Decimator
Inspired
Do you have a sub in the room because you should if you are using studio monitors. It makes a big difference also record and listen in your car or with a stereo to hear how you sound on other devices that music is going to be heard through. It took me a lot of tweaking to get my high gain tone for my 8 string that is tuned to open C. I need to not cut too much low end out and keep a little boost at 32hz and sometimes again at 64hz in the amp block. Your cab block should be set to null so you can get teh mic effects without the mic selected. Not too much gain on your input drive. Try setting the MV location to post and see how it darkens the tone and does not make it muddy. Try resetting the amp and cab blocks after updating the firmware version and make sure you are on ARES 2.0. This matters. I bet your sound is in there and you will find it if you keep searching and reading the manual as well as Yeks writeups. Huge bands are touring with these units and are often told they have the best live sound people have heard in their venues. Going FRFR to front of house is the reason. The Trans Siberian Orchestra are using it and are well known for their great live tone. When recording in a mix cut your highs and some lows but be careful not to cut too much. Use your ears and forget the rules such as cutting everything under 200. What you record matters also. Eq on the drums is a must if you don't want a mess of transients and same if you are layering many tracks of guitar down. Phaze issues can be a bitch but not that bad to get rid of. It is identifying it that's important. Keep trusting your ears and find out what you are missing. Try the irs on the axe change. Look for one called Guitar Hack and in the cab block tweak the speaker size. Every notch will give you a completely different cab sound but do not set it off by more than a few degrees.Hey everyone
I have been using the Axe-Fx II for many, many years now. And until today, I have not been able to actually get a tone that has... well.. "tone" and not just frequencies. The Axe Fx sounds awesome when playing alone and when using it through a poweramp/real cab, but it never sounds right when trying to make it sit in a mix with direct recordings. It just lacks tone. The frequencies are there but not the meat behind all the distortion. I am talking about the crucial 125-500hz area. It just never sounds right. This area is always a boomy mud-fest or too thin when trying to cut it.. I like to scoop my tones since I think that the midrange from 500-1k is always honky and nasally sounding (especially for making it sit in a mix), so I dip a lot of 750hz (classic move for a metal tone). Though, without having the 125-500hz hz area right, the tone ends up being just fizz and low end boom and it`s super thin and useless in a mix because it lacks the low mid meat. Furthermore, you can`t boost that area because it will just introduce all kinds of artifacts, which you notch out afterwards until there is no tone left again.
I have tried all bunch of ideas within the Axe, fiddling with depth frequency, master volume, bass eq, pre-eq, post-eq, and trying a million different IR's but I can`t get it right.
And yup, I have great guitars, good cables, adequate playing technique and a good recording and I know how to dial in tones and how a great signal chain has to look like for a great metal tone. I just can`t get it right with the Axe-Fx.
Would love to hear how you go about that. Did I miss something? Is there a trick? Cliff, would you please help me out with a bunch of ideas?
Thanks!
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