Awesome video Scott - thanks for sharing your techniques.
You may cover this in a later video, but...when I see routing like the beginning of your patch I have a question. Your chorus/flanger/etc. up front are parallel-routed so you're getting direct signal along with the chorus/flanger/etc. as opposed to a traditional pedalboard/serial-route setup. Is this done for space on the grid or is it a sound/taste preference? Do you compensate by adjusting their mix % or anything similar? Just wondering. Thanks!
Long story short - parallel vs. serial. (*Note, yes I will do a video on it from my perspective/opinion/experience
sooner than later).
Serial means you use the mix control to control how much wet (effect) vs. dry (raw guitar/amp tone). Sometimes you need to adjust the level of a given effect so there is no volume difference between turning the effect on/off. Sometimes there is no mix parameter available in the effect block (ie. wah). Sometimes you want more or less of this or that. If you've ever used/considered/studied a 'wet/dry/wet' sort of setup (running a raw amp tone and then a supplementing/complimentary rig with 100% effects simultaneously) then the parallel routing starts to make sense somewhat. With parallel routing you can route different effects to not interact with each other (I personally do not want my flanger and chorus to ever 'feed one another' for instance). Parallel routing allows for all these things to happen.
Quite often, when you record, you'll record the dry uneffected guitar-amp-cab tone. No effects. Then, afterwords, you'll *add* the effects. When you do that, you 'flip' the effects to 100% effect, zero dry tone because you are just adding effect to the dry signal only. So you use the LEVEL of the 100% wet (effected signal) aka MIX to add the effect. That way, you retain the clarity and 'in-your-face' of your raw tone but only add what you want effect wise. When you do that, your raw tone never gets lower in output than your effected tones and you retain that clarity.
I'll skip all the math involved; frankly I don't understand all the science. There is a real physical science difference between parallel vs. serial even from within the Axe-FX. I do understand - and trust - my ears. The results might work for you, they might not work for you (if you don't set the effects mix window parameters correctly), and in the end it might make ZERO difference to you either way.
All that said, I have to also say this: none of it might matter to *you*; no matter how greatly it matters to me.
I will add the (obvious or not so obvious) that because we are 100% in the digital realm, a lot of the end result is the same in the serial vs. parallel discussion in the end. My preference and persistence using parallel routing has a lot to do with my own experience, and I came up in the 80's when W/D/W was the ultimate in what the big rig monster players were all doing and I wanted to do it too. But I didn't have the money, the roadies, or the stage space to pull it off. In the Axe-FX? I can go to town and fulfill my fantasies of rigs with refrigerator sized racks, blinking lights, crazy routing and massive rig back-lines that would take a full semi-truck to cart and a team of roadies to set up and tear down.
All that said, I find parallel routing to be one way - just one way - to take advantage of the flexibility and power offered from within the Axe-FX's paradigm to customize and create tones that one would be very hard pressed to recreate in the analog world, if not physically impossible. If you can grasp the basics of it - route in parallel to the guitar/amp signal, set MIX to 100%, EFFECTS BYPASS to anything but "Thru" and use the LEVEL control to add ONLY what you want from that effect to the overall signal - then it's easy enough to try and experiment with: nothing blows up, no one gets electrocuted, no one burns their fingers on soldering irons and you don't cause a blackout in your neighborhood if you 'wire it wrong'.
It works for how I think, it works for how I want the box to sound and act. I do not feel it is 100% necessary for everyone to do or use. I strongly favor it personally; but that's my personal preference and not a general rule at all.