Will AxeFX improve my quality of life?

F

fearlessflier

Inspired
I am wondering about buying Axe-FX and would like to ask some opinions.

I’ve been playing acoustic guitar at home for many years and have quite recently made the step to playing electric guitar and joining a band which plays a combination of heavy-ish rock originals and covers from bands such as AC/DC, Metallica, Queen, Dragon, U2, Saving Abel, Collective Soul, Heart, Pink Floyd to name just a few.

I need a wide variety of sounds and the ability to easily switch between them. At the risk of beating about the bush, here is a brief description of my current gear:

A few nice guitars: Gibson SG Classic (main axe), Fender Strat, Gibson ES 335, Guild Bluesbird.
A so-so digital FX and amp modeller: Boss GT-3
London Power 2-channel tube pre-amp.
Mesa Boogie 20/20 stereo power amp
1x12 home-made cab with Celestion V30
2x10 cab with unidentified vintage speakers which sound OK to my ears.

I cannot get really good sounds and switching out of this combination. The pre-amp drive channel is OK, but the clean is not great. The Boss cleans are OK and the effects are not bad for my purposes but it is hard to get nice crunch or distortion from it. Trying to tie it all together with 4CM is tricky and I lose my tube tone anyway by feeding through the Boss. Bypassing the Boss with a looper is fiddly, since I’m feeding a stereo power amp. I could put some decent pedals in front of the pre-amp and use the Boss for time based effects only, but again looping in/out is tricky, plus I’m starting the tap-dance and I have to ask myself if the money on pedals is really worth it. You can see where this is heading….

So, I am thinking of buying an AxeFX. I’ve been reading reviews and forums and it looks like the duck’s nuts for getting high-quality repeatable sounds and effects without sacrificing tone and dynamics.

I am less worried about the capability of the AxeFX and more worried about my own. It has taken me ages to come to terms with the Boss and I’m still not all the way there. I have only just worked out the value of eq before and after distortions stages but most of my patches still sound pretty crappy and I’m often up till the wee hours stuffing around with the darn thing, not attending to my wife and 4 kids or to playing my guitar. Anyway, off the psych couch and on to specific questions:

The Axe seems way deeper than the Boss. For someone with novice understanding of audio, is it still relatively easy to set up some nice sounding patches? Or is it another potential black hole? What about MIDI controllers – easy or hard to set up?

I imagine that I’d be better off ditching the pre-amp. The Boss pre-amp sims give me hell – are the Axe ones much easier/harder/forgiving to deal with?

Apart from guitars, the Mesa 20/20 is my most expensive bit of gear and I could probably only afford the Axe if I sell it. I assume that some type of solid state power amp would be the way to go. Any recommendations? How well have the power amp sims worked out for others?

And cabs – mine are no great shakes, so I’d be considering replacing them with full range speakers. Are there any big traps for novices with this approach?

Sorry for the myriad of questions, but I’m dazed and confused….
 
Yes, it's relatively easy to set up some nice sounding patches. MIDI controllers are just as easy to set up as any other device.

There are enough good sounding presets to get you started, in fact, you could probably get away with just preset tweaking to get great tones.

The power amp sims work great with full range speakers and solid state amps. There are several threads discussing this topic. There are no real "traps". Obviously it's desireable to get the best you can afford.

In my case the AXE will pay for itself. I've had it a month and am now convinced I no longer want let alone need my old stuff.
 
Thanks for the reassuring words. I'm glad to hear your AxeFX is working out. Did you have anolog gear before or digital?

I've done no research into full-range speakers yet - how do they compare cost-wise with guitar speakers?
 
fearlessflier said:
The Axe seems way deeper than the Boss. For someone with novice understanding of audio, is it still relatively easy to set up some nice sounding patches? Or is it another potential black hole? What about MIDI controllers – easy or hard to set up?

I imagine that I’d be better off ditching the pre-amp. The Boss pre-amp sims give me hell – are the Axe ones much easier/harder/forgiving to deal with?
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Well, that sortof depends on how finely you wish to tune it. Some people have 100+ patches active in one set, others do a 40+ song covershow with 4 or 5 tones. The Axe-FX can sound good, even great, with default settings, and maybe even better with some deeper tweaking. Then again some people are more sensitive than others, tweak for ages and never get there. I think there are some 160 great presets in the stock (Ultra has 384), others may only find 5 to be passable. Pretty sure it will send the Boss home crying with the stock presets, though. It sounds way better out of the box than my Vetta did, but that's comparing apples to pears.

Essentially: a big selection of tones is going to take this kind of gear and quite a bit of work. However, sometimes "in the neighbourhood" is close enough for you to get a kick out of it and send the crowd roaring. The pay-off with the Axe-FX is huge, though...

MIDI controllers... on the cheap: get a used FCB1010 and UnO chip. It's what I use very comfortably. 5 presets and 5 stompboxes per preset, two pedals, very nice ripwerx editor. Maybe the GT3 can change patches for now. It has MIDI. And you can wait/save up for the MFC101 that might be out before Christmas. Or may not...

The introduction of several new products from Fractal has been a bit of a wait. That's the only drawback to Fractal. Bug fixes are usually very fast and up 'til now the innovations in the Axe's Firmware have been coming steadily. The AFX is that good now that I wouldn't mind if the focus would shift to a couple of the new products for a while.
Apart from guitars, the Mesa 20/20 is my most expensive bit of gear and I could probably only afford the Axe if I sell it. I assume that some type of solid state power amp would be the way to go. Any recommendations? How well have the power amp sims worked out for others?
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Lots of info in the amps and cabs subforum. Basically the ART SLA2 is getting much applause.
And cabs – mine are no great shakes, so I’d be considering replacing them with full range speakers. Are there any big traps for novices with this approach?
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Speakers is a bit shaky, you basically get what you pay for with that... With some positive and negative surprises.
Especially the cabsim is the most complicated most invasive tool in the AFX. You can make and destroy a patch with those and opinions differ wildly. For a novice I think it's better to delay that job for a short while.
Sorry for the myriad of questions, but I’m dazed and confused….
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No apologies necessary. Understandable and quite to be expected.
 
From your drift I guess you are in uk ? :) well ebay has lots of powered monitor speakers for sale usually at good prices, a couple of those and the axe-fx will be all you need :D I run mine direct to the p.a. as volume not really an issue (duo in smallish venue's) and also int a Roland Vga-3 (insert socket)which has a fr speaker so gives a gr8 sound. The gt-3 is a bit museum-piece now, it may run the basic axe' foot/change duty's via midi, my vox s.e. does , also have a fcb 1010 as Dutch say's . You certainly will not regret getting an axe-fx. as for the music you list there are loads of presets already loaded that will astound you. :D
 
Welcome to the forum! Everyone here is friendly and helpful, a huge plus. You can play your Axe thru your current amp and speakers, and you get a free trial period. My guess is that you will be selling your Boss, and maybe you can borrow some FRFR stuff to try the Axe that way. I agree with everyone, you will get a lot of super tones out of the gate. Another plus is that you get the same tones at low volumes or headphones, the wife and kids might appreciate. My spouse still complains about my "unamped" guitar when I use the headphones, but that's my cross to bear :p
Try it, you'll like it!
 
extenze.jpg

"When I heard what Axe-Fx could do, and that it could actually make a man larger, I thought "Hmmm, this could be fun!"
 
Thanks everyone for the welcome and for the generous advice.
angello120 said:
From your drift I guess you are in uk ?
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Australia, actually. Same thing, but better at sport...hehehe (usually)
angello120 said:
it may run the basic axe' foot/change duty's via midi, my vox s.e. does
Click to expand...
.
Dutch said:
Maybe the GT3 can change patches for now. It has MIDI.
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Of course! I had completely forgotten that my Boss (museum-piece!) could act as a MIDI controller. Good thinking, Dutch, Angello.
I suppose it would be too much to hope for that the Boss would display a patch name from the Axe? It might be time to dig out the Boss owner's manual and have a look at the MIDI section.
Chief said:
Another plus is that you get the same tones at low volumes or headphones
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That is an important point. I only ever play unplugged or with headphones at home and patch building with them is only a rough approximation of what I get when plugged into speaker and amp. I guess Axe FX tones will be the same only if I compare headphone tone with cab sims "on" to FR speakers with same cab sims "on". Unless I can find a cab sim very similar to my own. I thought I read somehwere that the AxeFX doesn't have a headphone jack, but needs to go through an Audio Interface. Is that right? I have a Tapco USB interface but have never really gotten around to using it due to weak sound card on my computer.

Chief said:
My spouse still complains about my "unamped" guitar when I use the headphones, but that's my cross to bear
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Oh dear. I know how you feel. I retire off to the garage to play and it can get pretty cold in winter. I tried "I'm writing you a love song", but since I'm not a songwriter and never actually came up with one, it kinda backfired...
 
Whereabouts in Melbourne are you located?

(I recognise the rig description from a Melband post a few weeks ago :cool: )

Chris
 
Hi Chris - pretty close to that fake hotel in your avatar! I live in Frankston, work in Dandenong. Actually, I PM'd you earlier on Melband to ask how it was working out post-honeymoon. Can't see the sent message in my folder so maybe it didn't work.
 
Hi Phil - got your PM on Melband ok this morning - didn't realise that was there when I posted here...

I use a Standard which is fine for me - I'm one of those inclined to dial in a handful of basic sounds and personally wouldn't have used most of the capabilities of the Ultra.

(However, if I had the money I would probably go for the Ultra... at the time I also had a new guitar about to arrive so needed to save a little!).

Have also come from a GT background... I've run direct to PA for many years and gone through a couple of generations of GT's and POD's too, still own a couple of decent valve amps too but rarely used. The AxeFx gave a huge improvement sound-wise over the GT8 and it's something I'm very glad I purchased.

There is a learning curve to it's use, but "deep" editing isn't always essential; I've gotten great results from careful amp and cab sim selection and basic tone shaping; there are maybe a few things like the low-cut parameter, bright cap adjustment that I find useful but most of the other fine tuning I leave alone... at this stage anyway. It does cleans and low drive tones very nicely, btw. Don't underestimate the contribution of the cab sims too, particular with the ability to add user cabs (and the new RedWirez cabs) - IMO this can be far more powerful than some of the fine tuning adjustments.

And the honeymoon's not over! I had a couple of early experiences with cruise ship gigs and bad PA systems (which becomes the weakest link), but back home through my own system everything was good again.

Probably worthwhile doing a search through some of Scott Peterson's posts too. He generally provides a very thought-out and measured/balanced dialog about his experiences and opinion and is worth a read.

Chris
 
Hi Chris,

Thanks for your comments. Nice to know that AxeFX is so much better that the GT series and that you are having a good time with it. I spent hours last night trying to dial in my GT and was nearly in tears of frustration. I'm not sure how much of it is the GT and how much is my lack of knowledge in tone-shaping. I'm trying to get some crunch and light to heavy distortion tones to not sound grainy, muddy or both. I can't help the feeling that the issue is me, just as much as it is the GT, despite its shortcomings.

I found an article in a GT-3 set-up guide which addressed tone-shaping. In it, the author guides the reader through taking a std patch on the GT and tweaking it for better results. The approach is, reduce pre-amp volume (SLDN), increase distortion volume (Vintage), put subEQ in FX chain before distortion and roll -9dB off low frequencies. Then add +9dB low EQ after pre-amp and +2dB at high frequency to add some clarity. The result is a big improvement over the preset patch, but ends up as a high gain 80's metal type of sound. It is quite usable for that genre, although I am pretty sure I can hear it clipping, or maybe digital aliasing artefacts. And buggered if I can find how to look at the level meter for each of the effects. Nevertheless, some knowledge of tone-shaping really improved what was a god-awful patch. I'm not so much after reallly high-gain sounds so I tried this approach for other tones which always seem flabby or muddy or fizzy or all three. One I'm having real trouble with is "Shine" by Collective Soul. It is in drop D, crunchy but not flabby on the low notes. Just can't get it right, or even close to right, but I feel maybe others could do a lot better than me. To top it off, having replaced tubes in the Mesa 20/20, all my patches now sound better with speaker sim on, where they used to sound right with it off. More EQ-ing I guess...

I almost decided "bugger it, I'm doing it" and almost ordered an AxeFX last night. My main worry is that I'll lumber myself with another steep learning curve. I am supposed to be learning new songs and practising, which I need to do as I'm no great shakes as a guitarist (but improving). All the other band members have their sound well-sorted, but not me. As I drove home I wondered if I should advertise for a "tone consultant" to help me set things up! I'd gladly pay someone to help me out of what feels like a deep hole. I realise I'm doing a bit of psych-couch venting here, but I hope that a forum is not a bad place to do that. Makes me feel better to talk about it anyway.

If I get one I'll take your advice about the sims. And hopefully stay away from deep-editing. I guess the first thing I should do is look at Wiki more closely and see what presets are there already.

Did you ever try using your GT as a Midi Controller for the AxeFX? I'm interested to know if the Expression Pedal would work. I read here somewhere that one member controls his AxeFX with a GT-10, and has patches in the GT which mirror the AxeFX patches. That way he has a back-up should anything happen to the Axe (inferior though it would be). It seems like a sensible approach. I could maybe do the same with the GT-3, it is not as if it has a high re-sale value or anything...

BTW, the biggest endorsement for the AxeFX for me is that there seems to be a fair number of people like you, i.e. own a few valve amps, but rarely use them any more.
 
A couple of thoughts. The Axe will sound WAY better than GT3 (have had GT3/5, POD 1/2/XT, Vox Tonelab, Guitar Rig 1-4 etc.) For a good basic sound, drop in amp model, cab model, adjust basic controls to taste = good basic sound. Beyond that you can go as long and as deep as you want. You said your 20/20 was your most expensive piece of gear. You're looking at a whole other world up from there $ wise to really get the most out of the Axe. Anybody really trying to rock out is either using some FRFR setup or a power amp cab setup costing at least the price of a new 20/20. Plus most people have some sort of midi controller, etc.

One relatively low cost functional amp is the Tech 21 Power Wedge. These can be had for $200 used in the US. They're not ideal, but they don't suck either. They're way cheaper than most of what I see people here using and get me 80-90% of the way there. That said, I'm buying the Fractomic amp/speaker when my name comes up on the list, but I've also got a huge stock of gear that I can sell off to more than offset the cost if the Fractomic makes me happy, so it's an easy choice.

Mike
 
Q: Will AxeFX improve my quality of life?
A: Maybe, it depends on your ("l" or "w")ife! :lol:

For me, it's a great tool to play with! The best I had for the last 20 yrs. :cool:
I have now everything I need....and I'm such happy with my results i get from the axe, that I'm stying on firmware 7.04 for the rest of my life! I just found what I looked for..... :mrgreen:
 
Ok, you're asking if the Axe-Fx will improve your quality of life? Look, you probably know that the Magical Wolf T-Shirt already makes the ladies drop on you like bees drunk on nectar. Now put an Axe-Fx in your rack and there is no telling what it will do to your quality of life. Look, I won't lie... It will probably make you crush Chuck Norris to a point where even his chin will rise up from his beard in the same manner Mount Everest emerged from the tectonic plates million of years ago.

I can't say no more...
 
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