Watered down sound on all high gain presets

David Fells

David Fells

Member
Just got an XL+, did a full reset, upgraded to 1.06, and installed the presets fresh. Any preset with a relatively high amount of gain, such as Sweet Child or Cliffs of Dover, have a reedy watered down sound - as if the guitar's volume is on a 1.

I uploaded a quick example here using the Sweet Child patch with an Eric Johnson strat https://www.dropbox.com/s/am1yez8l819z45p/axe.mp3?dl=0

No clipping in the axe or my ur44 interface, or logic, and it sounds the same through phones as through my monitors.

Anyone have any similar issues/experience?
 
I've never been able to use any of the factory presets. Have you tried building a preset from scratch?
 
I haven't tried building my own, but a friend sent me a few patches that sounded great, and when I imported them, they just sounded awful - the exact same problem.
 
Hi, have you listened to the original sweet child intro lately?

Check if wah block is engaged?

Check that power amp simulation is on?

Check that cabinet simulation is on?
 
can you make a new preset with just an Amp block set to Friedman HBE type and a Cab block set to Factory 59 - all default settings. any way you can record that real quick? maybe something more strumming with chords.

have you tried Reset System Parameters in the Utility-Reset menu on the front panel?
 
JJunkie, yes I have... was actually gonna record a quick cover as a demo for someone. Tried turning wah on (it defaults to off) as well as the tube screamer pedal (also defaults to off). I'll check the other two items tomorrow when I have more time to tinker.

Chris, yes, I did reset system parameters immediately after installing 1.06 and wiping presets, before re-installing presets (all of which was done trying to resolve this issue).

I'll be able to do a few new test recordings tomorrow.
 
Cool. To be honest, that sweet child recording didn't sound like "volume on 1" to me. There's not that much gain on that tone to begin with.
 
For what it's worth I also tried it with my JP6 with the CrunchLab/LiquiFire pickups, and it didn't sound very good either. Just very weak. While on the grand scale of gain, that track wasn't recorded super high gain, it didn't sound like this.
 
Is your instrument input level set correctly, IOW, are you tickling the red LED's? It could be way too low and therefore not feeding enough signal into the unit.

Other than that, perhaps the guitar cable is at fault.
 
David Fells said:
I haven't tried building my own, but a friend sent me a few patches that sounded great, and when I imported them, they just sounded awful - the exact same problem.
Click to expand...

I always get a moment of panic when I update my firmware.

The reason why is because often it resets a lot of things back to their original settings. I used to ALWAYS have Power Amp saturation set to Auth, and change a few things like dynamic depth\presence to get things to sound right again.

Go over your presets with a fine-toothed comb and make sure they're set EXACTLY the same.
 
The Aftermath said:
I always get a moment of panic when I update my firmware.

The reason why is because often it resets a lot of things back to their original settings. I used to ALWAYS have Power Amp saturation set to Auth, and change a few things like dynamic depth\presence to get things to sound right again.

Go over your presets with a fine-toothed comb and make sure they're set EXACTLY the same.
Click to expand...

Sounds to me as though maybe he picked this unit up used? and he dumped everything, loaded fresh firmware and presets, so I am assuming he brought everything back to as it would ship from fractal. a lot of assumptions here, but that is what it sounds like to me....
 
I've placed your support ticket on hold while you're working here. I will also note that I appreciate the spirit of helpfulness, but I notice what looks like a lot of conjecture and red herrings above. I think Chris is on the right track.
 
Admin M@ said:
I've placed your support ticket on hold while you're working here. I will also note that I appreciate the spirit of helpfulness, but I notice what looks like a lot of conjecture and red herrings above. I think Chris is on the right track.
Click to expand...

Apologies, no intent to mislead.
 
Pwrmac, you're correct I did buy the unit used. I perhaps wasn't as clear as I meant to be. However, I did the reset, etc, in an attempt to fix this issue.

As far as input level - I'm in the yellow. 2 blocks. If I look at the on screen meter, my input is coming in around 70% from the strat and 90% from my music man. The cable is a one week old Mogami gold as are the two XLR cables connecting from the Axe to the Steinberg UR44, all of which were just recently used with other gear a few days before the Axe arrived and worked as expected.

As soon as I get home I'll collect detailed info for the settings.

Perhaps this was a faulty assumption but I expected these presets would be pretty much ready to play, POD-style, not needing tweaking to get them dialed in. Never used an Axe, but I'm starting to think it could just be so much better than the other crappy modeling I've used that it's just far more sensitive to the interplay between pickups and amp, and the tweaking is just going to be necessary.

The only problem I Have with that is this - I have a patch a friend exported and I imported. I have recordings of both in use with the same guitar, his on his Axe, me on mine, and the difference is pretty staggering. I'll get that uploaded this evening.
 
David Fells said:
Just got an XL+, did a full reset, upgraded to 1.06, and installed the presets fresh. Any preset with a relatively high amount of gain, such as Sweet Child or Cliffs of Dover, have a reedy watered down sound - as if the guitar's volume is on a 1.

I uploaded a quick example here using the Sweet Child patch with an Eric Johnson strat https://www.dropbox.com/s/am1yez8l819z45p/axe.mp3?dl=0

No clipping in the axe or my ur44 interface, or logic, and it sounds the same through phones as through my monitors.

Anyone have any similar issues/experience?
Click to expand...

That's pretty much how I'd expect that patch to sound using a Strat. Slash used Les Pauls, they are MUCH beefier and darker.
 
I've installed the firmware twice now actually. And yes, it sounds worse with the strat, but it still sounds weak and questionable with my MusicMan. I'll bust out the R8 and do another pass this evening.
 
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