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Guitarzan69

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I am a 8 year deep AXE FX owner/operator, and within the last year have made some real good progress toward being truly happy with what I’m hearing/feeling. (I’m slow)

This is due not only to the latest firmware update, including updated Impedance Curves and Thump, Drive, etc…but also to the awesome community and the sharing of knowledge, thank you guys.

I’ve also met a few great people here that went above and beyond, not only being helpful, but also friendly.

For me, I love the multi band comp block tips from LT based on the Andy Sneap settings.

Let’s keep this going by sharing a tip that gave you the aha-moment.
 
Discovering the uniting effect of running all presets used during a gig through the same speaker cab IR(s) was really helpful. My original presets varied pretty widely, intending to “match the originals.” That’s a losing proposition, and a soundman’s nightmare. Once I started bringing my presets into the same cab IRs I noticed the band blend become noticeably better. And the FOH guy drank less.

It’s the way.
 
I'm still quite new (FM3 owner) and thank you to everyone for their generosity of knowledge sharing and friendliness like the OP stated. If I were to pass on a tip, as simple as it is, it's going through all the factory presets as a fractal newbie and finding little gems whether it be an amp block, speaker ir, delay setting, and saving those to the block library so when building my own presets it is a lot easier and gets you to playing quicker rather than trying to recreate what you want to hear and going down a tweaking rabbit hole (although also fun as well lol)
 
To give an actual tip compared to just saying watch an entire dudes YouTube catalog lol.

Don't under estimate the power of the bright cap value. That was a recent field that I used in dialing in a strat tone and it really helped me get to a specific end result tone in my head. Sometimes the bright switch is too much but taking it out makes it dull, so just dial that bright cap down till it's the perfect middle ground.
 
No real aha moment, more of a progression of ahas. Saved blocks, preset templates, and I stick for now with just a few IR’s for everything. One notable aha was Burgs Ken Fischer preset posted during the holiday season.

https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/k-fischer-nj.189494/

The Trainwreck styled amps got me closer to the tone I want than anything else I’ve tried. The Wrecks, Ruby, Komets. If you ride your guitar volume, these models are very good for pretty much anything. Another one is using the Plex verb instead of the reverb block. I’m on the FM3, and the cpu saving is useful. @Anand Mahangoe posted his plex verb blocks that I’m using on everything now.
 
Still working on this but..

With near limitless combinations of parameters given to us by the fractal units..

It’s important to learn when to stop and be satisfied with what tone you get and not be too picky with the details.

Exaggerating here but…

i.e values have to be an integer , it’s 0.37484 db to quiet, 1463.66 hertz “needs” to be cut etc

Oh and make sure the volume knobs at the front are not at zero 😬
 
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My tips are:

1) The preamp in the CAB block is a powerful tool to get your tone more like a guitar tone on top albums using both the saturation and eq is helpful to place your guitar in a mix without having to do extra stuff in a DAW.

2) Use more than one cab to change the tone a little more. Missing some high end, add a brighter cab alongside a V30/a cab with a 121 mic to get the lows and nice high end and mix them together at the levels in the cab block.

3) if you have resonant frequencies in your guitar and having a hard time dialing them out with an amp and noticed using a PEQ after the amp or cab makes your guitar anemic or flubby, still. Use a PEQ at the beginning of the chain right after the input block and pull out just the frequencies your guitar has major resonances in. Sharp Q and try to only pull out enough to make the resonance even. This way you can dial in tones at the amp and not have parts of your tone missing because you pulled them out after the amp or cab. The amp will help fill in the "holes" you might have created and add some of that back. You will have to tweak it a little until you get it right. You can then save the PEQ in your block library for the front of the chain for each guitar and just drop them into your presets for your guitars.

4) Don't be afraid to turn knobs to an extreme on an amp. Noon is not the best position 9 out of 10 times with almost any amp. Sometimes it is best to put certain BMT knobs at 0, like with a Boogie Mark, or IIC, or the JP2C as a for instance.

5) Don't be afraid to put time-based effects in parallel vs serial, sometimes not having your delay drenched in Verb makes your wet sounds clearer and not washed out.

6) For high gain, the use of a gate block at both the beginning of the chain and right after the amp is a great trick to clean up the signal and not have tonnes of noise. As others mentioned already the MB compressor for Palm mutes is a great way to help tighten up the low end and not get it woofy of flubby.

7) Use a looper block before the amp block, so you can play a few things for a couple of seconds and loop that while you are setting your tone and making cab changes, etc.
 
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My biggest “aha-moment” for live stuff was implementing Global Amp and Cab blocks. I had about 40 presets to cover the songs we would normally choose from, and adjusting a parameter on one preset meant going through every song in the set, adjusting that one thing, and saving them one at a time (which took forever).

Linkin Park’s tech was filling in for a run of shows and asked why I wasn’t using Global Blocks. I didn’t know that was a thing, so he helped me set up Globals for my Amp and Cab blocks so that changing Amp settings or an IR would automatically populate to all 40 song presets. It made tweaking a lot easier, more efficient, and let me treat my digital rig just like my previous analog setup.

From a tonal standpoint, the best tip I can offer is to keep things simple. Start with the cab/mic-up you want (low cut around 80Hz and no high cut), pick the amp you want, and tweak it to the IR. The amp modeling is fantastic, so this approach will give you the most authentic sound and playing experience. Use the basic amp controls for EQ adjustments and try not to use any EQ blocks (I doubt many of us used EQ pedals in our “real” rigs, so see if you can get away with not using one in your digital rig). Allowing the amp and cab to speak naturally will help you sit nicely in the mix and make FOH’s job a lot easier.
 
1: It is possible to switch between tones gaplessly. There are different ways to do it, and it's addictive.

2: If you have trouble using traditional IRs without heavy cab smoothing, try changing the resonant frequency of your pickups with trimpots in parallel to (connected to the outer lugs of) your volume pot (with a cap if needed) to tune out inherent harshness by ear.

3: Know that whatever tonal goals you have, the Axe-FX III can recreate it. If you can't figure it out, just create a thread on this forum site with dry tracks, wet recordings, and presets, and forum members will help you get there. Know that you still need to have a guitar capable of creating the sounds in your head, so if you're having excessive trouble with getting your tone, don't rule out that something in your guitar might just need a little tweaking; again, forum members will help you get there.
 
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