Axe-FX (A Love Story?) Rd.1

Whizzinby said:
Yeah I went and looked at the amp wiki last night to figure out what it was. That’s the cool thing about a new platform, you don’t have the amp names memorized yet, and you have to listen with your ears on them. I probably would have skipped over it had I known, but it makes total sense because it’s thin, snappy, and has a ton of bite and clarity. Enabling the sat switch on it is what makes it really nice. Rounds out things enough to take away the abrasiveness. Super cool.
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In all my Fractal travels over the years ..... from whoa to go .... 2 of my 4 staple amps were *always* without exception the "Hot" AC and Dirty Shirley 1 .... not 2 :)

The Hot AC gave me all the EL84 crunch / drive tones I could ever want with no need for any drive pedals .... and the Dirty Shirley 1 is a gorgeous lower gain Marshal - I *think* its based on a JTM .... it has a beautiful lower gain breakup and you can hit it with a drive and it is just glorious !

Really glad youre having such a blast.

As Leon wrote above [I think] .... none of us ever starting playing wanting the "best" amp or "best" guitar ...we all started because it was fun, made us smile from the inside out and we just love it .... everything else is a bonus.

Ben
 
Starting to figure out the file paths and processes for adding stuff in Edit. Downloaded the Steve Stevens, John Petrucci, and Alex Lifeson presets and Gift of Tone stuff.

The Petrucci effects block you can tell are purpose driven. Didn’t knock my socks off, but they are clearly for a song and probably awesome in the context of him being on stage.

Pretty cool to have a chorus block called My Uncle Has A Chorus Place, from the master himself. :ROFLMAO: Pretty straight forward CE2, but using a block by Lifeson adds to the vibe. lol

I mistakenly added the Axe versions of the Steve Stevens presets, or I assume that’s the case because the CPU meter laughed in my face trying to run that patch on my Turtle Edition. No output. I loaded up the other version and they played, sorta. The Rebel Yell preset has some kooky shit going on with leveling on a bunch of blocks, and about wanted to burst my speaker in half. It only had one of his stereo pair of IRs loaded too. Once I semi coaxed the levels down and loaded the other IR, sooo sweet… Sounds just like the man himself. Really cool. I think I’m going to re-save that once I figure out why the levels are so weird.

Still gotta say Leon’s blocks library is top of the heap so far. Recreations of the Dig, Brig :chef The delay block library is Jedi Tier stuff, but all of it it awesome across all the blocks types.


Questions:

Is there a screen in FM3 Edit that shows a complete view of all input and output levels, or do you have to click on the individual In and Out blocks? That Stevens preset had me scrambling to find a master I/O screen and I couldn’t find one. One thing I do like about that which shall go unnamed is a swipe down brings up all incoming and outgoing levels in a single screen.

Also, if I want to have a couple of my favorite IRs in the Library drop down (for convenience) can I just drop them in a folder like I would any other block library? Seems like a good way to save time in the cab block, rather than toggle it from Factory to User, then select the Picker and double click it from the file folder.
 
@Whizzinby get the cab block dialed in with your chosen custom IR, then click the little triangle next to library and hit "save". That way you can have them on instant recall.

Screenshot 2023-10-17 at 11.37.18 am.png
 
James Freeman said:
Didn't Frieman also say that Kemper steals the soul of amps or something like that?
They made big noise about that back then.
They make big noise avout anything that jeopardizes their business.
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Oh course Dave’s going to rag on modelers. If he were building and selling them and not tube amplifiers, he’d be singing a completely different tune.
 
norminal said:
Oh course Dave’s going to rag on modelers. If he were building and selling them and not tube amplifiers, he’d be singing a completely different tune.
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I think several amp designers have a highly opinionated take on what to them is best. E.g BluGuitar's Thomas Blug champions the analogness of his Amp 1 products, while various tube amp makers are going to say their approach is the best. Obviously Fractal will say that digital is the way to go.

In reality we now have several fantastic approach to a guitar rig nowadays. In no particular order:
  • Tube amps with/without IR loaders.
  • Digital component modeling from Fractal, Line6 etc.
  • Digital capture tech from Kemper, IK, NeuralDSP etc.
  • Digital amp/cab sim pedals from Strymon, UA, Walrus Audio.
  • Digital amps with guitar or fullrange speakers from Fender, Boss and Yamaha.
  • Analog solid-state from Quilter.
  • Analog hybrid from BluGuitar.
  • Analog amp/cab sim from DSM/Humbolt.
Each with their own pros and cons.

I do believe that many traditional tube amp makers are in a tough situation. Tubes, transformers etc are getting ever more expensive and less people are willing to buy $3K+ tube amps. Something the size of Fender is able to pivot to digital, but e.g Friedman is not. Adding IR loaders to an amp is relatively easy because most just buy the Two Notes embedded platform and integrate that.

A lot of this stuff requires high expertise in a specific field. I wouldn't be able to develop a digital modeling system like Fractal, or design a tube amp like Friedman. I would be able to develop something like Axe-Edit though, which in turn Friedman would most likely not be able to do.

Dave Friedman is to my knowledge not a programmer. So he needs to hire the right people if he wants to make a digital Friedman product. To me the IRX is not quite there - very barebones editing, barebones poweramp sim and a IR loader. Correct me if I am wrong, but afaik the editor does not track where you set the knobs on the pedal and likewise the editor can't adjust the knobs either, so it's not a fully digitally controlled solution like say even analog Strymons like the Compadre compressor/boost are.
 
Stone said:
Therein lies the reason why so many products exist its not really about what is best, it just comes down to what product suits your needs better and what you prefer.
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Hell, even I can't always decide what I like best. Sometimes it's "all the things I can do on my Axe-Fx 3", sometimes it's "a few pedals and the BluGuitar Amp 1 ME + 4x10 guitar cab", sometimes it's "fully digital, MIDI controlled Strymon board for quick tweaking". All of these are equally good sounding to me so the main difference is what using them is like.
 
I’d want someone who builds amps to be passionate and opinionated about that. Ain’t nothing wrong with people caring about their craft.

Dave has been pretty awesome about giving back to the community, shares a lot of information, helps a lot of users/amp builders/techs, does Q&A’s and chats etc. Fractal uses the Friedman name in their amp list right? If he’s cool with that then I’d imagine he’d be quite chill about schematics - someone in the market for a Friedman amp isn’t suddenly going to change their mind if Fractal add another model.
 
MirrorProfiles said:
I’d want someone who builds amps to be passionate and opinionated about that. Ain’t nothing wrong with people caring about their craft.
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I think it depends on what opinionated means. I don't buy UA products because I feel they are adamantly sticking to their guns and unwilling to change to offer better products to their users. This is a complete contrast to Line6 or Fractal who have implemented a lot of user requested stuff.

Someone being passionate about their tube amp designs is absolutely welcome. There's a lot of subjective aspects to this where it's not just a case of "this is objectively better."
 
laxu said:
I think it depends on what opinionated means. I don't buy UA products because I feel they are adamantly sticking to their guns and unwilling to change to offer better products to their users. This is a complete contrast to Line6 or Fractal who have implemented a lot of user requested stuff.

Someone being passionate about their tube amp designs is absolutely welcome. There's a lot of subjective aspects to this where it's not just a case of "this is objectively better."
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I think with expensive boutique amps, it’s a pretty small and niche market that I’m willing to afford the builders a bit more eccentricity than I would a company that is mass producing gear for a wider market. With that kind of gear, you sort of want the “warts and all” personality to come through, even if it doesn’t always make total sense. It’s kind of what separates Bogner from Soldano from Friedman etc.

The good thing is in 2023 there’s enough choice out there (and information) to buy whatever products align with what you are looking for
 
Elric said:
@JiveTurkey let's invite Dave to the forum and have this out. :D
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MirrorProfiles said:
I’d want someone who builds amps to be passionate and opinionated about that. Ain’t nothing wrong with people caring about their craft.

Dave has been pretty awesome about giving back to the community, shares a lot of information, helps a lot of users/amp builders/techs, does Q&A’s and chats etc. Fractal uses the Friedman name in their amp list right? If he’s cool with that then I’d imagine he’d be quite chill about schematics - someone in the market for a Friedman amp isn’t suddenly going to change their mind if Fractal add another model.
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Dave actually has given Cliff schematics before and worked with him they actually sold Axefx out of his shop tone merchants in West Hollywood , my first AXE FX 2 came from them an Freidman signed the papers so there is/was a relationship there.
Where the issue may lie is the artist endorsement Dave may not freely want to share the Cantrell , Stevens Jake etc
 
GTR37 said:
Where the issue may lie is the artist endorsement Dave may not freely want to share the Cantrell , Stevens Jake etc
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Makes sense.

I think a lot of that stuff gets shared eventually on certain parts of the internet, I get the impression Dave isn't overly precious because he posts on those amp schematic forums a fair bit and probably gained a lot of information himself from those kinds of places. I think Dave himself even says a lot that you can't do much to protect the circuit, but the name is what matters. So worst case it maybe ends up being called something else.

Its easy enough for anyone to go out and check the actual amp and measure voltages etc. I think if Dave is on board with it, he can validate its correct and sign it off which means people may end up with a better impression of the real amp. That said, AFAIK the circuit is in that BE family, so it may be possible to tweak a few values with the existing model and get there. I'm sure the JJ100 would certainly be possible to build with the existing models and tweaks.
 
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