Paid presets ... pfff

The first Axe FX presets for sale that I ever saw were from Austin Buddy. I don't know if he was the first to do it, but he was the first person I ever saw sell Axe FX presets. That opened the door to anyone else who might want to sell presets. The same goes for IRs. I remember when there were only a few people selling IRs. Now everyone is selling IRs and presets. The ones with the best products (like Austin Buddy) will thrive, and the ones with products no one likes will fail, but anyone who wants to try should be able to try.
 
The overload on social media of individuals advertising their paid presets is turning me off.

I just saw one that said something like: "Hey, I just made this preset in a few minutes. Buy it for $5."
I know several offerings that are of very questionable quality.

Everybody is entitled to making a buck, but it's getting ridiculous, and the early years of sharing stuff with the community / offering real content seem to be over, sadly. A stark contrast between getting constant firmware updates for free <> monetizing.

BTW, this is by no means an attack on the well-known parties providing high-quality presets and offering support for those.
You got me at "social media" ;)
 
Great players sound great with most any amp/gear. For some reason lots of people think it’s the rig/preset.

It’s like telling someone “what a great meal, I must know what type of stove you use”

I mean come on, I could get a copy of every preset from famous artist fractal user and would I sound just like them ? Nope, because I can’t play like them, so why should I obsess over their settings so much ?

I saw Zakk Wilde play no more tears on a practice amp and epiphone and it still sounded way more like the song than I could sound with his exact touring rig.


Unless presets come with a Matrix style direct neural download that gives us the playing jobs along with the amp settings, presets are not going to give talent

Wait! So, are you saying that I have wasted all that money that I have spent on the Satriani, Vai and Malmsteen Signature guitars? I thought that, once I had these guitars, all I needed to play like them was the right presets 😭😭😭

Where is the secret? Is it on the picks? the cables? :p
 
I am much better at playing the guitar than I am at making presets. Been here since the beginning. I have purchased presets over the years and mostly been disappointed. Not always, but mostly.
But some (purchased or downloaded for free) did help me learn more about Fractal gear, getting the tone I was looking for, etc, etc.
I remember the days when presets were readily shared for free. The good ole days. But even then, mostly they did not translate to my stuff or my hands\brain.
 
Why would you detest sharing? I have learnt a lot studying the presets of others, and I feel good when I share my presets
It's cool in the "here see how I did this" sense. But when you have lots of people purchasing presets, or using the same preset, you wind up with a lot of homogeny in the sound. Much like using drum programs have, every kid in their basement uses the same portnoy kit in superior drummer.
I like to roll my own.
 
It's cool in the "here see how I did this" sense. But when you have lots of people purchasing presets, or using the same preset, you wind up with a lot of homogeny in the sound. Much like using drum programs have, every kid in their basement uses the same portnoy kit in superior drummer.
I like to roll my own.
Just curious, do you roll your own drum kits? You're right that SD kits are pretty customizable, but they're still so commonly used, there's a lot of commonality to those tones.

What are you using instead?
 
Just curious, do you roll your own drum kits? You're right that SD kits are pretty customizable, but they're still so commonly used, there's a lot of commonality to those tones.

What are you using instead?
I use our own acoustic drums. Every so often it might get augmented by a kick sample that we made ourselves, but I dig the live drums personally, warts and all. Like this
 
My 2 cents. I don't share a lot of presets/blocks. But when I do, I don't really see the point in charging for them. Since I only do matching/clones of real gear or an artist rig, the amount of work is just ridiculous if you want to do it right.

What do you even charge for a single block that you've put 10, 20, 30, or even over 100 hours into researching, reaching out to people and gathering clips, reading manuals and technical information, and then recording, measuring, tweaking (rinse and repeat ad nauseam)? I do it because I'm a tone chaser, not to make money.
 
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My 2 cents. I don't share a lot of presets/blocks. But when I do, I don't really see the in point charging for them. Since I only do matching/clones of real gear or an artist rig, the amount of work is just ridiculous if you want to do it right.

What do you even charge for a single block that you've put 10, 20, 30, or even over 100 hours into researching, reaching out to people and gathering clips, reading manuals and technical information, and then recording, measuring, tweaking (rinse and repeat ad nauseam)? I do it because I'm a tone chaser, not to make money.
Attaching the desire for monetary reward to almost anything seems to diminish it incrementally until it becomes completely incidental to the monetary reward part. It's almost as if the desire for money is some kind of problem that poisons everything.... :rolleyes:
 
I suspect you didn't understand his post. I don't think he meant he was going to copy factory presets, but rather use default values for all the blocks in the presets ;)
I didn't misunderstand anything. He clearly stated that he would not do that but other people might and I said that if those other people did as they might then they may very well be infringing on Fractal's Intellectual property WINK EMOJI

Furthermore I brought forth the concept that taking money for republishing someone else's work would constitute fraud, which constitutes a criminal act in most civilized places ANOTHER WINK EMOJI

This would hold true if it were a designed Fractal Preset or simply a preset that simply had default values in it.

WINKY FACE
 
I'm always thinking just that any preset is based so fundamentally on how the character of an IR melds with how a particular pickup on a particular guitar with a particular setup, with a particular pick attack, etc. And I think it can line up really well for two players with pretty similar guitars. Like, I'll look at a Leon Todd video, where he's not trying to sell you a preset, but doing the awesome thing of showing how to use the Axe in different ways, walks you through his creation, posts his preset, and gives you his IR...and I try that preset, untweaked, playing the same thing he plays in the videos, and it sounds like garbage mixed with crap mixed with trash mixed with refuse, on a shit sandwich. And then I realize, "Oh, yeah, I'm not playing his guitar, and I don't hold my pick like he does, etc. If he played one of my presets on the guitar he's using in this video, it would also sound terrible." And that totally makes sense to me. I remember one of his where I had to boost my input insanely to get anywhere close to what he was getting, and still the EQ of the guitar was just bad with his settings. On the other hand, if he took that particular guitar and played through one my presets, it would massively overload and probably sound like the most biting harsh thing on top of being an unintelligible mess. Especially because I really favor these Saturday Night Specials, which are pretty low output, they can sound really weak on a preset made for powerful pickups, or they'll sound muddy on a preset made for a single-coil. Not to mention, my guitar has such a weird wood combination (Black Limba body with Wenge neck), I'm sure that's altering things too. Plus, the fact that my relatively low output pickups are also set very far away from the strings, and on top of that, my bridge is a Floyd. Normally a Floyd just seems to pair with high output fire breathing pickups. Mine is just a weirdo combination, but I love it haha!

This low pickup height is exactly what's been preventing me from enjoying others' presets. I just raised my pickups, and now Axe-Change presets are sounding fantastic! Here's more detail, as well as a preset I made with my new setup. For those who've commiserated with me on this, maybe check your pickup height too, just in case that could be the factor for you too. You can raise them just to try others' presets then quickly go back to your standard settings! I'm going to try the high setting for a while, just to see if it might work better for me. I hate to think I've lost so much potential tone for years now out of sheer habit haha.
 
This low pickup height is exactly what's been preventing me from enjoying others' presets. I just raised my pickups, and now Axe-Change presets are sounding fantastic! Here's more detail, as well as a preset I made with my new setup. For those who've commiserated with me on this, maybe check your pickup height too, just in case that could be the factor for you too. You can raise them just to try others' presets then quickly go back to your standard settings! I'm going to try the high setting for a while, just to see if it might work better for me. I hate to think I've lost so much potential tone for years now out of sheer habit haha.

I read your other thread but not fully and didn't see so I'm curious, I assume from the string to the top of the pole piece, what was your normal low setting?

How much higher did you set it?
 
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