Surprising and Eye opening day Yesterday

kmanick

kmanick

Fractal Fanatic
so yesterday I took my Axe FxII over to a buddies house to see how it would sound thru different power amps and cabs.
My current set up goes out to a Mesa 50/50 ->an Avatar Cab with H30's and a Recto cab with V30's.
I have 2 sets of patches one set I use thru my nearfield monitors and record with, my other set I have for use thru the Power amp and real cabs
I have these two sets Eq'ed quite differently to compenstate for what the Mesa add/detract and to compensate for my two cabs.

the 2 cabs we used are original early 1970's 4X12 marshall basket weave cabs with 25 watt greenbacks. (nice stereo rig)
and a JSX 4X12 (that sounds more like V30's)
Well...................... first off was running thru a marshall 9100 power amp, we dialed up the powera mp to about 3:00
and controled the volume from the front of the Axe Fx unit.
my Mesa adds a lot of bottom end to my patches so what I need to do is add a high pass filter to the end of all of my patches to remove the boom and
tighten up the bottom end. I also dial in my patches a little brighter to balance the darker sound of the Mesa 50/50.
I was really surprised when we fired this thing up.
my patches sounded a bit thin and trebly,:? no boom or mud at all
so I had to bypass the high pass filters and dial down the GEQ's that I also add into the chain.
we went thru a few patches (JVM, Cameron, Atomica Hi, FAS 6150, Friedman HBE, Recto, mark IV)
now thru my rig the Recto and Mark IV patches sound fantastic , which is somewhat expected (especially my mark patches)
The EL34 pased amps sims sound good but I really have to do some EQ-ing to get them where I like them.
Hmm....... so what I decided to test was my nearfield patches with Cab sims bypassed.
Surprisingly enough these all sounded great, much fuller, more girth, much closer to what I get with the cab sims on thru my KRK's.
I couldn't believe how much my Mesa 50/50 is Altering my tone.
My friend also has an JVM 410 so we plugged that in and tested it against my JVM patch (that I tried to match by ear to his rig earlier on this summer)
thru the marshall 9100 my nearfield patch was almost post on (YAY!!!) my friend was really impressed we went back and forth and the sound and feel ws almost spot
on, with some tweak time I know I could get it dead on.
Next was a Carvin tube power amp with 6l6's in it, and then a Voodoo labs SS power amp.
Again, I could not believe how different the Axe FX sounded when changing the power amp.
The Marshall was by far the best sounding of the 3 we used, the Carvin and the Voodoo labs both sounded a bit more "flat"
the Voodoo labs SS being by far the worst. (lifeless)
So I learned something here today, I did not expect to hear such a radical difference from the Axe FX when changing power amps
Now I am really interested in hearing this thru a VHT 250-2 or the new LXII
I'm starting to think that an EL-34 based power amp is the way to go with this thing, I'm hoping the LXII is really flat though we shall see.
 
Power amp sims on Cab sims off
I'm going to grab the Carvin Ts100 on the way home today and give it another shot
He threw in some 6l6's and biased it last night after I left.
 
I found that using power amp sims on would make my tone sound really weird when I put it through my Carvin V3M power section. I turned it off and all was well so I'm curious as to why you kept it on with tube power amps.
 
Agreed, Sam.

Nick, to give the power amps a "fair playing field" during your test, you should have had Power Amp sims set to OFF with the Marshall, and set to ON for the Carvin and the Voodoo Labs amps. Just as you said, those two amps sounded "flat", because that's what they were designed to do... be flat. I owned the Carvin TS100 about a year ago, and it is a fairly flat power amp, even though it uses tubes. Be sure you set the Power Amp sims to ON when using this amp. I ended up switching to the Matrix GT800FX, which sounded very similar to the TS100, to save rack space and weight.
 
Interesting results. Yep, power amps can have a huge effect. A couple of times I've seen people using Mesa 20/20 power amps here and inside I shudder. I had one because I got a deal on it (well before FAS entered my life) and thought I'd try it. I'd think, "well, it's 40 watts total, so I should be able to get a functional clean sound, right?" WRONG. Not even close. Not one functional clean sound. WTF? It's a power amp, shouldn't it be at least vaguely vanilla? Apparently not.

A guitar teacher who'd been a Nashville session guy said they'd use the 20/20 when they wanted a rock sound. I found it dark and harsh for my purposes.

It's interesting to hear about people's experiences with power amps. The Matrix ones seem pretty well loved as a mostly clean palette to work with. I went all-in-one FRFR because I didn't want to constantly 2nd guess all the possible variables with cabs and amps, but some people need to move more air than I do and big cabs will do it.

Good luck finding a good solution.
 
Thomas-Hawk said:
Agreed, Sam.

Nick, to give the power amps a "fair playing field" during your test, you should have had Power Amp sims set to OFF with the Marshall, and set to ON for the Carvin and the Voodoo Labs amps. Just as you said, those two amps sounded "flat", because that's what they were designed to do... be flat. I owned the Carvin TS100 about a year ago, and it is a fairly flat power amp, even though it uses tubes. Be sure you set the Power Amp sims to ON when using this amp. I ended up switching to the Matrix GT800FX, which sounded very similar to the TS100, to save rack space and weight.
Click to expand...

If I leave the Power amp sims on I can more easily tell how much the Power amp is adding it's own flavor,plus I did not want to have to totally re eq my patches.
I run the power amp sims on with the Mesa 50/50 so I wanted to see how much of an effect the other amps would also have with the power amp sims on.
Even the Marshall was 'less intrusive" than the Mesa is.
did not pick up the Carvin , will pick up tomorrow and do some more testing. (he likes my Mesa I may swap with him if I like the Carvin0
 
My 50/50 (with deep mod) sounds better with sag=0 on the Axe .... but it really just limits the Axe to a one or two trick pony when you're bypassing all those nice modelled poweramp sections .... so Matrix GT1000 is what I'm setting up for now .... just need to bother my arse to try a FR cab now to get a few of these new IRs floating around into action .... haven't even broken the EVL12s in yet! Should have learned to play the trumpet instead of guitar ....
 
maxdown said:
Should have learned to play the trumpet instead of guitar ....
Click to expand...

I did. Much more work, half as much fun.
On the bright side it was good for learning to read music... and do strange things like transposing while sight reading!
Hard work :)
 
So I've got the Carvin TS100 at my house today. He has it loaded with 6L6's.
So I think I've come a a stark realization when using the Axe FX II in different scenarios
If going FRFR I believe a totally flat power amp is very desirable.
When going thru real cabs....................................not so much
I had it in my rack for about 2 hours today, tweaked some of my favorite patches blah,blah blah.
Disconnected it and put my Mesa 50/50 back in and noticed a huge difference in the fullness and the harmonic character
I think what I'm hearing from the Marshall 900 (that we used on sunday ) and from the mesa is the rich presences of thick mids.
the Mesa obviously is voiced with much more lower mids but the Marshall and the Mesa both sound much more 'Alive" to me than the Carvin does.
maybe the Carvin would sound better to me with EL -34's (don't have any to drop in) in it but right now I'm starting to think that the VHT 2502 or the LX II is what I should be hunting down.
plus the Carvin is no where near as loud as the Mesa is when running in stereo (not even freaking close LOL! )

opinions.....rebuttals.......................thoughts :)
 
kmanick said:
So I've got the Carvin TS100 at my house today. He has it loaded with 6L6's.
So I think I've come a a stark realization when using the Axe FX II in different scenarios
If going FRFR I believe a totally flat power amp is very desirable.
When going thru real cabs....................................not so much
I had it in my rack for about 2 hours today, tweaked some of my favorite patches blah,blah blah.
Disconnected it and put my Mesa 50/50 back in and noticed a huge difference in the fullness and the harmonic character
I think what I'm hearing from the Marshall 900 (that we used on sunday ) and from the mesa is the rich presences of thick mids.
the Mesa obviously is voiced with much more lower mids but the Marshall and the Mesa both sound much more 'Alive" to me than the Carvin does.
maybe the Carvin would sound better to me with EL -34's (don't have any to drop in) in it but right now I'm starting to think that the VHT 2502 or the LX II is what I should be hunting down.
plus the Carvin is no where near as loud as the Mesa is when running in stereo (not even freaking close LOL! )

opinions.....rebuttals.......................thoughts :)
Click to expand...

Had a 9100 for about a week, that's one heavy ass amp. Make sure you have the impedence switch(s) on the Carvin set to match your cabs.
 
IMO, if you're using Power Amp modeling in the Axe, you want a flat power amp, whether or not you're using FRFR or guitar cabs. If you're using Power Amp sims ON in the Axe, while using your Mesa 50/50, it's essentially like running your tone thru two power amps; the one in the amp model in the Axe, and your Mesa 50/50. If you like it, you like it. While not "technically" correct to run it that way, it's not hurting anything. And, to say what's been said many times before: if it sounds good to YOU then it IS good to you! Go with it!
 
I have a Fryette 2/50/2 power amp. It sounds very good, but I doubt it will sound like the Marshall. Fryette uses 12AU7 tubes to drive the power tubes and just about every Marshall I've seen uses 12ax7's. Thats hitting the power tubes with a signal ten times larger that the Fryette design. What that boils down to is the Fryette can get very clean, which surprised me when I tried it out in a music shop. I was expecting the Marshall 'haze' and it wasn't there.

I've had a clean patch nearly wide open on the Fryette and got not alot of power tube distortion. Something to consider if what your looking for is the classic Marshall power tube grind.
 
good to know.
I'm not specifically looking for the "Marshall" sound just one that's not sterile and lifeless :) so the VHT may be what I'm looking for.
every clipI've heard on Youtube (for the most part) sounds very good.
I think you could swap out the 12ua7's and drop in 12Ax7's, they are just a lower output version of the 12Ax7,
if you wanted to go that route.
 
I don't think I would want 12AX7's in my 2/50/2. Fryette designed it that why for a reason. Besides, I like the way it sounds now.

If I where to try a higher gain driver tube, I would probably 'sneak up' on it and use an 12AV7 or 12AY7 first as that is only a doubling of the gain. Certainly no more than an 12AT7, which would be about three times more.
 
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