Official Axe-Fx Q&A thread!

[Shask]

Hey guys I'm wondering if you can help me get a tone:

This is probably adding a single effect to the chain but for the life of my I can't seem to figure out how to do it. Basically I want to make a patch which is my normal rhythm patch but with the (sorta generic) grainy low-fi sound to it for song intros and guitar call and answer parts.

and example is the start of this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYkLvH3Z4Ck

My thoughts were to add an EQ block and remove a lot of the bass but it's not quite right. any suggestions?

You could put an EQ after the amp and take out all of the bass and treble. Remove everything except from about 500hz to 1500 hz.

You could also use a drive pedal and change the "bit reduction" to make it all lo-fi sounding....

 

[theo]

Use this as your cab, It's a bad telephone impulse response taken from a CLA preset in a waves plugin.

Axe-Change - Download Other - CLA Telephone IR - by Clark Kent

 

[asher]

The GEQ on a default Ultra preset that does something close (I like messing with this one). Everything else is standard.

 

[fremen]

I do that on a preset, try "Diary of jane" in my bank A and use the expression pedal to morph between normal and "telephone" sound. Also bypass the pitch block

I also shared a preset live with another guitar player recently, Cenk Eroglu, ex-Winger member, check as from 5:54 :

He's using the Bogner Red model+Awesometime impulse, me Friedman + ThisOne impulse

My Axe was also used for a full gig by two guitar players last Friday, I tweaked a special preset for them, they were morphing from clean to drive using an expression pedal each. I panned them left/right (+30/-30) using the cab block. I will upload the preset and possibly a video soon, works very well !

 

[theo]

I'm keen to have a play with that morph block Fremen!
Love your work

 

[TripperJ]

Does anyone have a timeframe as to when the Axe-Fx II will be available again?

 

[mm66554]

I know there is probably an answer already here somewhere, I just need a quick solution. Got my Axe yesterday and have connected output 1 L to input 3 on my sound card... just read the manual and apparently it is 20Khz. I want the full 48Khz the Axe has to offer. Here is a diagram of my connections:

Red = my current connections.
Blue = what I THINK it should be.

So should I buy an s/pdif cable and use that instead? Once again sorry for the probably-already-posted question. Thanks.

 

[Shask]

Your question doesn't really makes sense. You can use either. The red is using the analog out. All devices are 20hz-20khz because that is what humans can hear.

You can also use the blue SPDIF also. That is if you want to use a digital connection. The sample rate is 48khz, but the frequency range is still 20hz-20khz.

You can use either. Depends on if you want to use the analog signal, or the digital signal. Using digital will put the signal through less AD/DA conversions, but you can also introduce more clock issues. Depends on your setup.

 

[mm66554]

Yeah I confused sample rate with frequency range. So using SPDIF will be equivalent to using Axe as a soundcard as audio interface doesn't degrade it by doinf A/D conversions? Is this what everyone is doing or are they going through the USB?

 

[AxeHappy]

There are so many options I don't there there is something that everyone is doing.

I feed the XLR out into one my interfaces pre-amps and go form there. I wouldn't recommend the Spdif connection for highest quality though. Cliff has recommened against it. And no, I'm not going to go find a link for that. You can dig this thread or the Fractal forums if you want.

 

[Volteau]

Hey guys,

So yesterday I ran into my first Axe Fx 2 mystery. I was reamping a guitar track, and everything was going fine, until I began reamping another track, when all of a sudden I started hearing this aweful static-y fizz/fuzz like sound, as if the track were horribly over-saturated (as if all the effects had a fuzz pedal in front of 'em). I tried exporting the track to see if it was the DAW messing up, and lo and behold, all the fizz was gone when playing it as a wav file. So I thought "ok, it's the DAW over-saturating the tracks (for some reason...), but since they export just fine, I'll just keep working until my ears bleed from the horrible static mess". Thing is, I bypass the Axe fx 2, and all the saturation is gone, so it's definitely the Axe II and not the DAW. This ever happen to any of you guys?

There is a pretty big qualitative difference between the guitar reamped before the horrible static and after. My guess is that it's the DAW trying to reduce the noise on the static version and by consequence makes the track sound weaker.

Here are the before and afters (they are labeled as such in the file names):

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28793505/Q.E. Before.wav

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28793505/Q.E. After.wav

The before one sounds bigger and with more atmo. I wish I could show you guys how horrible the static is, but since it doesn't export with the track, I can't.

BTW, I checked to see if it was the CPU overloading, but it's between the 55-57% (with the effect I'm trying to reamp the tracks with, which is the ABCD=ms, FB, Jitter, Mod one). It also happens with any other patch. I use a Shiver Clean preset which was always just that, clean, and now it distorts. Should also mention it happens whenever I play a note, not when it's idle. The sadness...

 

[Volteau]

Sooo quick update. I connected the Axe straight to the computer instead of the Axe>Interface>Computer method, and now the fuzz sound is gone. I can't get the ABCD=ms, FB, Jitter, Mod preset to sound like before, since now it doesn't sound so... spacey? If anyone could help me out with some tips, it would be greatly appreciated. Would be nice if someone could PM me the preset, as I am using FW 11.05 (sounds best to my ears) and I can't for the life of me find the presets for this FW version.

 

[Volteau]

Wow. Ok, so I woke up this morning to something pretty bad. I turn on my Axe 2, the splash screen comes on, the Input lights do their little dance, I see the name of the last preset I had used, and then it just restarts again and again. Any idea what might be causing this? I don't want to cause it further damage by doing a FW upgrade while it's on, so I'm kind of stuck here.

 

[lewstherin006]

Wow. Ok, so I woke up this morning to something pretty bad this morning. I turn on my Axe 2, the splash screen comes on, the Input lights do their little dance, I see the name of the last preset I had used, and then it just restarts again and again. Any idea what might be causing this?

Try holding recall I believe it is when you are starting it up. It sounds like you have a bad preset.

 

[Volteau]

Try holding recall I believe it is when you are starting it up. It sounds like you have a bad preset.

I love you. So much...

 

[chinnybob]

So I just updated to FW15, and whilst I expected it would change the sound of my presets, I'm now getting a load of extra noise on some of my high(ish) gain ones. On my go to preset I run an overdrive and a fuzz, with drive at 2 and 0 respectively, into the recto orange modern amp with the drive at 6, so nothing extreme, I've never had noise problems and now I do. If I bypass the overdrive it goes away but that's pretty important to the sound! It's the kind of thing where when I'm not playing I can just adjust the noise gate to get rid of it, but for example when I'm palm muting there's a lot of noise, the kind of thing I'd expect if I was running too much distortion... Thoughts anyone?

 

[Shask]

Global noise gate offset?

 

[chinnybob]

Global noise gate offset?

Tried it, but it had the same effect as the noise gate in the signal chain. The problem arises when I start playing, particularly during palm muted sections. Messing around with the settings, it still does the same thing with just one overdrive, really starting to annoy me now. Can't find anything in the release notes which would explain it...

 

[Seanthesheep]

Im having the same noise problems and its bad, on my gain patches i have to tighten up the noisegates to -15db at the minimum

 

[Webmaestro]

Based on what I'm hearing, I think I'll hold off on updating to 15. I"m still setting at FW 13-something and very happy with it.