AxeFxII Djent patch?

[Tyler]

I have tried a ton of different ways to set up a signal chain and many EQ settings but still have not been able to get the type of sound Im looking for. Im not looking into a total bass filled tone, but more mids for my pinches.

 

[danieluber1337]

I thought djent tones were easy to dial in...

Tube screamer - no gain, vol at 12, tone to taste
Compressor if you like
Preamp - engl sim (energyball?) or diezel (das metal?) low gain, lowish bass, highish mids, high highs
cab - anything with v30s
post eq - boost 1.4kHz 5dB or so, medium Q
hpf at 75 to 150Hz... depending on how much bass you want. For example, vildhjarta's demo tone had zero bass, but periphery's was pretty ballsy down there one the palm mutes

I think the main things are tube screamer, low preamp gain, boost 1.4-1.6kHz.

That's just how I would do it, anyway...

 

[RearyGay]

You have an Axe-FxII and you don't know how to dial in a tone?

Look for the tone in your hands. Start at square one. Having an awesome right hand technique will let you get whatever sound you want. You already said you want a big low-mid sound, dial it in and adjust your technique accordingly.

 

[Speculum Speculorum]

Hey man. Are you on FAS forum? If not, get on there and look around at what some of the guys are doing. It's a big help. What's not helpful is guys just talking about how they can't understand dudes not immediately getting the ins-and-outs of the Axe-fx II. Is it easier than previous models? I understand that yes, that is the case.

Here's what helped me start to really get the tones. This is advice from Mark Day on dialing in high gain tones, and I'll summarize it for you.

1. Make sure your firmware is updated to 3.04.

2. Start from scratch and pick a single amp, single cabinet set-up. When you have a whole bunch of modifiers right from the get-go in the signal chain things can start to get hairy and you won't know what is necessarily effecting what.

3. Turn the presence and depth to zero, set the master and gain to zero, and set the bass, mids, and treble to 5. Since we're going high gain, turn your MV up to somewhere between 2.5-3 for starters, and select how much gain you want. Now dial in how much bass, mids, and treble you want. Now add presence to your liking. Add depth and speaker drive if you feel it will improve things. If you think it is necessary, use some of the EQ in the amp block. I personally don't feel the need to most of the time unless I'm working backward after adding effects - usually I'll take care of EQ with a PEQ.

4. THEN, and only THEN, if you aren't getting what you want, look into altering some of the advanced settings. I like to dial back just a touch of the power tube hardness and the triode hardness. You can try adding more damp if you are using a low MV.

5. Add a drive. Try mixing the drive at 80% to avoid simply adding a bunch of noise into your signal. Experiment with the tone settings. A lot of guys run with the tone up at full, and when I do that with my guitar it sounds horrible (HORR-I-BLE). Then try adding a PEQ before and after the amp. I like a HP/LP PEQ set up at the start of my chain, and then sometimes I like making razor-thin cuts post-amp.

there is a guy on the FAS forum who uses high MV on almost all of his high gain stuff, and he has set a multi-band compressor up right after his speaker block and tweaked it in a way so that he can emphasize the mids and highs without getting tinny or letting crazy amounts of rumbly bass through. This is something to look into. My biggest point here is that you should experiment with singular modifiers at a time, and then combine them once you have a really, REALLY good understanding of how each impact your sound.

Remember that you are your own worst critic, and that often we spend far too much time dialing in tones without taking breaks. Especially with high gain, high saturation stuff, our ears tire out in a very short period of time. I talked to a sound engineer who gets up and takes at least 5 minute breaks every 20 minutes when he's mixing metal. Every hour he takes like a ten minute break. If you don't take these essential breaks, you will start to think everything sounds shitty, and you will arbitrarily make changes to your tone in order to simply hear something different. Read as much as you can on the FAS forum because those guys are solid freaking gold-mines of information. Good luck!

 

[Tyler]

Ive dialed in plenty of tones that are decent, but I just havent found the perfect kind of sound Im looking for just yet. Most likely because I tend to stray away from compressors and PEQ.

 

[not2secure4u]

Hey man. Are you on FAS forum?

What forum is that ? You can PM me if we can't discuss that here

 

[Tyler]

What forum is that ? You can PM me if we can't discuss that here

Fractal Audio Systems forum

 

[Speculum Speculorum]

Yeah, PEQ and compression can be your best buddies or the nastiest frenemy you've ever had. The way I approach PEQ when I'm tone-dialing is that I record a riff in Logic and I work with an EQ on the audio region. The PEQ is not very fun to work with in Axe-edit, and it's hard to sweep frequencies and play at the same time (I should really make some friends in Boise). Then I go back and make my settings loosely based off of what I do in Logic, keeping in mind that the PEQ on the Axe is a little more generalized, so my settings are not usually as extreme. The same goes for if I feel like something does need a little compression to gel together.

Granted, I'm pretty much just using the Axe for recording right now. I'm not sure how well this method would transfer over to live performance. My guess... probably not very well.

 

[anne]

It took me forever to get good high gain tones. For the Aftermath, I settled on Boutique 2 with master at 10 (it's mid-gain) double cabbed to taste with PEQs to cut bass and fizz. I'm definitely alone on this one, but I avoid any and all drive blocks because of the way they smear the highs.

The PEQ is not very fun to work with in Axe-edit, and it's hard to sweep frequencies and play at the same time

USB playback?