Hello Fellow Phans!
Summer has officially started! You know how I know summer has officially started? Because PHISH is back and touring again! They just wrapped up night 2 of 3 in Chicago and it was a SUBLIME show! No rust to remove or dust to shake off here, the boys are in top form.
Inspired by this post that captured (finally!) a close up of Trey's Komet 60 settings I decided it was time to dust off the old Trey A preset and update it with the Komet+G12-65 pairing as the core tone and, of course, give the old Quantum 8.02 love. Can you believe the last update I posted to this preset was Quantum 3.03??? Seems like a lifetime ago but really it was only a year.
The big changes are, of course, the use of the Comet 60 in the AMP block:
And a G12-65 impulse response from Celestion in the CAB block:
I'm not 100% settled on that IR yet because I haven't had a chance to play this loud, with the band, using my hollowbody (it's at the rehearsal space so it was dialled using my PRS Standard 24...a fine-sounding guitar in its own right). But tonight that IR was feeling tasty.
If you're not an owner of the Celestion IRs, flip the cab to the Y side and it's using the perfectly adequate 4x12 G12H Anny Mix (Cel) IR -- a gift from Celestion to the Fractal users out there that's include in the newer firmware updates.
The AMP block as External 6 tied to the input drive. I really liked the natural amp distortion and I wanted to be able to tap into that live so I used one of my external IA switches on my board to go between clean'ish and mean'ish settings on that input drive. The drive on this amp, paired with the G12-65 is to die for; it just sings and sings.
The DRV blocks are a little different too. In DRV1 is the old Analogman mod'ed TS-9 set for low'ish gain but lots of output. This is Trey's "juice it" setting pedal. The sound of this was matched to my in-real-life Analogman-modded TS-9. DRV 2 is no longer a TS-9 setup! It's a Microboost -- set to do a full-spectrum boost on the signal with some light drive. It's an alternative to the input drive. The two drives stack beautifully and you can get some amazing feedback with them both on.
The COMP block is off in all 5 of the configured scenes! Yup. I just didn't think this amp needed it. It's so squishy when you hit it harder, unlike the MkIII clean setup, that I didn't like the COMP block keeping the level of the drives. It's there in case I miss it, but right now I'm not.
I dropped the scene 5 whammy setup -- I just wasn't using it live and it was pretty useless except for some sonic "whale call" effects in the rare space jam we do so out it went. Scene 5 is now a reverse delay scene. I kept the Mu-Tron (scene 3) and octave down (scene 4) effects in place because I get good miles out of those with the band.
Be sure to check the controller assignments page to see all the things that are assigned to externals. I have a full array of external switches and knobs that I assign to my presets so I can twist and tap to change things up when I play live. I've got a second foot controller on the "big board" now that I'll probably work into this somehow, but as of right now it's unused.
Expect this one to evolve as I gig it over the summer. As a first pass though I'm really happy with how it sounds. These amps are stupid easy to dial in now. Actually getting it setup and rolling while listening to the show tonight took all of 5 minutes. And most of that was time spent waiting for my slow-ass iMac to churn through the computations.
We're living in excellent times my fellow guitar players. Excellent times!
Preset for an XL+ is here: http://axechange.fractalaudio.com/detail.php?preset=5641
Enjoy!
Summer has officially started! You know how I know summer has officially started? Because PHISH is back and touring again! They just wrapped up night 2 of 3 in Chicago and it was a SUBLIME show! No rust to remove or dust to shake off here, the boys are in top form.
Inspired by this post that captured (finally!) a close up of Trey's Komet 60 settings I decided it was time to dust off the old Trey A preset and update it with the Komet+G12-65 pairing as the core tone and, of course, give the old Quantum 8.02 love. Can you believe the last update I posted to this preset was Quantum 3.03??? Seems like a lifetime ago but really it was only a year.
The big changes are, of course, the use of the Comet 60 in the AMP block:
And a G12-65 impulse response from Celestion in the CAB block:
I'm not 100% settled on that IR yet because I haven't had a chance to play this loud, with the band, using my hollowbody (it's at the rehearsal space so it was dialled using my PRS Standard 24...a fine-sounding guitar in its own right). But tonight that IR was feeling tasty.
If you're not an owner of the Celestion IRs, flip the cab to the Y side and it's using the perfectly adequate 4x12 G12H Anny Mix (Cel) IR -- a gift from Celestion to the Fractal users out there that's include in the newer firmware updates.
The AMP block as External 6 tied to the input drive. I really liked the natural amp distortion and I wanted to be able to tap into that live so I used one of my external IA switches on my board to go between clean'ish and mean'ish settings on that input drive. The drive on this amp, paired with the G12-65 is to die for; it just sings and sings.
The DRV blocks are a little different too. In DRV1 is the old Analogman mod'ed TS-9 set for low'ish gain but lots of output. This is Trey's "juice it" setting pedal. The sound of this was matched to my in-real-life Analogman-modded TS-9. DRV 2 is no longer a TS-9 setup! It's a Microboost -- set to do a full-spectrum boost on the signal with some light drive. It's an alternative to the input drive. The two drives stack beautifully and you can get some amazing feedback with them both on.
The COMP block is off in all 5 of the configured scenes! Yup. I just didn't think this amp needed it. It's so squishy when you hit it harder, unlike the MkIII clean setup, that I didn't like the COMP block keeping the level of the drives. It's there in case I miss it, but right now I'm not.
I dropped the scene 5 whammy setup -- I just wasn't using it live and it was pretty useless except for some sonic "whale call" effects in the rare space jam we do so out it went. Scene 5 is now a reverse delay scene. I kept the Mu-Tron (scene 3) and octave down (scene 4) effects in place because I get good miles out of those with the band.
Be sure to check the controller assignments page to see all the things that are assigned to externals. I have a full array of external switches and knobs that I assign to my presets so I can twist and tap to change things up when I play live. I've got a second foot controller on the "big board" now that I'll probably work into this somehow, but as of right now it's unused.
Expect this one to evolve as I gig it over the summer. As a first pass though I'm really happy with how it sounds. These amps are stupid easy to dial in now. Actually getting it setup and rolling while listening to the show tonight took all of 5 minutes. And most of that was time spent waiting for my slow-ass iMac to churn through the computations.
We're living in excellent times my fellow guitar players. Excellent times!
Preset for an XL+ is here: http://axechange.fractalaudio.com/detail.php?preset=5641
Enjoy!