Upgrade (Air Question)

julindres

julindres

Member
Hello everybody, I have been an owner of an axe ultra for some years now and sadly I had to sell the unit for economic reasons. But as soon as I can get back on my feet ill probably purchase and axe or a kemper. (Now this is not a kemper vs axe thread) Here is my concern. After years of tweaking I have learned to make the ultra sound awesome. The tones and effects are crazy good and when I recorded it sounds amazing. But I would be using it for live playing more than recording. The problem that I have is that when playing the ultra live I get amazing tones but there always seems to be like missing air. Here is what i mean. I play in a church, with a mic vox ac 30 and pedalboard, the amped is miced and is all the way in the other side of the stage facing a wall, so I don't hear the amp from the amp itself but from my in ear monitors. And there is like this air between the mic and the amp that I can hear and feel even just through the in ears monitors. With the axe I get the same tones, but its lacking that airy sound and feel, sounds very dry in a way. I tried putting delays and reverbs in different places but still can't get that air. So my question is to owners with live experience and maybe that have owned ultras and now the axe II, Can the new axe and firmwere get this airy sound when playing live? I know the tones are perfect, so thats not my worry. (Oh and I use the axe live going direct to the PA.

thanks!
 
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The Axe-Fx 2 does sound more open than the Ultra but it's hard to say what you feel is missing. It could be something as simple as the fact that the Axe-Fx most likely has far less noise. In any case the Axe-Fx 2 has greatly expanded on the cab sim so if you want you could capture the sound of your VOX and use that as in impulse.
 
Axe2 has longer IR's, which make it possible to have a bit of space in the sound to start with.
 
julindres said:
Hello everybody, I have been an owner of an axe ultra for some years now and sadly I had to sell the unit for economic reasons. But as soon as I can get back on my feet ill probably purchase and axe or a kemper. (Now this is not a kemper vs axe thread) Here is my concern. After years of tweaking I have learned to make the ultra sound awesome. The tones and effects are crazy good and when I recorded it sounds amazing. But I would be using it for live playing more than recording. The problem that I have is that when playing the ultra live I get amazing tones but there always seems to be like missing air. Here is what i mean. I play in a church, with a mic vox ac 30 and pedalboard, the amped is miced and is all the way in the other side of the stage facing a wall, so I don't hear the amp from the amp itself but from my in ear monitors. And there is like this air between the mic and the amp that I can hear and feel even just through the in ears monitors. With the axe I get the same tones, but its lacking that airy sound and feel, sounds very dry in a way. I tried putting delays and reverbs in different places but still can't get that air. So my question is to owners with live experience and maybe that have owned ultras and now the axe II, Can the new axe and firmwere get this airy sound when playing live? I know the tones are perfect, so thats not my worry. (Oh and I use the axe live going direct to the PA.

thanks!
Click to expand...

I think i know exactly what you mean!! AC30 is my main amp in 99% of the presets and I've been struggling for years to get that "air". If i remember correctly, at some point up to a certain fw it was there (fw 17 or 18 maybe), then it disappeared. I would not consider it the air between the speaker and the mic, but the vox itself, as when you lower the cut knob there's that magic happening in the very top end, we call it "silk" in italian, it adds dimension without being harsh, while on the axe model extreme settings add harshness / ice pick but no magic.. I'm not sure it depends on ir's vs amp model, but I'm pretty sure at some point it was there (when I got it about 2 years ago I remember a discussion with a sound engineer and we were talking how amazing the axe was, modeling the silk too) and I can't remember in what update it was gone, but I guess at that point the new features (ultra res? g3 drives??) were too good to stay behind!
 
mmmm thats interesting...well it could be what I'm talking about, I know its kind of hard to explain exactly what it is... But I also have an orange rocker 30 and a had a fender princeton reverb and they all gave me that airy sound when playing and only listening though the in ears...I guess it could be what the cab sims too...not sure...
 
There are so many cab ir's out there that I'm sure you could easily duplicate what you are describing if you put some time into it. In fact I bet you'll find something better.
 
Yes that could be it too, in the ultra I always used the stock cabs and varied the mics and added some air freq in the cab parameter but at the end I could never achieved what I wanted. So in the Axe II are the cabs updated, like the stock cabs? Or do most people just purchase IR's from like redwirez or some company?
 
Others on this thread have a lot more experience than I do, but IMHO you can't draw any conclusions unless the comparison is a true blind test. Unless you have both systems set up as you would use them and had a way for someone else to switch them back and forth (and maybe even include a third system of some type), you can't draw any scientific conclusions. The fact that you know which system you are working with inherently biases your brain. The brain can play a lot of tricks on you. I'm not saying there is not a difference, but would it be as prevalent as you think in a true blind test? Just something to think about.
 
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You could be missing a bit of room reverb that the mic is picking up. Maybe try a reverb with very low mix after the cab.
Also, just a thought but did you try placing all of your fx before the amp block? In the church setup I imagine all the delays were in front of the amp which means the delay trails are going to be colored by the amp.
 
julindres said:
Yes that could be it too, in the ultra I always used the stock cabs and varied the mics and added some air freq in the cab parameter but at the end I could never achieved what I wanted. So in the Axe II are the cabs updated, like the stock cabs? Or do most people just purchase IR's from like redwirez or some company?
Click to expand...
I'm sure a lot of people get great results for the stock cabs but I much prefer the cab packs. So far my go to is cab pack 13 by ML Labs. This is based on a Mesa oversized cab with vintage 30s. The best thing for you would be to purchase a cab pack that features the speaker you like using most and go through all of them until you find the best one and then tweak to your liking. Some of the cab packs come with hundreds of IRs. The same speaker and cab but with so many combinations of mics and variations in positioning of each mic. It can get overwhelming but it can get you any tone you want.
 
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