V5 overwhelming low mids on higher gain amps

notalemming

notalemming

Fractal Fanatic
I am having no luck getting a decent sound on most of my higher gain patches so before I revert back to V4.01, I thought I would see if anyone else was having these issues or ideas how to fix it. The only amps that don't sound bad are the plexi type amps but everything else is wallowing in low-mid muck! I tried all the tips I could find, reset amp block, lower MV, lower/raise gain, tone controls, nothing works. I play through a guitar amp & cabs, no FRFR, no cab sims but I do use power amp sims as I find a lot of the character & feel is there. It seems really dark & flat without them. I have been having great luck with this setup since V1.xx. Any help to clear this up would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise, back to V4.01!
 
Don't know if I can help you, but I found with V5 that the cabinet "motor" setting really helped deal with a lot of the extra low mids that have been introduced. It really sounds amazing and I now have much less problems with low mids than I did with V4. Since you aren't using the cab sim, you don't get the "motor" benefit. I would suggest using a flat cab sim just to get the motor control going. Not sure how you would get a flat cab sim, but if you can you might find the new "motor" is sweet!

Otherwise if that doesn't work for you then you might need to consider reverting to V4 or turning off the power amp sim.
 
Did you try increasing the low cut parameter in the advanced settings of the amp block? Also, you can try to remove some low mids with the graphic eq in the amp block.
 
notalemming said:
I am having no luck getting a decent sound on most of my higher gain patches so before I revert back to V4.01, I thought I would see if anyone else was having these issues or ideas how to fix it. The only amps that don't sound bad are the plexi type amps but everything else is wallowing in low-mid muck! I tried all the tips I could find, reset amp block, lower MV, lower/raise gain, tone controls, nothing works. I play through a guitar amp & cabs, no FRFR, no cab sims but I do use power amp sims as I find a lot of the character & feel is there. It seems really dark & flat without them. I have been having great luck with this setup since V1.xx. Any help to clear this up would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise, back to V4.01!
Click to expand...

Have you tried lowering the Dyn, maybe even off. Also turn down or motor drive if you are using it. Also the tip about up the lo cut setting is good.
 
I havent felt this at all really, but low mid muck is very realistic as thats what you tend to get a plethora of when micing a real cab.
 
I don't use the cab sims as I originally stated so the motor drive solution is out. I have tried lowering the dynamics, transformer match, turning off speaker drive, all of which help the low mid slightly but pretty much ruin other frequency areas. The low cuts don't really help as I lose all the low end I do like before it starts cutting the low mids. I just think this is the tonality of this update & the only way to get rid of it is to put a PEQ after the amp, find the offending frequency & cut it, or go back to 4.01.
 
Not getting that here. Check your Global EQ or maybe something else in the signal chain.
 
Thanks for the reply Cliff. I thought of that too last night. The global EQ is the same as always, a little cut in the lowest & highest frequencies. All else are flat. This setting has worked great in all the previous firmwares since 1.xx. I bypassed all the other effects, which are mostly some delay & verb, & it's still there. Any chance the update didn't install correctly or something like that?
 
Last edited:
very little chance of it not installing correct. I uses a checksum to validate and your axe-fx would probably not work until you get a replacement EPROM if it didn't load right.
 
javajunkie said:
very little chance of it not installing correct. I uses a checksum to validate and your axe-fx would probably not work until you get a replacement EPROM if it didn't load right.
Click to expand...

Yeh, that was pretty much a shot in the dark.
 
Last edited:
How high is your MV? I found with the Über it gets really nasty (bad nasty) if the MV is over 5.5-6.0. Mud, mush city. So I just turned it down. It sounded great. Then I just dialed the sag parameter a bit and tweaked the new dynamic feature. I was golden. All this was with a gain of around noon.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Might be running the input level too high,seems to me the higher i run it the more the lower mids increase! 38.4 here
 
Thanks for all the replies. What I have found that seems to help the most is dropping the global EQ a little at 125 & 250hz. These have been flat for all the other firmware updates. I also found that on the speaker tab of the amp block, making sure that if the low freq. was over 100 to lower it somewhere between 77 & 90hz, widening the Q a little so it's not such a spike & lowering the boost a little from the default has also helped a lot. That along with the other tips on the MV, dynamics & lowering the transformer match just slightly have all helped. This is the first update I considered bailing on & going back to 4.01. I still may but will experiment some more as I like the feel but not at the expense of the tone I have come accustomed to. I hope everyone (especially Cliff) understands that everyone has their own idea of what ideal tone is & that it is very subjective & that what I am saying is taken as constructive criticism & not griping.
 
I've got the low end problem, it's like there has been an eq shift across all patches toward the low end, instead of towards mids and upper mids where guitar lives in a mix.
Lots of eq'ing and cuts in the low end going on at my end to get things sitting right.

Im finding the low end undefined on high gain patches, it's farty and splattery like a low wattage amp cranked to ten, not crisp and tight.

Another thing I've noticed is the jcm 800 seems to have lost alot of gain.

Not complaining here, just noting my thoughts.
 
notalemming said:
Thanks for all the replies. What I have found that seems to help the most is dropping the global EQ a little at 125 & 250hz. These have been flat for all the other firmware updates.
Click to expand...

what version firmware did you start at out of interest? I found the versions I had before 3.4? Were muddy and undefined, 3.4 was perfect eq wise imo, but has been slipping back towards a low mid low end emphasis since then.
 
rickgk said:
I've got the low end problem, it's like there has been an eq shift across all patches toward the low end, instead of towards mids and upper mids where guitar lives in a mix.
Lots of eq'ing and cuts in the low end going on at my end to get things sitting right.

Im finding the low end undefined on high gain patches, it's farty and splattery like a low wattage amp cranked to ten, not crisp and tight.

Another thing I've noticed is the jcm 800 seems to have lost alot of gain.

Not complaining here, just noting my thoughts.
Click to expand...

Q: how are you setting up the JCM800? With the MV lowered to about 5.00 it's screaming with gain and harmonics here.

What IR's are you guys using?
 
rickgk said:
what version firmware did you start at out of interest? I found the versions I had before 3.4? Were muddy and undefined, 3.4 was perfect eq wise imo, but has been slipping back towards a low mid low end emphasis since then.
Click to expand...

I started on 1. I didn't have an issue until 5. 5 feel wise is nice but the tone is just not there for me. I got it better with what I stated above but it's starting to sound over equalized & not as natural as earlier versions. Im' beginning to think dialing it out in the global EQ is not going to work because once I get the distorted patches sounding OK, the cleans sound hollowed out. I really don't want to put an EQ block into each distorted patch but I think my next step is to find my worst patch, put a PEQ after the amp block & find exactly which frequencies are bothering me & then copy that into all the other patches that need it.
 
Last edited:
Isn't there an EQ inside of each amp block now? Perhaps you could try that instead of messing with the global EQ or adding PEQ's all over the place, especially if it's just one or two amp models. Get them close to a default with whatever it is that you are experiencing dialed out and save it in the block library as a sort of preset and then you can call it up in any patch you want to build and have a good starting point to go from.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom