They All Sound the Same Part Deux

∞Fractals said:
This is my concern; I’ve never really cleaned up or rolled back a Vol pot on high gain. 3&4 don’t seem right from other amp types. Too old school I suppose.
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I thought about that, too. I'm the same way...I hardly ever touch my volume knob with an amp like that, so it's an interesting experiment he's done here. And I have no idea how much gain a 5150 actually has, or how rolling back the volume would actually affect it.
 
Huge differences here. The most alike are 1&2 (more gain) and 3&4 (less gain).

1 has that annoying high pitched noise in the background and is more harsh/wild than 2. It could probably give more ear fatigue.

2 sounds more balanced/relaxed than 1, and it does not have the high pitched noise. I prefer this one over 1.

3 is again more calm. No fatigue, but the sound does not fit the playing. It does not sound to me as if this sound was dialed in for this riff/playing. But I could be fooled from being primes be the two more gainy clips before it. I prefer this one over 4.

4) this one kind of sounds like someone is playing rubber bands.



I would expect Brand F to be the closest to the amp. But my mind is playing tricks with me.

Brand F is not clip 1 as there is no way I would expect it to have the worst case of high pitched noise.

If the amp is clip 1, Brand F will likely be clip 2. But as I recall it from the previous test, Brand L was the harshest with the most high pitched noise - both in dB level and annoyance level.

If clip 2&3 are the amp and Brand F, I'd say that Brand F has missed the mark in matching gain level.

Clip 4 is the most awkward. I can not imagine it being Brand F. It doesn't sound like a quality amp either. Remembering the last test, I would imagine Clip 4 to be Brand N.


I don't have experience with the particular amp, and the settings were not revealed. Also it wasn't revealed which guitar with more or less funky pick-ups was played. And what cab/IR? But remembering the sounds from the previous test, I would guess:

1 is Brand L
2 is Brand F
3 is the amp
4 is Brand N
 
1 & 2 are more upfront / more mids, 3 is pretty bad and 4 would even get more lost in a mix. But when I think of a 5150 I do think of a pretty full sound, so maybe 3/4 are what it sounds like rolled off. But I agree w/ @Andrew Male that I don't know what it should sound like in the first place. Actually, I don't really "like" any of these (but that wasn't the question ;-)

Since you added #5 after, I'll guess that's neither the amp nor the Fractal ;-)
 
I can at least hear that one has a lot less gain this time.

I wonder if these are played with the axefx3 as the looper feeding each of the contestants.
 
4 and 5 sound the worst to me.

1 and 2 sound the best to me.

3 is too low gain for me to even look at it twice.
 
I wanted to dial up a real preset and compare using headphones this time. At first, I thought 3 & 4 sounded like the volume was rolled back further than the other 3, but when I rolled my volume back halfway, my tone sounded closest to 3 & 4. So if 1, 2, & 5 are what a 5150 sounds like with the volume rolled back halfway, they certainly don't clean up very well. I used a 5153 100W Blue and a 4x12 5153 57B cab, at stock settings on the Axe running FW 19.
 
3-4 with half guitar volume behave how i would expect, the others remind me of another brand I used that didn't cleanup. But also I don't use the 5150 amps, so maybe they don't cleanup much with less volume.
Thats how i play with songs, with volume, clean, crunch then stomp on her for lead.
 
3 has a very natural sounding tonal change with less distortion as the sound fades out. But ... we don't know which pick-ups are in the guitar. If they are some hot active pick-ups, they may be louder than some low output pickups at 10.
 
TSJMajesty said:
I wanted to dial up a real preset and compare using headphones this time. At first, I thought 3 & 4 sounded like the volume was rolled back further than the other 3, but when I rolled my volume back halfway, my tone sounded closest to 3 & 4. So if 1, 2, & 5 are what a 5150 sounds like with the volume rolled back halfway, they certainly don't clean up very well. I used a 5153 100W Blue and a 4x12 5153 57B cab, at stock settings on the Axe running FW 19.
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Master Volume was on 10 for this test. Gain at 3. All other knobs at 5.
 
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Was this just simply dialing up the preset with all knobs at noon, with all modeler I/O settings set at defaults?

Set aside the other 3 modelers - the AXE FX and Amp sound identical, which is awesome.... but without knowing if each modeler was optimized to replicate the original tone, I'm not sure it's a fair comparison.
 
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