Using an Acoustic Guitar with the AXE FX

A

Archimedes

Member
I'll need to use the AXE FX soon for a couple of live acoustic guitar tracks and I'm looking for advice from those of you who have used the axe with an acoustic guitar.

1) Are there any presets that work well with an acoustic guitar or will I need to build all my presets from scratch?
2) Are there any amps/cabs I should try?
3) Are there any effects you found particularly nice/useful?

We use a Fender PA in mono for the house sound and I have an AXE FX XL with an active CLR monitor that are run in mono as well.

Thanks!
 
I use my Axe-Fx with my Taylor acoustic guitars using their ES system. You need a clean amp, I just use the Tube Pre to give me enough signal boost without any distortion. I guess another amp that you could try would be the Jazz (Roland). I do not use a Cab. The only effects I use are PEQ to do a little tone shaping, Reverb to give a little bit of atmosphere and on some songs I use just a little Chorus or Delay.
I have found that the quality of pickup is important and I've been very happy with the Taylor ES system. Some Piezo pickups take a bit of tone shaping to get them sounding more "acoustic"
I have also Tone-Matched a studio recording and it works very well.
Overall I've been very pleased with the Axe-Fx for acoustic (and of course electric) guitars.
 
I never use AXE for acoustic stuff. I like acoustic guitars sounding as natural as possible, so less coloration is better for me. I just make sure i have the best acoustic pickup and plug straight to my AER amp. It works really well. I play gypsy jazz that way and also some duets with pop singers.
Sorry if this didn't answer your question, just wanted to share my way.
 
I'm sure BreadTooth will chime in here... I know he uses the Axe Fx a lot for acoustic.


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I play a lot of acoustic with the axefx. I don't use an amp, I use the parametric eq's. Outstanding tones. I dial out what the pickups add and am left with the natural tone of my guitar. Always repeatable, haven't changed the basics of my acoustic patch for 7years.


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What I've done in the past is go directly into the snake via a DI box/ XLR. It works well and the sound engineer can shape it from the booth. I want to try the axe with some effects though to vary my sound a bit and to try something new.
 
My Taylor 814ce sounds heavenly with the most simplistic signal routing.

Volume < Compressor < TubePre < Chorus < Delay < Reverb

Expression control for volume
Expression control for rate or depth control for chorus / delay
Scenes turn on and off various effects.
Season to taste.

This weekend I was setting up a patch to play the studio version of Led Zeps "Bron-Yr-Aur". The original recording has an interesting swirl sound that weaves throughout, and there is also a chorus sound on the guitar, or maybe a phase.

Anyway, I created a simple "Bron-Yr-Aur" patch using a reverse delay for the swirl, mixed real low, and dimension D chorus.

TubePre < Chorus < Reverb < out
...... < delay reverse < out

BALLS OUT, killer tone.
With my acoustic.
Total clarity, plenty of cool dynamics, sweet.

Tomorrow I'm gonna experiment with the null IR so I can check out some of the goodies in the cab block.
 
pauliusmm said:
I never use AXE for acoustic stuff. I like acoustic guitars sounding as natural as possible, so less coloration is better for me. I just make sure i have the best acoustic pickup and plug straight to my AER amp. It works really well. I play gypsy jazz that way and also some duets with pop singers.
Sorry if this didn't answer your question, just wanted to share my way.
Click to expand...

An acoustic going through the Axe doesn't result in more coloring than connecting it to an AER.
 
I use a live tone match of my under saddle pickup with a microphone / recording chain.

under saddle pickup -> local
microphone -> preamp -> reference

I just play first position chords: G -> D -> Am -> C

There is a little trial and error involved to get a good tone match. I look for a graph without too many spikes or drastic low / high end in the curve.

Then use smoothing to taste.

From there my preset would use Filter blocks for clean makeup gain and no amp blocks:

under saddle pickup -> input 1 front -> comp -> [pre efx like flange, vibe, etc.] -> Filter [null for makeup gain] -> Filter [null for more makeup gain / boost] -> tone match -> [post efx. rotary etc.] -> MBC -> GEQ -> Delay -> Reverb
 
unix-guy said:
I'm sure BreadTooth will chime in here... I know he uses the Axe Fx a lot for acoustic.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

BreadTooth said:
My Taylor 814ce sounds heavenly with the most simplistic signal routing.

Volume < Compressor < TubePre < Chorus < Delay < Reverb

Expression control for volume
Expression control for rate or depth control for chorus / delay
Scenes turn on and off various effects.
Season to taste.

This weekend I was setting up a patch to play the studio version of Led Zeps "Bron-Yr-Aur". The original recording has an interesting swirl sound that weaves throughout, and there is also a chorus sound on the guitar, or maybe a phase.

Anyway, I created a simple "Bron-Yr-Aur" patch using a reverse delay for the swirl, mixed real low, and dimension D chorus.

TubePre < Chorus < Reverb < out
...... < delay reverse < out

BALLS OUT, killer tone.
With my acoustic.
Total clarity, plenty of cool dynamics, sweet.

Tomorrow I'm gonna experiment with the null IR so I can check out some of the goodies in the cab block.
Click to expand...

See? I knew it :)
 
do a search for: gtrbody_ultrares.syx

Use this IR in a CAB block and route it in parallel, adding in a touch (or more) to taste, depending on how much of the resonance you'd like to add to the straight DI tone of your acoustic. I've found this IR to work really well for adding some "realism" to a straight pickup tone.

You could go for Stereo UltraRes in the cab block, pan both IRs dead center, using the gtrbody IR along side a "null" IR (to in essence pass through the straight signal), and balance them to taste. This would allow you to take advantage of all of the other Cab block parameters as well as the new post PREAMP features. I've not tried this myself, but could see where this would come in very handy.
 
I use the axe for my thursday night regular gig where i play acoustic. Works great, sounds great. Did a tone match of my Martin Eric Clapton and use it with my Godin Multiac.
 
jazzgtrl4 said:
I use the axe for my thursday night regular gig where i play acoustic. Works great, sounds great. Did a tone match of my Martin Eric Clapton and use it with my Godin Multiac.
Click to expand...

it means with tone match I do not need to take my acoustic dreadnought to gig and just play my electric strat as a dread? missunderstood?
 
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