Smilefan's Axe II Patches Thread

[barhrecords]

There is a special guitar rag Neil Young issue out now, I forget the mag name?, but it has a neat equipment article.

I am a big Neil fan but I didn't know his distorted tone is just the amp / guitar / pickup combination.

I had heard mention of a one-off device dubbed the "Whizzer" that Neil uses. I always thought the "Whizzer" was an overdrive or distortion of some kind. From that magazine article, the Whizzer turns out to be a motorized preset changer. From 5 footswitches, the Whizzer turns the amp and reverb knobs to preset positions.

Richard

 

[marcmesa]

Really appreciate the feedback Logic. Sometimes I suspect I'm just talking
to myself on this thread. I will continue to list my custom IR's with the patches.

smilefan
Thank you very much for your sharing ...

I download the patches, but I wait Axe FxII for the month of November

 

[Guitarbot]

Just wanted to say thank you for postin the patches. I can't test yet because I don't have the Ultra 2. I sold my Ultra & am waiting for code to buy the 2. You have me saving patches for an item I don't own yet

 

[smilefan]

Hi Smilefan,
I tried the Vibrato preset. Without the Panner block there's not much going on, it's very subtle. Could you check if Axe-Edit handles your preferred settings the right way?
Or is the Panner a necessary part of the fx?
BTW, the preset has a mono Cab in it. Which means that the panning of the Filter block gets summed to mono.

Yek, you are simply my best friend on this Forum! Yes, the cab is supposed to be stereo.
I must have moved the cab mode to mono without realizing it. Who else would go into the
patch in that detail?! I have reposted the "True Vibrato" patch with this correction.
And, yes, pitch vibrato IS a rather subtle effect, the panner helps bring out the sound.

 

[cobbler]

There is a special guitar rag Neil Young issue out now, I forget the mag name?, but it has a neat equipment article.

I am a big Neil fan but I didn't know his distorted tone is just the amp / guitar / pickup combination.

I had heard mention of a one-off device dubbed the "Whizzer" that Neil uses. I always thought the "Whizzer" was an overdrive or distortion of some kind. From that magazine article, the Whizzer turns out to be a motorized preset changer. From 5 footswitches, the Whizzer turns the amp and reverb knobs to preset positions.

Richard

If you are a Neil fan I sugest you pick up the book Shakey by Jim McDonough. Great read!

This was a great article too:

http://www.tonequest.com/pdf_pubs/samples/TQRSep06_Proof.pdf

 

[yek]

I’ve been posting a lot of basic, useable patches, so far. Keeping it real.
Now its time to get SUR-real! The below patch is a psychedelic
whirlpool of harmonic madness. You should get both octave up
and octave down harmonics easily. Don’t over-play, let the patch
do the work. Play single note lines, with big bends (no chords,
they will fart out the Synth).

What’s creating all this harmonic activity is primarily a flanger.
Specifically a Thru-Zero flanger with a looping ADSR controller
attached to its Level control (I’m not making this up! Page 134 of
the manual), and an LFO on the Mix control.

I know what you’re thinking. “A looping flange, zero what??”.
Don’t stress, its an advanced patch. Don’t try this at home, kids.
I just wanted to illustrate by example that the stock Axe II patches
only scratch the surface of what’s possible, and to show how deep
down the rabbit hole you can go with an Axe II.

No custom IR’s on this, all stock. So dust off your “Jimi” chops,
pull out your biggest sonic bong, and load up a giant heaping
bowl of……………

Woha, mayhem!

 

[barhrecords]

That's exactly what I thought when I first heard of it. But, Neil has his special settings
he MUST have. Have you ever seen a picture of it? It looks crude as hell. Like a big hunk
of home-made machinery sitting on top of the amp.

Yeah his whole rig, pedal board switcher for the Whizzer and all are encased in wood

Between that microphonic firebird bridge pickup and the Deluxe, he gets a monster tweed overdrive + harmonics. Live Rust is one of my fav live recordings.

Richard

 

[smilefan]

OK, back to basics today. And there is no more basic and essential
amp-voice than the Vox AC-30TB. For girl-friendly Pop music,
it’s the amp to beat. More guitarists have gotten laid playing
pretty, open suspended chords thru AC-30’s than any other amp.
Documented fact! (OK, not really…but it should be!).

AC-30’s do a lot of things well, from clean to scream. This patch
concentrates on its beautiful cleans. A Vox dialed for clean, with a little
atmospheric processing, should be light and tight on the bass, quite middy,
with a chimey, finely broken-up treble grind unlike any other amp
(even on a clean setting).

Popular music is rife with examples of great AC-30 clean sounds.
R.E.M., U2, Tom Petty, The Beatles, Oasis, Muse, Radiohead, Johnny Marr
(The Smiths), Dave Davies (The Kinks). This patch is designed to reproduce
the best of a clean Vox in a lightly processed environment.

Try using this patch with a Capo on the 5th-7th fret area.
Pick on some pretty-sounding first position open chord progressions,
(include minor or suspended chords). Throw in some hard upstrokes on the
high E and B strings (brings out the ‘chime’) mixed in with your strumming/picking.
Used this way, the patch should give you a decent impression of a 12-string
Rickenbacker electric.

EDIT: 01/09/2012 There used to be 2 separate patches here. A stock cab and
and custom IR version. Thru careful editing of the SPKR impedance pg. the stock
patch now sounds the best, so the custom patch is deleted. There is an optional
Klon-style booster and a very uniquely voiced trem in the patch now, as well.

 

[yek]

OK, back to basics today. And there is no more basic and essential
amp-voice than the Vox AC-30TB. (..)

Great story. And great tone in that preset too.
Learned something too, about keeping Drive very very low with this sim (with Master on 10).
Nice to see the Tape Dist in there, one of the secret tools.

 

[smilefan]

Great story. And great tone in that preset too.
Learned something too, about keeping Drive very very low with this sim (with Master on 10).
Nice to see the Tape Dist in there, one of the secret tools.

The Tape Distortion IS a secret weapon. In this patch I used it to bring out some
of the AC-30's signature shimmery treble grind, while keeping the bass and mids relatively clean.

Master on 10 is how real Vox's used to be played in the old days (might be why they
caught on fire so often - hopefully the amp sim will not exhibit this tendancy) .
Then control the range of clean/grind/scream with the guitar volume.
Caveman channel-switching.

Yek, you are probably the only person looking at these patches in detail to see how I did
things. My intent at posting these is to give other folks ideas/inspiration for use in their
own patches (which they then post for me to swipe!).

 

[smilefan]

What do you get when you front-end a Cornford amp with a Big Muff Pi fuzz
and a Ring Modulator, then feed that whole mess into a Formant filter?
A sound straight from the Halls of Mordor!

Today’s tip for your own patch building skills is to notice what I did with
the Big Muff. I used the same trick I did in my “Naughty Wah” patch.
To keep the fuzz from washing out the whole signal, I severely narrowed the
bandwidth to 860-1020Hz and turned the Mix down to 13%. So even with
the gain up around 75% the Big Muff is just a buzzy flavor in the patch rather than
the dominating voice. Bend the fuzz to your will!

This patch sounds great with long, sustaining power chords and single note lines.

 

[snorkel54]

OK, back to basics today. And there is no more basic and essential
amp-voice than the Vox AC-30TB. For girl-friendly Pop music,
it’s the amp to beat. More guitarists have gotten laid playing
pretty, open suspended chords thru AC-30’s than any other amp.
Documented fact! (OK, not really…but it should be!).

AC-30’s do a lot of things well, from clean to scream. This patch
concentrates on its beautiful cleans. A Vox dialed for clean, with a little
atmospheric processing, should be light and tight on the bass, quite middy,
with a chimey, finely broken-up treble grind unlike any other amp
(even on a clean setting).

Popular music is rife with examples of great AC-30 clean sounds.
R.E.M., U2, Tom Petty, The Beatles, Oasis, Muse, Radiohead, Dave Davies (The Kinks).
My personal fav is Peter Buck on R.E.M. ‘s “Driver 8”. Sounds just like
an AC-30 is supposed to. This patch is designed to reproduce the best of a clean
Vox in a lightly processed environment.

Try using this patch with a Capo on the 7th fret (or thereabouts).
Pick on some pretty-sounding first position open chord progressions,
(include minor or suspended chords). Throw in some hard upstrokes on the
high E and B strings (brings out the ‘chime’) mixed in with your strumming/picking.
Used this way, the patch should give you a decent impression of a 12-string
Rickenbacker electric.

The custom IR’s I use make so much difference in this patch that I created
a separate patch for those who have the custom IR’s I specify (you’ll need to install
those IR’s manually), and another for the stock IR patch. I tried to get them as
close as I could, but the custom IR patch is just better. I couldn’t quite dup the lilting,
sweet clarity of the custom patch with stock IR’s.

These will sound best with Fender style single coils.

Specified IR’s for Custom patch:
Cab A – Redwirez VoxAC30Blues-KM84-Cap-2in. (R121 cond mic)
Cab B – Redwirez VoxAC30Blues-R121-Cap-0.5in. (57 dyn mic)

Hello smilefan!
Great thread, you are a very dedicated Axe-man.

I have a noob question

You use Redwirez a lot... If you choose a specific cabinet witch spesific mic, why do you choose a (different) mic in Axe-edit/fx ? Is it just to get the sound you want?
I'm struggeling to see the logic

 

[Black-mojo]

Yek, you are probably the only person looking at these patches in detail to see how I did
things. My intent at posting these is to give other folks ideas/inspiration for use in their
own patches (which they then post for me to swipe!).

He is one of the few who have a II in EU too.... I'm deeply following your thread please don't give up.
(Might be november for me)
Yours.

 

[snorkel54]

I'm lucky that I got one! Hang on man, your day are coming

 

[yek]

What do you get when you front-end a Cornford amp with a Big Muff Pi fuzz
and a Ring Modulator, then feed that whole mess into a Formant filter?
A sound straight from the Halls of Mordor!

Today’s tip for your own patch building skills is to notice what I did with
the Big Muff. I used the same trick I did in my “Naughty Wah” patch.
To keep the fuzz from washing out the whole signal, I severely narrowed the
bandwidth to 860-1020Hz and turned the Mix down to 13%. So even with
the gain up around 75% the Big Muff is just a buzzy flavor in the patch rather than
the dominating voice. Bend the fuzz to your will!

This patch sounds great with long, sustaining power chords and single note lines.
All stock cabs here.

Haha, a very nice one. People should hear this.
Smilefan, if you have a computer it's so easy to create a clip using USB.

 

[smilefan]

Haha, a very nice one. People should hear this.
Smilefan, if you have a computer it's so easy to create a clip using USB.

Glad you like "The Black Speech". That's a fun patch. Sounds like an Orc croaking
out words.

I don't think the room sound that I mix for is going to translate to a great 'direct' sound.
Then I'd get bogged down making two versions of the same patch, trying to cop the 'live'
feel. I've thought about making clips, but, how long does it take, with a USB cable, to download
one of my patches into an Axe and demo it thru one's own system? 10 seconds?

Still, I may yet do clips. Once I get my II where I want it sonically.

 

[smilefan]

Hello smilefan!
Great thread, you are a very dedicated Axe-man.

I have a noob question

You use Redwirez a lot... If you choose a specific cabinet witch spesific mic, why do you choose a (different) mic in Axe-edit/fx ? Is it just to get the sound you want?
I'm struggeling to see the logic

Its strictly for the sound. I was waiting for someone the ask me why I do that! In theory,
the custom IR's I use are 'null' mic captures (i.e. Earthworks TC-30), so flat that mic coloration
is essentially eliminated. So if I use a Celestion Greenback IR, I have just the sound of the
Greenback coming out of my EVM's. No mic EQ or coloration.

Sometimes I like that neutral sound, but sometimes I add a mic model from the Axe back in
to get an EQ boost at certain frequencies (like an R121), or to get some 'rounding' of the
signal (reduction of highs and lows - like an SM57). This is all to taste, as I make the patch.
I'll use whatever I like the sound of best.

I find, since I mix patches for live use, using custom IR's, then adding an Axe mic model on top,
gets me a very present and lively sound that works exceptionally well at volume.

Your question was an excellent one.

 

[smilefan]

OK, one more patch before the weekend. I've been reading in other threads
requests for older, more esoteric Marshalls, like the Super Bass, Marshall Major,
the JTM 45/100 (the amp Jimi Hendrix played at the event that broke him
worldwide - the 1967 Monterrey Pop Festival).

All fairly rare beasts nowadays, I got to play thru one of them. The exceedingly
scarce 45/100. What struck me about it, was not its gain, but how much like
a 10 story high Tweed Bassman it sounded. Like a cross between Godzilla's Bassman,
and an early low-gain Plexi 100 watt. Lots of fat mids with just a bit of that
famous "fingernails on chalkboard" Marshall treble grind.

So here is my take on the 45/100, as my feeble memory allows (its the second thing
to go with age!). Take a good look at what I did with the Tape Distortion in this patch.
That signature Marshall treble grind is dialed in with the Low and High bands, and the
Mix control. So it has just a bit of juicy breakup in the right frequencies.

Play the patch as loud as your situation will allow to get the true feel of playing
one of these monsters.

 

[LMO]

Unless otherwise specificied, all these patches are mixed for live performance
thru an Axe II/Matrix GT800 SS amp/EVM-loaded gtr cabs rig. I am most interested
to hear how these tranlate to other's amplification systems.

Thanks for taking the time to post all of these patches! My Axe II is due next Thursday, and I am looking forward to giving them all a try.

Since I'm using studio monitors, I wonder if adding an IR that is similar to your setup might give me an idea of how the patches are supposed to sound. Are any of the RW or OH EVM12L IRs likely to sound at all close to what you are using? RW has a Speakerbox version, along with the Bigbox Mesa IRs (Mesa Mark IIC+ and Mesa Halfback Open). OwnHammer has a 1/12 Thiele IR available.

 

[iggypop]

Thanks for this thread, Smilefan. I haven't read the forum for a while, looking forwarding to testing these patches. And keep up the good work, great stories!