Please High Gain Help

jmshaff

jmshaff

Member
Hey guys. I am an Ultra owner for almost a year now currently running 9.0. And I have to say this unit has made me very sad. For starters I purchased this unit just for direct recording. I never had the intention of using it live as I love my live rig. From the first moment I started working with it I found that when it came to high gain I just couldnt accomplish it without there being something fundamentally wrong to my ears with the tone. In most cases no matter what I try there is a terrible digital crackle once you try to give it any gas. This is different than the hiss or top end haze typically associated with the pod.

I posted on the forum once before and got some good suggestions (and also slapped around a bit) but never really came to a solution. I have tried different sound cards, monitors, guitars and all deliver the same results. I have spent plenty of time with the manual and wiki and I have tried dialing back the gain, dialing back the master filtering this, eq'ing that running balanced and unbalanced but nothing has ever really worked. But part of what really starts to get me is the fact that in all my searching on the net I rarely find anyone with a high gain tone from the axe that I really like. In many cases its dripping with verb or delay or tuned extremely low which I have noticed covers some of the problems as well. I write everything style wise from Petrucci, Borland, Disturbed, 30 Second to Mars with a tuning range from standard to A flat. A fairly wide range but all for the most part high gain liquid-ish tone.

I really want to like this unit but I am very near letting it go if I cant make it do what I need. At this point the only time I turn to it is if I want cleans or effects and to be honest this is an expensive unit for something I dont even want to turn on anymore.

I am hoping to accomplish a few things with this post. First I would like to see if anyone is willing to share some high gain patches that are in the ball park of what I am looking for. I would like to track with it and see if the sound from my unit is similiar to what your hearing out of yours. Secondly I would like to see some more detailed descriptions of how some of these patches are put together. I've read posts where people insist that in order to run a head high gain they generally have a series of pedals to get the sound they want. I however do not. I run a 6505+ and the only thing I have in my chain is a whammy, tuner and a wah. My singer runs a Boogie Road King and only runs a decimator. However trying to run just a head and cab combo with the axe just doesnt seem to work for me.

I am willing to accept the fact that perhaps the Axe and myself as just not destined to be pals and if its time to move on then I guess this has been a good experiment and I will pass the unit on the to my buddy that only does mid gain classic rock and country type stuff. Which the Axe does great btw!!

If you want to hear clips you can go to http://www.soundclick.com/myselfishme the tune H1N1 and Tomorrow are all Axe. The tone here is ok but was never really what I heard in my head and also never the same after the 9.0 upgrade. However in those tracks you can hear the harshness that I am refering to. I still never felt comfortable playing with those patches however as it never felt high gain enough, I always felt as if I had to pick much harder to get the sustain I would normally get out of other units or my head. And for reference the rest of the clips are Pod 2.0

Thanks again for any help in advance. And feel free to ask me any questions you may like as I know I kind of dumped a lot of information in this post but I really would like to use this unit.

Matt


PC Q6600 8Gb Ram
Windows 7 Enterprise
Sonar 8.0
Motu 8 Pre
Echo Layla 24/96
Alesis Prolinear 820's
Ibanez Fan Boy
Rg Giger and an assortment of disgusting colored old rg's
 
I think you should sell the Axe-FX.

Really.
Been blasting both tunes on monitors (Behringer Truths, admittedly not top of the line but really not that bad either, Mark Day uses them too) and headphones (AKG K55, also not top of the line, but they usually have some top end edge that brings out those harshnesses). Anyway, I don't hear anything harsh except the cymbals. And the snare. Those cut like razor blades.

Guitar tones are bleeping fantastic!!! Nice tunes too.

Of course I have no idea what you're hearing in your head. Could you post a recording of what you would deem passable? Are the Pod recordings right for you? I could never get the POD2.0 to sound that good.

Not flaming you, I'm not telling you you're not hearing what you are hearing or that you should like those recordings, just wondering what's wrong and what it is that would succeed in satisfying you.
 
I don't hear any of the crackle you refer to, but I do hear some of the harshness.

The clean sounds like it's reeeeaally forced. On H1N1, it sounds to me like there's too much attack and it doesn't sound smooth at all. On Tomorrow, it sounds pretty good, though I don't like the warbly effect. I think it's too pronounced, which again, makes it sound harsh.

The high gain stuff sounds pretty good to me. How many patches did you use on H1N1? I hear at least 3 different high gain sounds, including leads. Nice use of the ol' clockwork banana patch.

On Tomorrow, I really like the lead tone, but I do hear something funky in the rhythm patch. The chorded parts sound good, but the single note stuff at 2:33 has a bark that I don't like. I don't know what any of this stuff is called, but here's how I would describe it: The honk is too harsh. I like it to sound more like a marshmallow (or a sponge) and right now it sounds a little tinny... if that makes sense to anybody... I would try a PEQ to pinpoint the high frequency of that honk and reduce it.
 
Yes there is totally harshness I agree. With H1N1 its the same patch all the way thru. All my rhythm patches are recorded mono and doubled one left one right. The lead line is just more gain on the amp block and I dont like that sound either as it is very harsh. Tomorrow is actually the same patch as H1N1 but with a little less gain. It is very honky or barky its like the guitar never fully saturates there is still a lot of the direct signal that barking along with the patch. The cleans were sort of ment to sound stressed on H1N1 and not smooth. And I love the banana patch!!

I think what I am looking for is a totally different sound more than just filtering. My problem is a lot with the feel as well. Where I can get a very liquid saturated tone out of my 6505+ and as well with the pod and still maintain control I cant seem to do that with the axe. Now the pod tends to sound way more artificial but you can give it more gain and not have it totally come apart.

I still wonder if my biggest problem is I generally just use a head and a cab live and always get good tone that feels good. It would seem from the majority of patches I have looked at there are a ton of things in the chain to try to achieve what in my mind should just take a head, cab and gate.

Do you have a high gain patch thats your using now?
 
Have you considered putting a pedal in front of you axe-fx? I'm not saying it'll solve your problems, but if you or a friend have a high-gain stompbox laying around, it's worth a shot.
 
TheOtherDave said:
Have you considered putting a pedal in front of you axe-fx? I'm not saying it'll solve your problems, but if you or a friend have a high-gain stompbox laying around, it's worth a shot.
Click to expand...

No I have considered it. But my being stubborn has kind of stopped me from that. I guess I feel that I should be able to do what I need in this box. I do have my buddy that wants to purchase an axe coming over this weekend to play around with it. He has an army of accessories he is going to bring with him so I can try other things. He borrowed my axe while I was at Namm a couple of weeks ago and had the same issue with high gain that I am talking about. His thing is more mid gain blues tone however and he was totally sold on it from that aspect.
 
I don't have any recent recordings. I have a really sloppy riff with a tone I did with v7.18. It's by no means perfect (WAY to loose), but I only had my axe for a couple months at that point. My spdif stopped working all of a sudden (it worked, i shut down my computer and next day no worky), so I can't record until I fix that issue.

I use soundclick as a way to upload and share ideas/tones with my close friends, so don't look at the recordings here as songs (especially the orion violin one... garbage). The tone I'm referring you to is the "Axe FX tone test". Like I said, it needed a lot of work at this point, but I think you'll be happy with the saturation level. http://www.soundclick.com/sidivan
 
I don't think you should be hearing any crackling. Is it possible that something might be clipping?
 
Tom said:
I don't think you should be hearing any crackling. Is it possible that something might be clipping?
Click to expand...

Good question and thats something I first started looking for because thats what it almost seemed like. Its not clipping going into my card and according to the Axe its not clipping there.
 
Tonight i found a cool patch that was really musical, and EJ "ish.. So i started tweaking deep and in the Bias area
i was able to soften it, and get ALL the high end hiss out. When i was happy with it, i added a CA3/amp, and
turned the master down, but raised the level way up! Its killer...has balls, but it seems ive merely raised the overall
volume on a lower driven amp, with great sparkle. Adding another high gain amp, besides it, and mixing to what your
ears like...its killer!
 
Boboliscous said:
Tonight i found a cool patch that was really musical, and EJ "ish.. So i started tweaking deep and in the Bias area
i was able to soften it, and get ALL the high end hiss out. When i was happy with it, i added a CA3/amp, and
turned the master down, but raised the level way up! Its killer...has balls, but it seems ive merely raised the overall
volume on a lower driven amp, with great sparkle. Adding another high gain amp, besides it, and mixing to what your
ears like...its killer!
Click to expand...

How's about sharing the patch, perhaps the OP (and the rest of us) will find what he is looking for in it.

As for my experience, I am not entirely sure that I hear the same thing as the OP but I can sure hear the difference in what you put down and what you subsequently indicated as being your target tone. I am not a high gain player (high gain is a little subjective so hard to tell where the line is drawn) so my patches are not as in your face as I believe you want yours to be.

I tried for about an hour to get the target tone you are looking for and could not find a way to remove the extra "hair" on the tone. I don't have any other way of describing it.

The best success I had (which was not 100% at all) was a Filter in front of the Amp block. Another filter between the Amp and the Cab seemed to work as well albeit differently. I tried several different ways to setting the Filter (which I have next to 0 experience with) and the high shelf with -db seemed to be the best so far. However, like I said, it was still a considerably more disoriented tone as compared to your target.

I have not played through a high gain amp ever but have used drive pedals in front of mid gain (or crunch) amps quite a bit in the past. That was so long ago, I can no longer recall what that sounded like. I find the gain on the Axe-Fx (and other nameless digital devices) to have a lot of crackle and hair (perhaps this is what the OP is referring to). It does not seem to be easily removable although perhaps that is what the amps actually sound like at similar values? To me, it detracts from the tone I am looking for.

I too tried a myriad of different settings, in the amp block mostly, to no avail. Perhaps I am looking for something that does not exist? In the end what works best for me is pretty low gain on the amp (max 2 for USA Lead 1) with a drive pedal (also very low or nop gain but full Level). This seems to produce the smoothest gain tone. The hair is still there but less apparent.

Sorry for the novel. :)
 
I'm not an expert on this but I hear almost no body in the high-gain patch. There are two parameters I discovered recentely called depth and the other I forgot (but it's on the left or right of it). Maybe that'll solve your problem. Also if I either the master or gain is too high on high-gain amps it doesn't sound too great (to my ears). You can better add a 808OD or any other drive model and lower the gain / master. Also make sure that the volume of the drive model is full clockwise and don't add too much gain at the drive model either.

I hope that helps!
 
Hey guys I have been working on this a lot more than I care to admit the last week or so. (Link Below) This chain is T808-Energyball (with boost) Rewirez Orange Cab 5" Off Cone. Cab 2 4x12 Recto2. Both cabs are using R121. Going into highpass filter. I have listened to this on a few different sources and it doesnt sound bad but it could still use some help. There are still some artifacts that I am having a tough time dialing out. One of the problems is the tone to me is just not very clear. If I try to brighten it up, it starts to get pretty ugly. More of the bees nest sort of thing.

www.soundclick.com/myselfishme

Any thoughts?

Thanks Again Guys!!

Matt
 
Sup?

Might a patch like this help you?

http://www.fractalaudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=126776#p126776

clip is at the top, patch's are half way down.

anyway,,would you mind sharing that ENGL patch,, I would like to look at a few things in there if that would be cool. I think I kinda know what you are trying to dial out. One thing I have come across, is according to Cliff when you engage the Boost, it adds 12db gain to the front of the sim. You can add a Filter before the amp and leave all the settings stock, but turn the Level up to 12 and you get the exact same thing. What I have found is that I like to lower the gain a little in the amp and instead of hitting the Boost, drop the filter in front but only put the level around 6-8 ( or to taste sometimes lower/higher too) and it seems help me get where I'm going.


MOSHON
DAVE
 
jmshaff said:
Hey guys I have been working on this a lot more than I care to admit the last week or so.
Click to expand...

Just a thought, maybe you can leave that sound for a while and try for something totally new with different amp/cab etc. You know, sort of divert your mind and your ears, and then after a few days start from scratch on your high gain sound with a simple signal chain and see where it takes you.

Sometimes I don't even plug in for a few days, just noodling around on different guitars without them plugged in. Makes going back to the Axe FX with your main guitar quite enjoyable!

Those techniques often works for me when I'm in a rut. Not saying you're in a rut or anything, just giving some alternative approaches in your quest. :)
 
Matt, a lot closer m8. Still got that high end scratch to my ears which is one of the things I was talking about. I hope you're not giving up, its in there somewhere!

Mosh, killer tone! I am not really a metal fan, nor player for that matter, but that tone sounds sweet. Would you be up for sharing that patch? It sounds to me you have it dialed in for my tastes. Sweet playing too btw! I forgot about using the Filter as a boost.

One other thing that I have found, which is highly guitar dependent, is the use of the guitars' own volume and tone controls. Volume especially has a significant effect on removing some of those artifacts.
 
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