Who wants TOSIN ABASI's LIVE ANALOG RIG TONE? ;)

So...I have watched AAL's Latest Rig Rundown and as many of you probably know, Tosin is completely Analog now. He uses a Morgan amp which is super clean and has lots of headroom. He gets all the gain staging from various OD pedals and Clean boosts in front of the amp. It actually makes a lot of sense and is quite brilliant. I got to thinking, why can't we do something like this in the axe-fx? So I put it to the test. This preset SLAYS, IMO. The clarity and punch is INSANE, and is super aggressive or mild as you want it to be, definitely Tosin Tone worthy. I've attached the preset for you guys, as well as a screenshot of his live rig pedal board.

Tosin Abasi's Pedal Board.png
Few things to note

MY GEAR:
- TC Electronic Hyper Gravity Compressor in front of the AXE-FX (slap a comp block in your axe-fx chain and call it a day)
- JPX7 with BKP Blackhawk Pups (Any guitar works great, but if you want that Tosin slap tone you need something with a 5way, coil tap or variation of single coil/spilt coil option)
- Axe-FXMKII Firmware Quantum 8.0
- Seymour Duncan Powerstage 700 (Super transparent poweramp, but has EQ capability AND tons of power. same as what Mark holcomb uses)
- Orange 4X12 Closed back Cab (just sounds...MONSTROUS)

The DI tone from the axe-fx sounds fantastic as well, but this preset really shined w/the poweramp and cab setup. The cab IR i'm using is from Cab Pack 19, ML Bulb Angle Citrus Cab Pack.
It is specifically cab ML Citrus 4X12 SM57+M160 - 01. So if you don't have this pack then the cab won't load and you'll need to change the cab to something similar.

I have left the amp block pretty much as it comes aside form the gain. It is the Cameron model, which is VERY similar to the Morgan Tosin uses. I use the CAB block to shape the tone via the preamp section of the cab block. I set it to modern, boost the lows, mids and highs to my liking.

Scene 1, first level of gain, its the amp completely clean. It's super punchy, plucky and in your face responsive with VERY little break up, roll your vol. off and you've got a perfect clean channel.

Scene 2 is the second level of gain staging. I used a FET Pre-amp OD block to over crank the amp. This is great for very notey riffs and the slap tone. Same concept Tosin uses in his rig.

Scene 3 is the third level of gain staging. It adds more saturation for the big chorded choruses and HEAVY chugging stuff. I found the FAS OD boost to be the best, but i'm sure other drives will work or add different characteristics, crank the drive and you get a SLAMMING heavy metal sound.

Watch your levels so you aren't clipping and have fun! lmk what you guys think!
 

Attachments

  • TOSIN ANALOG RIG_100%AXE-FX.syx
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When you have a pedal board that complicated, which needs MIDI switcher to make sense of it all, and drives MIDI pedals with presets, you might as well have saved all the trouble and gotten the Axe FX instead. Because that thing is an analog Axe FX. But also with all such extra fun things like cabling and pedals that might fail at any given moment. And ground loops. I speak from experience. 99% of the time it worked. But that 1% had me in fear of catastrophic pedal board failure all the time.
 
Thats Tosin's board, not mine. His board really isn't that complicated when you get down to it. But ya, I was able to match his rhythm tone(s) and slap tones pretty damn close, using a very basic axe-fx setup.

Check out the attachment, and try for yourself. I'm curious as to what others think.
 
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