I played a major festival show here in Las Vegas last night where my band was headlining. I had worked all week using my Axe FX II, Mark II, with the latest firmware. I was running it through an Atomic wedge and utilizing the MFC 101 with two Mission expression pedals. I also use a Line 6 Relay 90 wireless with two transmitters set to different channels. I had set up five presets. Four were balanced out for a decent rhythm volume and one was set with increased volume for solos. The solo patch was also set up utilizing X/Y for two types of delay, one short, one long. I got to the gig, and because of rain and bad wind, we were not able to set up until a couple hours before gig time. No sound check either. Ouch. I double checked my wedge by utilizing the "plunk method" on my hottest patch as on occasion the knobs on the Atomic will move during transport. Pushed the knobs on each channel until I saw the peak indicator lights start to show red, then backed off slightly to ensure no clipping. All good. I then turned up the master volume about a third of the way on the wedge, hit a couple of chords on my lead channel when I heard a pumping of the volume, which got very loud, then.....silence. Nothing. I switched to my other four patches, same exact thing. I looked over and saw the dreaded output clipping lights on every patch, something I was extremely careful about when setting up my patches. At home and at rehearsal during the week, I routinely watched the front of the Axe Fx to ensure that wasn't happening, even on my lead patch. All good until show time. I looked over at the the master channel volume on my Axe ensuring I was good there as well (I set my master volume at noon on both outputs one and two). I reached over and rolled the output volume back to a third on the channel I was using (output one) and zero on output two. Still the same thing. I was mortified. I turned the unit and the wedge on and off several times as I also did with my wireless. I also unplugged my expression pedals. The same thing happened each time. I then plugged directly into the Axe Fx using a cable instead of my wireless....same thing. I ended up having to do a complete reset of my Axe Fx and when I did, the patches I set up were toast. I ended up having to find five other factory patches on the fly to use for the gig. It was, to say the least, mortifying. I was really disappointed at the end of the night. The patches I used were a major compromise and I ended up having to try and tweak them on the fly, which during a gig in front of thousands of people and industry folks who are there to watch you, is a huge letdown. We managed to pull it off and folks said we sounded great, but I have to tell you, I am left to wonder what the heck happened? Has anyone else had a similar experience? I love the unit and am not giving up on it, but having to bring a back up rig kind of defeats the purpose.
