Brian Coonan
Power User
Yesterday I had two shows - and the Axe Fx III just rocked. The first one was an acoustic duo show - I'm so freaking pumped that I can play my acoustic through the Axe and LOVE how it sounds now I can't even stand it! For years I've tried to run an acoustic through a processor - even processors MADE for acoustic guitars and there was always something there that I didn't like - I'm sure a lot of you know what I'm talking about - just something with piezo's and other electronics never worked out for me. Until now - so I finally get great effects, an awesome looper and a great acoustic sound. Very happy with it! Show was great - we sounded great - iem's were great. We started off in shade but as the sun moved, the Axe ended up getting hit from behind and the top (of my skb rack it's in) and there were no issues whatsoever - and this thing got HOT. I had a mic on top on the rack just in case someone at the party wanted to say something and when I grabbed it - it was like grabbing a hot poker - blazing hot! So that was cool too - reassuring.
Second gig I was playing electric guitar through the slightly modified AC20 deluxe factory preset - sounded awesome and the band loved it. We were all using iem's and going through a Bose L1. Here is where the classic user error comes in. We were doing a sound check and just going through some G-D-C progression and the other guitar player was like - "something sounds bad - something is out of tune" - so we both check our tuning - I'm dead on with the Axe, he's dead on with his - but there is something obviously wrong - I use tuner offsets so I shut that off - no change, checked the layout on the axe (which, being able to actually make changes on the fly without axe edit is sooooo much easier than with the AX8 - great UI Fractal!) - checked my pitch block (virtual capo is activated with one of my FC12 switches) and it wasn't on - and I'm just about at that point of a very minor freak out when I look down and notice Exp 2 is slightly down. Exp 2 is Pitch Block 2 which is the classic whammy! Once I turned it off, we were amazingly back in tune. hahah All that was about 10 minutes of troubleshooting a completely dumb thing!
But - after that - this was my first real run through with the Axe in a real live setting so I got to test how the FC12 was set up, how the sound and response was, etc and as if I weren't sold on it before, I am so happy with it. What a great piece of gear.
Anyway, that's my first official gig report. lol
Brian
Second gig I was playing electric guitar through the slightly modified AC20 deluxe factory preset - sounded awesome and the band loved it. We were all using iem's and going through a Bose L1. Here is where the classic user error comes in. We were doing a sound check and just going through some G-D-C progression and the other guitar player was like - "something sounds bad - something is out of tune" - so we both check our tuning - I'm dead on with the Axe, he's dead on with his - but there is something obviously wrong - I use tuner offsets so I shut that off - no change, checked the layout on the axe (which, being able to actually make changes on the fly without axe edit is sooooo much easier than with the AX8 - great UI Fractal!) - checked my pitch block (virtual capo is activated with one of my FC12 switches) and it wasn't on - and I'm just about at that point of a very minor freak out when I look down and notice Exp 2 is slightly down. Exp 2 is Pitch Block 2 which is the classic whammy! Once I turned it off, we were amazingly back in tune. hahah All that was about 10 minutes of troubleshooting a completely dumb thing!
But - after that - this was my first real run through with the Axe in a real live setting so I got to test how the FC12 was set up, how the sound and response was, etc and as if I weren't sold on it before, I am so happy with it. What a great piece of gear.
Anyway, that's my first official gig report. lol
Brian
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