The Age Old Axe "levels" question

slinky005

slinky005

Power User
I know a million posts have discussed this.
I just want to ask it from my experience/situation:

I am embarking on using the Axe for the 1st time at a gig in a couple of weeks.
I spent the last 3 days rehearsing with the band having done all my sound and levels at home in preparation.
Essentially my levels are all over the place when mixed in with the band.

We are all using in-ears with nothing else on stage so all my levels are based on my in-ear mixes.
As we all know monitor mixes differ from the house so other than listening the output of the board to hear the "house" mix , is there a good practice to getting consistent levels across patches using my monitor mix?
 
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I play in a very similar fashion (straight to an ears rig). I make sure to set my levels while playing with our drummer and bassist. I don't set them with headphones plugged into the Axe, instead I do it on the IEM board that we always use following the normal signal chain it will use during a show. It normally only takes a few passes with each patch. I also tend to dial some high mid out of the standard Axe FX outputs (in the 2-4k range) because it sounds better through the house that way IMO - but I tend to do this on the channel strip of the board and not on the Axe. My band is all over the place on type of music, but I find having all my patches set with the group playing together is the way to go.

Hope that helps!
 
I have a gig that's similar. I level all my patches and presets visually with the VU meter on the mixing board. I usually set it -10db below clipping to have enough headroom for solo boosts. (I use about +5db). Leaves headroom for anything funky.

The visual method usually gets you about 90% there. Then you have to adjust by ear AT STAGE VOLUME for the rest. I still have a dedicated volume pedal to help with any issues.
 
I adjust my levels with my solo boost on. Turn them up until the output starts to clip, then back them off 3 or 4 db. Seems to have worked for me so far!

It would probably be smarter to cut back more though to give myself room for adjustments on the fly for stuff like eq changes though.
 
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