Reamped an old track today. Wow. AxeFX3 blows S-Gear out of the water!

Joe Bfstplk

Axe-Master
Ok, so I was going through my new MacBook looking for why the HDD was 3/4 full, got distracted, and dallied in the "Recordings" folder a bit. Added some AI drums to a demo I had thrown together a few years ago with just the metronome instead of MIDI drums, and I found a bunch of odd-meter accented stuff going on, which gave "Aidan" a bit of "thinking" to do, but ended up with a really good sounding demo. Going to have to start recording more with just the metronome, in case more cool odd-meter stuff pops out....

Anyhoo, after that, I dug up a session I'd put together a few years ago, of a song I originally wrote in the early '90s sometime, but never got around to recording with the band. It was recorded using S-Gear. I then remembered that it recorded dry guitar and pumped it through the plug-in. I replaced the MIDI programmed drums with "Kyle", who "played" exactly what I needed to hear once directed to listen to the rhythm guitar, then I dumped the mix to a file.

Finally, I set about re-amping the guitar through the AxeFX3. I used my new favorite bass preset (the SVT2 and Ampeg 4x10), and had to drop the dry level on the bass track quite a bit, due to having recorded it a bit hot. Once I got that dialed in, fat, warm, slightly furry bass emerged. I landed on the perfect guitar sounds in an existing preset made for one of my other songs, so it didn't take long to replace them all. Rhythm guitar went through the 6G4 Super, with Rotary, a couple riff guitars also through the 6G4, but without the Rotary, and finally, the superb Friedman Small Box for the solo. The track went from sounding like a pretty good demo of the song with the guitars through the S-Gear to sounding 100% radio-ready with the Axe-FX3 re-amping them.

Now I have to dig out the lyric sheet and sing the silly thing.... :D

Bravo, Fractal FolksI
 
I love S-Gear, has really some unique amps, but yeah the Axe Fx III is another league.
S-Gear was much better than the RP1000 I had, which wasn't quite as good as the old, dying ToneLabSE it replaced. I liked it too, for the same reasons, but wow, it's like going from VHS to 8k video....
 
Overloud THU is pretty good from some sounds. Mercuriall is the only plugin maker that I know that can do classic dirty clean sounds well. Other plugs are way too focused on high gain 50 string sounds.
 
Ok, so I was going through my new MacBook looking for why the HDD was 3/4 full, got distracted, and dallied in the "Recordings" folder a bit. Added some AI drums to a demo I had thrown together a few years ago with just the metronome instead of MIDI drums, and I found a bunch of odd-meter accented stuff going on, which gave "Aidan" a bit of "thinking" to do, but ended up with a really good sounding demo. Going to have to start recording more with just the metronome, in case more cool odd-meter stuff pops out....

Anyhoo, after that, I dug up a session I'd put together a few years ago, of a song I originally wrote in the early '90s sometime, but never got around to recording with the band. It was recorded using S-Gear. I then remembered that it recorded dry guitar and pumped it through the plug-in. I replaced the MIDI programmed drums with "Kyle", who "played" exactly what I needed to hear once directed to listen to the rhythm guitar, then I dumped the mix to a file.

Finally, I set about re-amping the guitar through the AxeFX3. I used my new favorite bass preset (the SVT2 and Ampeg 4x10), and had to drop the dry level on the bass track quite a bit, due to having recorded it a bit hot. Once I got that dialed in, fat, warm, slightly furry bass emerged. I landed on the perfect guitar sounds in an existing preset made for one of my other songs, so it didn't take long to replace them all. Rhythm guitar went through the 6G4 Super, with Rotary, a couple riff guitars also through the 6G4, but without the Rotary, and finally, the superb Friedman Small Box for the solo. The track went from sounding like a pretty good demo of the song with the guitars through the S-Gear to sounding 100% radio-ready with the Axe-FX3 re-amping them.

Now I have to dig out the lyric sheet and sing the silly thing.... :D

Bravo, Fractal FolksI
Any chance of a couple of before and after snippets?
Would love to hear them and compare the quality.
 
Sure, Axe FX may beat S-Gear in amp simulation, but the convenience of VST plugins is undeniable. Still, it's a small price to pay for audio quality.

the flip side is the convenience of the axe being stand alone and not requiring the computer, opening the daw, selecting a track, inserting the plugin etc..:

granted I’m sure most of us have a computer always in the house, but with the Axe you can flip it on, plug in your guitar and be jamming immediately.
 
the flip side is the convenience of the axe being stand alone and not requiring the computer, opening the daw, selecting a track, inserting the plugin etc..:

granted I’m sure most of us have a computer always in the house, but with the Axe you can flip it on, plug in your guitar and be jamming immediately.

Well, rights tools for jobs, yo.
If there was a VST axe FX, I would choose it over the hardware units 10/10 times for studio work.
Also, I would choose the hardware unit 10/10 times for anything else.

I really think it's a bummer that the VST Axe FX will never happen.
They said they were afraid of piracy or something...

Here's an idea:
A VST without a GUI or any ways to build a preset or anything, unless the commands come from the Axe FX itself. So the GUI would only consist of two buttons - "Open preset in Axe FX" and "Synch changes from Axe FX". This vst could even be free. Such a VST is useless without the Hardware unit anyway.
 
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Well, rights tools for jobs, yo.
If there was a VST axe FX, I would choose it over the hardware units 10/10 times for studio work.
Also, I would choose the hardware unit 10/10 times for anything else.

I really think it's a bummer that the VST Axe FX will never happen.
They said they were afraid of piracy or something...

Here's an idea:
A VST without a GUI or any ways to build a preset or anything, unless the commands come from the Axe FX itself. So the GUI would only consist of two buttons - "Open preset in Axe FX" and "Synch changes from Axe FX". fromThis vst could even be free. Such a VST is useless without the Hardware unit anyway.

Don't think it's so much a piracy issue as it is putting their code into a format that someone could then reverse engineer to figure out how Fractal does what they do so well.

In your idea of vst needing Hardware, what handles the processing? Your computer or the Hardware itself?
 
K, so it's not the track mentioned above, but I did the same thing - replaced MIDI drums with AI Ian, and re-amped all the S-Gear guitars and bass via AxeFX III.

Before re-amping (drums already replaced to give a fairer comparison):


After re-amping:
 
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