New Rig Day and the Importance of the Speaker Page

Speculum Speculorum

Speculum Speculorum

Power User
Hey Fractalites!

I assembled and tested my live rig today! I'm running the Axe into a Mesa 290, which is powering an Avatar Contemporary 212 loaded with Vintage 30s. Man! What a sound! I haven't dinked around with it too much, but my initial impressions are as follows:

1. Cleans, out the gate, were easy-peasy. I kept the Mesa 290 presence right at noon (experimented a lot and this seemed to be a nice spot for it), and messed with the balance between axe and mesa presence until I found my happy place. I got right where I wanted to be in a very short time without much hassle. I was playing with the power amp modeling disabled and the sag all the way down (just to be sure) and it's very interesting how the breakup changed. In the case of the Shiver clean channel, I'd get breakup almost immediately on my bridge pickup if I went much past 3-4 on my recording patches. I could push the input drive much higher running through the rig and the tone would get richer and fuller, but didn't have the same distortion quality. REALLY cool.

2. High gain stuff is definitely different. And this is where I say the speaker page is super important. The low resonance was simple enough (because the speakers low resonance responds really well), but I found that I really had to tweak the hi-res in order to get a more natural distortion sound. At stock settings with my setup there was a pretty noticeable high-end fizz that just didn't sound natural to me. I tried all the standard things (higher master volume, lower the input drive, filtering before the amp, etc.), but I just couldn't get rid of it. I was nearing the end of my tweaking session (didn't want to get fatigued), and I realized "Oh yeah... turn down the hi-res", and BAM! Instantly better. It'll take some dialing at higher volumes to get it where I really want it, but I can safely say I know I'll be able to get where I need to go with this thing, and it'll sound simply amazing soon enough.

3. I don't know why people say the mesa is "so loud". It certainly sounds better the more you push it, and I'll definitely have to get into some "gigging" volume to really master my presets for playing with a band, but I thought the thing sounded great at volumes I could talk over. My dog wasn't running around freaking out. My wife wasn't pissed. And it sounds good. So cheers, Fractalites. And remember - if you find yourself wondering about harshness or boominess that you just can't seem to dial out, the FIRST place you should look is the speaker page! :encouragement:
 
Agreed-the speaker resonance page has enormous potential, and I don't think it gets enough attention.
To be honest though it remains a bit of an enigma to me; despite the posts Cliff himself has put up regarding it.
 
I try to think of it in as simple of terms I can.

It has to do with the way the amp interacts with the impedance curve of the speaker. The speaker will react differently depending upon the values given to the hi and lo-res information. The low frequency is important to get the cab "feel" right. But I think there's a lot more leeway in the hi-res. You can fiddle with it to your heart's content and see where you end up. For me, just reducing the highs a little bit made a world of difference. It went from "sounds good in the mids and is cutting but whoa that's a lot of harsh fizz" to "Ahhhhh... thaaaaaaat's it" in a matter of seconds. I will have to tinker a bit more to get the sweet spot for this cab, of course (I only played high gain stuff for about 15 minutes tops), but I think this will be a go-to page for me a lot more often.
 
The reason you weren't getting a "natural distortion sound" is because you were exaggerating the high frequencies. With the power amp simulation on you are simulating the interaction of a tube power amp with a speaker (which causes a high-frequency boost). But you're using a tube power amp so you're already getting a high-frequency boost. With power amp modeling on now you've got the treble boost from the simulated power amp plus the treble boost of the actual power amp. With that setup you should probably turn power amp simulation off. If you don't turn power amp modeling off you would need to turn the LF and HF resonance way down to prevent exaggerating the lows and highs. The manual, wiki, and numerous posts talk about this.
 
FractalAudio said:
The reason you weren't getting a "natural distortion sound" is because you were exaggerating the high frequencies. With the power amp simulation on you are simulating the interaction of a tube power amp with a speaker (which causes a high-frequency boost). But you're using a tube power amp so you're already getting a high-frequency boost. With power amp modeling on now you've got the treble boost from the simulated power amp plus the treble boost of the actual power amp. With that setup you should probably turn power amp simulation off. If you don't turn power amp modeling off you would need to turn the LF and HF resonance way down to prevent exaggerating the lows and highs. The manual, wiki, and numerous posts talk about this.
Click to expand...

Power amp modeling was off as per my post.
 
So do you recommend NOT using the mesa presence control? The wiki and manual references said to keep it at noon. I did, in fact, read a lot before I went ahead with trying out my gear.
 
What does the axe presence knob do when the PA sim is off? does it turn into a high cut control or something? I am surprised the axe speaker page actually works when PA sim is off.
 
Speculum Speculorum said:
So do you recommend NOT using the mesa presence control? The wiki and manual references said to keep it at noon. I did, in fact, read a lot before I went ahead with trying out my gear.
Click to expand...

Where did I say not to use the amp's presence control? The manual makes no recommendations on where to set the presence. I'm not sure what the wiki says. Regardless if you are using a tube power amp you can use whatever tone shaping controls that power amp has.
 
JJunkie said:
What does the axe presence knob do when the PA sim is off? does it turn into a high cut control or something? I am surprised the axe speaker page actually works when PA sim is off.
Click to expand...

With power amp modeling off the presence knob becomes a high-shelf EQ. Setting it to 5.0 yields a neutral response. The original Axe-Fx manual mentions this but it seems to have been omitted in the Axe-Fx II manual.
 
Upon further research, I must have accidentally been tweaking with the power amp modeling on. I turned it back on and made sure it was off and the speaker page definitely doesn't respond. Weirding me out! Also yes, at better dialed in volumes the "harshness" is gone.
 
Speculum Speculorum said:
Upon further research, I must have accidentally been tweaking with the power amp modeling on. I turned it back on and made sure it was off and the speaker page definitely doesn't respond. Weirding me out! Also yes, at better dialed in volumes the "harshness" is gone.
Click to expand...

I would recommend leaving the power amp modeling off with that power amp. Mesa power amps are pretty colored and you would just be adding unnatural coloration on top.
 
FractalAudio said:
With power amp modeling off the presence knob becomes a high-shelf EQ. Setting it to 5.0 yields a neutral response.
Click to expand...

Just checking... If it's a high-shelf, and 5 is neutral, what does running it above 5 do? What would lifting a shelf above neutral do?

Allow more highs past, maybe?
 
@FractalAudio does the exaggeration of the high frequencies you mention react to your playing, meaning that if your play harder, will it distort/exaggerate harder? I ask because i used to have two almost identical amp blocks in my main preset. One running with pa sim active, running through a cab sim directly to the foh. The other with no pa sim, running directly through my 2:90 to my mesa backline cabinets via output 2 on the axe.
This has worked perffect for me, but due to new effects in my chain, i am experimenting w removing the 2nd amp block from my chains (to save cpu), and in stead using a tone match block on my send, to simulate the amp w no pa sim. This simulates the sound just fine, but when playing live, something feels and sounds different on my backline. No biggie, but would like to know if I can get closere to my "old" stage sound
 
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