Hey
@tjontheroad, I don't know if we've chatted since I started integrating that Source Audio Kingmaker into my setup, but I'm pretty sure I told you I picked one up, or least had it ordered. A few weeks in and I'm loving it. Jeff hooked me up with a pretty good deal on the Neuro Hub, so I've got my drive settings well dialed in.
And thanks for encouraging my GAS on this thread!
After a crazy week of no real time to play and little time to even look back here to follow up on this thready, I finally had some time to play around tonight, and I couldn't put down the guitar. I was sitting here at the computer, making a few little changes here and there in my effect routing and dialing in the presets better on the Kingmaker. I think I may have things set up well enough that I really don't need the Axe-FX, and frankly memories of the 200+ amps and millions upon millions of IRs and the rabbit hole that you can get stuck in has me re-thinking it and I'm a bit more happy with what I have in the FX8. The biggest things that changed lately:
- Of course the Kingmaker for drives. There are some good drives in the FX8, but the Kingmaker to my ears is a touch better, especially on the fuzz emulations. Part of this is that you can set it to do two simultaneous drives either in series or parallel, and I really like mixing different drives in parallel.
- I realized that the extra gate I was putting in the loop really doesn't need to be there as the noise is extremely low with only using the input gate. I was kicking that on for hi-gain and off for cleans, but it is hardly any difference, as the TC is pretty quiet without it.
- I have migrated from using 2 EQ blocks to fine-tune the different rhythm and lead tones I like to using one filter block since I can take advantage of the X/Y features.
- I started digging into the Plex Delay. For my hi-gain rhythms it is bypassed, of course, but for lead I dial in a nice setting with soft repeats at different time settings and the diffusion set pretty low, and have little, if any, amp reverb added. For cleans, I set the diffusion up higher and the amp reverb up just enough to blend in the delays that much more and I have a nice wet clean sound that is really growing on me. (Still need to experiment with the balance of that... it might be just a hair wetter than I really need at volume.)
So, in the spirit of
@X-Mann, I have finally decided to upload a preset of the way I'm doing things now. I'll probably do a couple of more presets with a similar layout for the scene switching and the filter and Plex delay blocks, but swap in other effects for the Rotary, Ring Mod, Flanger, and Phaser.
I'll kind of describe how the scenes match up with the amp settings and describe what the Kingmaker is doing for each of the first 5 scenes.
- Hi-gain rhythm tone. I boost the Blue channel in normal mode of the TC50 with a parallel drive with just enough to tighten it up a bit. I think I'm mixing a Rat and a TS9 if memory serves me, but you can try replacing the compressor with an FX8 drive if you want to dial in something in that range. (Or skip the drive all-together as it's fairly light and tightens things a bit. This amp is also set with loop on, boost off, and reverb very low on Blue if you have it on at all.
- Hi-gain lead on the Red channel. Boost and loop are on, reverb is off. Boosting this with another parallel drive, and I think I used a mix of the Kingmaker Germanium Fuzz for some nasty, thick hair, and the Klone for a bit of a cleaner mid-boost. Gain is very low on both of these, and I keep the gain on Red channel around noon, or maybe a touch higher, so it's not too saturated.
- Clean sound. Green channel with the loop and reverb on, boost off. I like a wet clean, so I'm mixing in some of the amp reverb with some Plex delay. Kingmaker is bypassed (of course, I want clean. LOL)
- Lower gain lead. Blue channel, boost on, loop on, reverb optional, but low if used. Kingmaker is optional, but I ended up setting up a patch to just give it a bit of color more than gain. Hard to explain, but I kind of like what it did on that, and would have to open up the editor to remember what drive or drives I used there. Drive was all the way down and the level control wasn't boosting it to hit the amp any harder.
- All-out fuzz destruction lead tone with the Kingmaker going into the Green channel. I think I used the Germanium Fuzz again, but with a lot of drive, in parallel again with the Klone, also with a lot of drive. Levels are set to give me unity gain, and of course for that program I have the amp set with the loop on, boost on, and reverb off. (Partly because I run the knob for the green channel up higher than blue, and red almost off for those occasions when I do use reverb on those channels. That setting for fuzz leads is just way too wet if I hit the reverb on the amp in Green.)
If you end up swapping in a drive block for the compressor to mimic what I'm using the Kingmaker for, you can probably set up something similar by using X as a drive to boost the amp on hi-gain rhythm and lead scenes (1&2), and then switch over to Y for scene 5 and dial in your most insane, dirty, destructive fuzz patch with a lot of big, fat gain and some nasty sizzle and spit on the top.
The other scenes are somewhat irrelevant, as I have the bottom row of buttons set to trigger the first five scenes, and the top four buttons to toggle on/off individual effects. For insane nastiness, I like the ring mod on my fuzz patch and then started going nuts with the wah. Being after the Fuzz gives a whole different character to the wah, and the ring mod is enough to stunt the growth of small children.
One other note about the filter block, that helped me realize just how much more flexible I could be with just one block than what I was doing with the EQ blocks, which I was just doing some subtle shaping with. I have a modifier attached to the frequency of the filter, and on the X side I boost the lows for my rhythm tone. (I may need to lower that a bit when I turn up, but I'll see.) For leads, I switch it to a very wide mid boost with just I think about 2dbs to thicken up the leads so they cut through and sound a bit thicker.
When I started playing with the fuzz, I found that I wanted a similar mid boost, but at a higher frequency, so I set one of the internal modifiers to switch with the scenes. My amp lead tones are centered around 400 I think and the fuzz lead tone is center maybe around 1200 or 1600 because it was just a little muddy at the lower frequency. Still kind of subtle with the Q as wide as I have it, but it got me where I wanted with it.
Have a great weekend guys. I'm up to Corvallis to jam with the band this weekend!