It seems more likely that I need to configure some basic settings for this type of setup. guitar->axe fx->power amp-> cabinet

It sounds this way with all crunch/high gain tones. Please help or link me to a thread that already covers this topic. I've checked the manual on how to set everything up and have searched the forum and google for the last couple of hours but couldn't find anything. Thanks
 
There's got to be hundreds of posts in the forum concerning the various approaches - but I do know it's sometimes hard to piece things together when there's so many different opinions.

The very best advice I took onboard when I first got an Ultra (and I still maintain for the Axe2) is:

1. Make your 'live' presets at the volume you intend to use them using your backline amp/cab to monitor as you go along

2. Start with a simple preset (just an amp block really if routing to a traditional cab)

Start by getting familiar with the chain layout and how to use an FXL block to split your signal to both outputs on the Axe - generally you'll use Output 1 to go to a DI feed for DAW/FOH and Output 2 to your backline.

Then build the preset as simply as possible with the amp block being sent to output 2 on the Ultra.

Tweak the amp block's Drive, Bass, Mid, High, Master to get as near as you can to what you want - don't worry if the settings on these look a bit different to what the real amp's settings would be - just trust your ears.

Once you've tweaked the inital basic settings you will need to think what will be needed next to fine tune the tone. Will a PEQ or GEQ be needed after the amp block? Or try one before to shape the tone before it hits the amp? Deep parameter tweaks in the amp block? Try a drive block before the amp?

There's way too much info to put in one post - but once you get the basic amp tone right then you are nearly home and can add the FX later to taste.

Another approach is to download some presets as used by others and dissect some of these and modify to suit your setup - a good comprehensive collection would be Yek's v11 Ultra banks - try a few presets and bypass/remove any FX and concentrate on the amp blocks and chain routing.

It may seem a long road from where you are now - but once you get your hands dirty it gets easier.
 
The quickest way to solve this IMO is to come up with a quality Full-Range (FR) cabinet solution for live use rather than using a traditional guitar cabinet. Of course this is may cost a bit of $$$, but would most likely only require some slight tweaks to the FR PA stage cabinet's EQ curve...assuming, of course, that you've got enough horsepower to carry the stage in a manner that is appropriate for your use.

Of course there are other options. If you have the time, then you can do a lot of things with parallel routing - 2 discrete amp block (tone) paths: one for stage cab, one for FOH - so that you can tweak the tones independently of each other. This gets a bit messy if you have any post-amp block effects processing. If special effects don't sound good routed in front of the amp block, then you'll need to duplicate those effects also. This introduces much complexity, cpu limit issues, and controller issues (i.e. time consuming)....but it is do-able.

This is exactly where the AxeFxII has hit the target: get the ideal sound of your real cabinet rig, and then use the tone matching feature or IR capture feature to replicate it for sending to FRFR or FOH speakers. You can still do this with the Ultra, but you'll need to crash-course on how to capture Impulse Responses, using software, to put in the Ultra's User Cabinet slots. There is a possibility that 3rd party IRs will come close, but there would be a lot of ferreting through hundreds of cabinet impulses. Check out Redwirez or Ownhammer to see if they have your cabinet captured.

What power amp are you using, and what cabinet?
 
Thanks for the in depth replies guys! I'm using an Ampeg v4 cab and QSC GX3 solid state power amp. I was actually asking more about the nasty thin fizz quality that sits on top of all the high gain guitar tones when going through my amp, not necessarily the way to go about getting a good tone. However I still appreciate the advice. I'm pretty familiar with guitar processors so I have a general idea of how to go about setting up some nice tones, but when I play through the amp it sounds kind of like a pre amp without a cabinet. I was actually able to fix this issue with a filter at about 6.5k (of course) and turning the fader for 8k down completely in the global output eq page. It sounds very nice now and responds really well when turned up super loud. There is still some sort of issue though. Now there is this really bad feedback sort of sound when I use high gain tones. It sort of goes away when I play very active guitar parts but while my hands are idle it starts to ring really badly. It does NOT sound like normal guitar feedback. It's super high pitched and metallic sounding. It sounds alot like mic feedback actually. Anyone know anything about this kind of thing?

Also I have an old PodX3 Live that I've heard can be used as a midi controller. Does anyone have any experience using multi effects pedals as foot controllers?
 
if you can, please post your preset .syx file so the forum can view it and perhaps point out the settings in your preset that might present problems when used with your cabinet. Also, what guitar is used and what are the pickups? Ideally, someone will download your preset file and use it in a similar rig to yours and give you their findings. Sometimes there are obvious things pertaining to drive and preamp gain and stuff like that which rear their ugly heads when making the conversion from studio to live.
 
I'm using Emg 808 actives with the 18v mod. It's a Schector Diamond 8. I can't upload any files because I can't connect my axe to the computer yet. I have a midi to usb cable which my computer detects when the axe is plugged in but axe edit doesn't recognize anything.
 
Axe Edit is a bit of a prima donna about recognizing the device. You need to have everything plugged in and turned on before starting Axe Edit.
 
you can't expect a patch dialled in on your monitors to translate to power amp and cab, but if you're running FOH as well, then split your chain so the cab ir you used at home is in a side chain followed up by the fx loop block. this will send your cab emulated tone out to the desk through output 2. then use the global eq on output 1 to sculpt your tone so it sounds decent through the cab. cut 8k back to tame the fizz and tweak the other bands as necessary

the feedback you're experiencing is coming from your pickups

if the power amp has presence controls, make sure they're not too high. might be worth investing in a decent power amp like one of the matrix products - it will make a big difference
 
I wasn't expecting the tone to be identical, but that nasty fizz just didn't seem right. My pod hd500 setup had feedback with my power amp cab setup as well, just not nearly as bad. I tried a few other guitars and they all actually had worse feedback than the one I was using at first. My power amp does not have a presence control but could turning down the presence in the amp model on the axe help as well? I think the presence is at around 12 or 11 a clock. It's pretty high compared to how I usually keep it on other amps but it sounds pretty good that way. I'd like to look into a different power amp but I feel the money could be better spent since my main sound is going to be ging into the desk live and the amp behind me is just so I can have an extra monitor behind me that I can control if I realize my monitors are too low mid-song. and because it feels very familiar that way. There's also the issue of the PA usually being behind the people who like to stand up close to the stage during shows.
 
Tried having the axe plugged in and turned on before starting axe edit and it still isn't recognizing anything. Any other tricks to get it going?
 
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