Part II: Smilefan's Axe II Patch Thread

Thread is wikified:
Sound samples, videos, demos, preset collections - Axe-Fx II Wiki.

Smilefan, I'm running through ALL your stuff again. Only about 50 more and you have your own "bank". ;)
Among my favorites: Farfisa organ, and Blowtorch plexi.

I noticed that the cab assignments in some presets differ from your text description (and simply don't make sense). I guess some errors crawled in along the way. Didn't dot down in which presets this occurs though.
 
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Wikified! Wow! Thank you, Yek!

I'll have to look at the cabs in my presets vs. the text. I keep experimenting, so might
have made some changes without documenting.
 
Wikified! Wow! Thank you, Yek!

I'll have to look at the cabs in my presets vs. the text. I keep experimenting, so might
have made some changes without documenting.

Smile, Your hard work and efforts are absolutely Wiki material. Good call Yek! I have to catch up on both the thread and Wiki.

To both of you... It cannot be said enough or even properly conveyed, but your contributions to this forum and the amount of time you put in to inform, teach, and document is just phenomenal! I don’t think you even realize how much of a help you are to goobers like myself.

~ a thousand tips of the hat~
 
duaneallman.jpg

Duane Allman at the Fillmore with his "Hot 'lanta" darkburst Les Paul


Forum member, Drama, had a great idea for a patch. He wants Duane Allman’s
legendary “Live at the Fillmore East” tone. Who doesn’t? ;)
I couldn’t resist taking a crack at this, since I’ve heard so much about
Duane, his gear, and tones over the years.
This is the tone (he comes in at about 3:00):

The Allman Brothers Band with Duane - Dreams - Fillmore East - 09/23/1970 - YouTube

After listening to this, I know you youngsters are saying, “that’s the thinnest
Les Paul sound I’ve ever heard, why does anyone want that??”. Because
you can’t hide behind it! It’s a plain, clear, sweet, volume compressed tone that
shows exactly who you are and what you can do. Duane made history with that tone.

THE AMPS -
He used two 50W Plexi heads (the model 1986 Bass/Lead). It is rumored his
amps were modified to be smoother. His cabs were Marshall 4x12’s with cutouts
in the back, making them more open sounding, with less mids and focus. They were
loaded with JBL D-120 alnico speakers. One of the best speakers ever made, they were often
used by pros in Fender amps, and contributed to Duane’s less-Marshall-y sound. Those JBL’s
don’t break up when you push them, they just get smooth and compressed. The
JBL K120-loaded Marshall 4x12 is the closest IR we have in the Axe II to the D series.

THE GUITAR-
The guitar you see in the vid is his “darkburst” tobacco sunburst ’58 Les Paul. He was known
for using vintage Les Pauls (a ’57 Goldtop, and a couple ’59 cherrybursts). The darkburst
(known as the “Hot’lanta” guitar) was acquired from Pop musician, Christopher Cross
(the same guy SRV got his “Number One” Strat from). The sound you hear in the vid is
the signature tone of real PAF pickups. Thin, reedy, and sweet. Nothing like modern humbuckers.

THE EFFECTS -
He only ever used one effect, but what he did with it became urban legend among guitarists of the day. He would use Fuzz Face's, but only load them with nearly dead carbon 9V batteries, claiming it gave the sweetest tone. So he used them more as a "flavored EQ" than a drive to hit the Marshall's input stage with, like Hendrix did. When I was coming up as a young player, EVERYBODY talked about this. THE 'secret' tone formula! I cranked the bias on the patch's Fuzzface drives way down to simulate this.

THE MAN –
If you are serious about playing electric guitar then investigating Duane Allman
is not optional. One of the best electric guitarists who ever lived. He was a famous
session player at the Muscle Schoals studio before the Allman Brothers. The recordings
done with ABB cemented his place in history. The three albums he did with them
are all classics (“The Allman Brothers Band”, “Idlewild South”, “Live at the Fillmore East”).
He was great at everything. Rhythm, lead, slide, even acoustic (check out “Little Martha”).
His nickname to friends in the business was, “Skydog”, reportedly because he was high
all the time (the whole Allman Brothers Band had psyilicibin mushrooms tattooed on their knees
as a symbol of their chemical brotherhood). In his life, Duane was as respected a player as
Clapton or Hendrix.

This sounds pretty good, played with a Les Paul-type guitar with low output PAF-style pickups.
Now I just need to get a “Duane’s Talent IR” together!
 

Attachments

  • Duane Allman Fillmore.syx
    6.3 KB · Views: 75
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Man, that's amazing. Nailed the cut that I couldn't get right.

Thanks so much!

Time to go spend some proper time with it!
 
That was the first effect the company made. The rotating effect rarely works on vintage units because the rotating drum section was filled with an electro-static fluid that dries up. It makes
a quirky 'underwater' sort of effect. I think there is an "Underwater" preset that could be adapted to get close.

Working units sound like this (the rotating speaker sim, that is):

Morley Rotation Oilcan Echo Trem Vibrato Vibe Warble Reverb Pedal - YouTube
The Sacred Steel guys don't care about the rotating effect; they use it for what they feel is the unique character of the wah pedal.

For anyone not familiar with sacred steel, the players use lap steel (AKA non-pedal steel; a favored model is the Fender Deluxe 8 from the mid-1950's) to embellish the preacher's spoken words, building emotion in the congregation. Services can run four hours or more, and members are sometimes driven into ecstasy, speaking in tongues and often passing out. Come to think of it the ecstasy thing may be why my own church resisted electric guitars... ;)

Take a listen here: The Campbell Brothers

The playing is very expressive with a vocal quality, and when the entire band gets going it is quite an experience, regardless of your religious leanings (or lack thereof).

I'd love to hear what Darick Campbell might do with an Axe-Fx II...

Edit: Just realized the Campbell Brothers are playing Seattle this evening.
 
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Man, that's amazing. Nailed the cut that I couldn't get right.

Thanks so much!

Time to go spend some proper time with it!

I'll tell you the 'secret' to bringing out that cut. Its in the Fuzz Face's. I kept their
Hi Cut and Lo Cut values between 500-800Kz, which puts all the warm fuzz in the midrange
and keeps the treble register clear. This is a great feature of the Drive blocks that lets you
put the grind exactly where you want it in the sonic picture.
 
I was lucky enough to live and participate in most
all of Pop music history (the electric stuff anyway).
It breaks my heart that younger folks today don’t seem
to be getting their own scenes and heroes. Music is mostly
all business now, and guitar playing itself is in declining popularity.

I want to pump some interest and excitement back into our little
corner of the Web by recalling all the incredibly fascinating Rock tools,
tones, and personalities I grew up with. Plus, help everyone get the most
out of their Axe’s in the process.

Thanks for your kind comment. I’ll keep doing this as long as my feeble
memory continues dredging this old stuff up, or until you get tired of my
long-winded posts and tell me to shut it.

Then bring on the feeblemindedness and the breeze oh great great grandpappy! I'm loving it. I grew up up in the 60's & 70's (as well?) and we certainly did have some great music and musicians pave the way for us to enjoy today on the AxeFx ;) Keep 'em coming!
 
For goodness' sake: no need to apologize, as the fault lies with me. Honestly, I just haven't had a chance to play around with the patch since I posted my "demo", but I appreciate your diligence. I will definitely mess with it this week or weekend and will record any worthwhile result.
 
The Sacred Steel guys don't care about the rotating effect; they use it for what they feel is the unique character of the wah pedal.

For anyone not familiar with sacred steel, the players use lap steel (AKA non-pedal steel; a favored model is the Fender Deluxe 8 from the mid-1950's) to embellish the preacher's spoken words, building emotion in the congregation. Services can run four hours or more, and members are sometimes driven into ecstasy, speaking in tongues and often passing out. Come to think of it the ecstasy thing may be why my own church resisted electric guitars... ;)

Take a listen here: The Campbell Brothers

The playing is very expressive with a vocal quality, and when the entire band gets going it is quite an experience, regardless of your religious leanings (or lack thereof).

I'd love to hear what Darick Campbell might do with an Axe-Fx II...

Edit: Just realized the Campbell Brothers are playing Seattle this evening.

Wow cool stuff!! Thanks for turning me on!
 
Before we get started on the attached patch I need to
give a huge public thank you to two people. First, forum
member Levipeto for his help and patience in getting my old
computer-illiterate butt up to speed with Soundcloud byte files.
Second, thanks to Don Peterson for allowing me to work with his
great Gen. I patch, “Technoid Vocoder”. If you never heard this
patch, he was the first to use the synth blocks for drum sounds.
I have taken his brilliant ideas and tried to expand upon them.

I wanted to make audible what it sounds like when you play against
a complex slap-back delay. In this patch, there is a Tom beat, a Hi Hat beat,
an AC-30 amp signal, and a Multi-delay which generates two 1/8 Dot repeats,
out of sync with the main beat. This creates a polyrhythm (cross-rhythm) when you
play in time to the 4/4 beat. The result is a beautiful, complex soundscape.
Apologies for the total lack of recording polish. This is live, one pass, straight into
the Soundcloud site recording software.

It sounds like a transistor radio version of what I was hearing in the room, but you get
the idea of playing against the delay repeats. You can’t hear the Tom rhythm at all,
just the Hi Hat. But I think you’ll be very pleased with the giant, complex, room-filling
sound of the patch.

The drum sounds you hear aren't a separate machine or software, they are part of
the patch itself (the drums will sound dramatically better thru your system than you
hear on this crude recording).


 

Attachments

  • Technoid Delays II.syx
    6.3 KB · Views: 58
  • Technoid Delays.syx
    6.3 KB · Views: 58
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Very cool-at least from the description-can't do SC at work :(
I was asked a month or so ago if I could make the axe do the thing that starts the song "WHy Part 2" by collective soul. I assumed IT could, but I knew I couldnt. By description, sounds like it could. Thanks for all your efforts here. I have a pile of patches to load up and test out-hopefully get to practice early tonight and load them up.
 
Before we get started on the attached patch I need to
give a huge public thank you to two people. First, forum
member Levipeto for his help and patience in getting my old
computer-illiterate butt up to speed with Soundcloud byte files.
Second, thanks to Don Peterson for allowing me to work with his
great Gen. I patch, “Technoid Vocoder”. If you never heard this
patch, he was the first to use the synth blocks for drum sounds.
I have taken his brilliant ideas and tried to expand upon them.

I wanted to make audible what it sounds like when you play against
a complex slap-back delay. In this patch, there is a Tom beat, a Hi Hat beat,
an AC-30 amp signal, and a Multi-delay which generates two 1/8 Dot repeats,
out of sync with the main beat. This creates a polyrhythm (cross-rhythm) when you
play in time to the 4/4 beat. The result is a beautiful, complex soundscape.
Apologies for the total lack of recording polish. This is live, one pass, straight into
the Soundcloud site recording software.

It sounds like a transistor radio version of what I was hearing in the room, but you get
the idea of playing against the delay repeats. You can’t hear the Tom rhythm at all,
just the Hi Hat. But I think you’ll be very pleased with the giant, complex, room-filling
sound of the patch. I’ll be posting two other patches soon, to show you some more of the
amazing percussion sounds possible with our Synth blocks.






That sounds amazing!!! :)
 
belew.jpg


Kfliegner wants guitarist Adrian Belew’s famous “Elephant” trumpet sound
off King Crimson’s classic, “Discipline”. Here you go, but fair warning.
I have taken some practical license to make this sound more usable and
controllable.

Everyone I know who’s seen Adrian do this up close told me he has a
Big Muff and a Flanger on the floor. He hits the strings hard, behind the
nut, then a split second later, takes the guitar volume knob from zero to ‘10’,
with his fret hand. I was able to make this sound, but its useless for anything
other than this one technique.

So I reproduced the elephant trumpet sound such that it can be manipulated in
a standard guitar way. The trumpet sound comes from a Flanger time setting
of about 1.40-1.50 ms, plus a high feedback setting (works on any flanger).
I put an envelope-controlled Volume block out front to simulate Adrian’s volume
knob manipulation (and free us from having to do that manually).

With a little practice hitting the strings with the right speed and force, and muting
after the envelope sounds, you’ll hear the elephant sound every time.
Plus, you don’t have to hit the strings behind the nut with my patch to get the right effect.
Just play normally. Hope you like it.
 

Attachments

  • Adrian Belew Elephants.syx
    6.3 KB · Views: 65
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You're a marvel.

I remembered reading in GP in the 80s that Belew used a flanger to achieve that sound, but I never imagined how (and neglected to ask him when I interviewed him for my college newspaper in 1984, though he did autograph my shirt!).

Brilliant!

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk
 
belew.jpg


Kfliegner wants guitarist Adrian Belew’s famous “Elephant” trumpet sound
off King Crimson’s classic, “Discipline”. Here you go, but fair warning.
I have taken some practical license to make this sound more usable and
controllable.

Everyone I know who’s seen Adrian do this up close told me he has a
Big Muff and a Flanger on the floor. He hits the strings hard, behind the
nut, then a split second later, takes the guitar volume knob from zero to ‘10’,
with his fret hand. I was able to make this sound, but its useless for anything
other than this one technique.

So I reproduced the elephant trumpet sound such that it can be manipulated in
a standard guitar way. The trumpet sound comes from a Flanger time setting
of about 1.40-1.50 ms, plus a high feedback setting (works on any flanger).
I put an envelope-controlled Volume block out front to simulate Adrian’s volume
knob manipulation (and free us from having to do that manually).

With a little practice hitting the strings with the right speed and force, and muting
after the envelope sounds, you’ll hear the elephant sound every time.
Plus, you don’t have to hit the strings behind the nut with my patch to get the right effect.
Just play normally. Hope you like it.

Got two for the price of one on this patch. Here's the elephant:



and I think I know how he gets his rhino sound:



Pretty cool, Smilefan!
 
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