damienmcgauley
Inspired
So it finally arrived and it was definitely worth the wait!
So yesterday when I got home from work exhausted and my AXE FX II had arrived WooHoo!
Plugged into my power amp and it just worked. no fuss, no problems.
The first thing I noticed unfortunately was that the fan noise "was" actually pretty loud. I thought from the forum posts that it was just some audio snobs complaining (I don't consider myself to be one, despite working as an electronic design engineer for a HiFi company in a previous lifetime)...anyway, I digress. This probably won't be a problem for those mounting the Axe Fx in a rack case. For me, the AXE sits on a desk and it is pretty noticeable.
Onto the sounds:
Each guitar sounded so different through each sim and each sim sounds different at increasing Power amp levels (that "butt-Munson" effect again...). Read that again THIS IS IMPORTANT, the |LISTENING VOLUME seemed to make a huge difference to me of how I perceived the gain of each amp sim. That may be down to shortcomings of my power amp set up. (I'm waiting to buy my A7x's out of my next pay cheque).
Preset 007 Plexi Normal Preset just totally does it for me so far. End of.
Preset 000 Bassguy had some weird artefacts on the low bass strings of my tele. It almost seemed that there was an octave divider effect on the low E when red light clipping occurred. I think I may need to lower the Bridge PU on my tele a bit further away from the strings.
My guitars with passive pickups (1966 tele & custom N3) seemed to work better that the actives (Schecter Loomis & N4s with EMGs) on the stock presets, but I know this is just a matter of setting the Input trims.
I enjoyed scratching the surface and I know I'm really going to enjoy getting stuck in to this great piece of equipment.
Damien.
PS: Note to first time buyers: Learn what the basic buttons you're gonna need on the front panel are BEFORE the box arrives. One thing that surprised me was how incapable of doing basic amp / effect bypassing I was when actually confronted with the unit (despite reading the manual a few times). I think I'd been reading about fun stuff and about all the different amp types instead of learning how to do basic operations.
So yesterday when I got home from work exhausted and my AXE FX II had arrived WooHoo!
Plugged into my power amp and it just worked. no fuss, no problems.
The first thing I noticed unfortunately was that the fan noise "was" actually pretty loud. I thought from the forum posts that it was just some audio snobs complaining (I don't consider myself to be one, despite working as an electronic design engineer for a HiFi company in a previous lifetime)...anyway, I digress. This probably won't be a problem for those mounting the Axe Fx in a rack case. For me, the AXE sits on a desk and it is pretty noticeable.
Onto the sounds:
Each guitar sounded so different through each sim and each sim sounds different at increasing Power amp levels (that "butt-Munson" effect again...). Read that again THIS IS IMPORTANT, the |LISTENING VOLUME seemed to make a huge difference to me of how I perceived the gain of each amp sim. That may be down to shortcomings of my power amp set up. (I'm waiting to buy my A7x's out of my next pay cheque).
Preset 007 Plexi Normal Preset just totally does it for me so far. End of.
Preset 000 Bassguy had some weird artefacts on the low bass strings of my tele. It almost seemed that there was an octave divider effect on the low E when red light clipping occurred. I think I may need to lower the Bridge PU on my tele a bit further away from the strings.
My guitars with passive pickups (1966 tele & custom N3) seemed to work better that the actives (Schecter Loomis & N4s with EMGs) on the stock presets, but I know this is just a matter of setting the Input trims.
I enjoyed scratching the surface and I know I'm really going to enjoy getting stuck in to this great piece of equipment.
Damien.
PS: Note to first time buyers: Learn what the basic buttons you're gonna need on the front panel are BEFORE the box arrives. One thing that surprised me was how incapable of doing basic amp / effect bypassing I was when actually confronted with the unit (despite reading the manual a few times). I think I'd been reading about fun stuff and about all the different amp types instead of learning how to do basic operations.
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Guess I'm not a Marshall guy. 