Okay guys. For the love of God, critique my patches

I will spare you the far-too-old strings that are currently on my guitar and my currently sorry playing. I have been sick for the last two days and have been generally sitting around feeling sorry for myself. This has, however, given me some opportunity to work with some settings for the Axe-II. I'm a bit frustrated, as I am still pretty new to this and it seems like the rabbit hole just got a lot bigger with the 3.02 release.

So please, if you would be so kind, take a look at these presets and tell me how to make them better. Right now I feel like I'm doing everything ever-so-slightly wrong. I know that part of the issue is my current guitar, but I am also wondering if I have some I/O setting wrong. When I download presets that everyone else raves about, they sound pretty bad running through my system. So, if these presets sound awesome, I will have to start trouble-shooting to make sure I have everything set up right.


Thanks and happy tweaking,
Speculum Speculorum
(Brian Nowak)
 
Brian,

I can't get into them until late tomorrow; but a few questions to add context would help up front.
  • What guitar(s) do you use?
  • What is your output signal chain? (poweramp/cab/FRFR/Other?)
  • What sort of tones do you go for?
  • What do you feel is 'off' in your tones?
 
Right now, I'm using a fender strat with a Warmoth Neck (macassar ebony neck/fretboard), and I've got a SD JB installed in the bridge position. I'm pretty sure it's actually wired at 250k pots, which might be part of the issue. It was basically a teaching guitar that I modified when the neck went bad and wanted a bridge pickup with a little more grit to it. I can't wait until the BRJ Jekyll 727 gets here. I am, however, leaning on mostly user error, as I'm very happy with my clean tones. Very. Happy.

My signal chain is direct into Logic via USB and my monitors are Adam A7's.

The tones I am going for are in the line of modern hard rock/metal - Tool, Red Seas Fire, Ola Englund, Textures, Tesseract, etc.

I feel that my high [gain] tone lacks definition, and regardless of how I set my gain staging, feels gritty and flabby instead of punchy. However, when I increase presence and shoot for more clear highs, the guitars sound screechy and simply won't blend well. As you will note, I have a TS808 in the front of the amp, and the gain is low, but it still feels loose and undefined. Basically, I'm unsatisfied with the all-around process of getting tone. It's odd though - when other people rave about presets they've downloaded, I run them into my Axe and I'm always a little disappointed with the results. I've fiddled with my I/O and I know that all the modeling is on and running properly. It's a hum-dinger. Thanks for the help Mark.
 
With the bass - I'm not really even sure where to begin. I feel like I am on track to get where I want, but the bass lacks clarity for a hard rock sound. It kind of sits in the middle no matter where I adjust it to.
 
It's just a really gainy patch with a high-output pickup. Your drive block is also kind of smearing the tone; seems to be adding noise and not doing much else. I got better results bypassing the drive and turning down the bass knob. The 4x12 German impulse is also rather muddy. Try the 4x12 Metal with a RE16. Also people rag on JB all the time when it's not in mahogany.

P.S. hello ss.org.
 
Thanks for the tips, zero. It is sounding better. The 4x12 metal does add a bit more of a boxy tone, but it is a heck of a lot clearer. Like I said, I'm really new at this, and was only following people's advice on high gain tone structuring, much to my chagrin. And yeah, this guitar is kind of screwed up tonally. Wired for blues. Strange neck/fretboard woods. High gain PU in the bridge. The funny thing is it sounds awesome clean. But high gain, it just sounds off. Alas, all I can do is wait for my new guitar to get here.

So, any advice on how to run a drive less noisily? Is it simply a matter of running the level lower? Because I see these guys talking high gain all the time and they're all saying the same thing: oh run the drive at zero, the tone where it works, and set that level to 10, baby. Was the noise factor a sum of all my parts: guitar, amp levels, and cabinet block? Thanks again.
 
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