Axe-FX II: Any Favorite Parameter Tweaks?

[JubileeMan 2555]

Just curious if any of you guys have a particular parameter you tend to always set first whenever making a model. Like Dynamics, or Power Sag, or even frequency responses of Speaker interaction...etc.

[Scott Peterson]

The only advanced tab parameter I make use of is the 'low cut' and when I do, it's minor and just depends on the amp. I use it on Mesa Recto stuff primarily.

6.0 essentially removed the need - IMHO - to need to use Dynamics, Sag, Speaker Resonance, etc.. You can use them to customize your tone, but I don't feel I need to touch them at all.

One fun one to mess with is the "Definition" parameter. I always end up putting it back to 1.00 but it's very interesting.

[shasha]

The transformer match. I always roll it down to .996, which seems minute, but it changes the feel a bit. I also like to go into the speaker cab, change the mid resonance to about 1800Hz, 1.8 for Q and about .5dB (all ballpark numbers). It gives it a little bit more cut and bite that I like. Not everyone digs that.

And one that people seem to dislike is the cabinet room area. I like just a little bit of air.

[aleclee]

Aside from the high/low cut params, I pretty much stopped tweaking amp geek params in 5.x. Apparently, I was a firmware version ahead of Scott.

I do occasionally use the MBC to tighten up low end on some brootalz presets.

[tvegas99]

subscribed

[tweedster]

The Marshalls with my PRS McCarty (humbuckers) are pretty muddy especially in the neck pickup position, so I tweak in the speaker section to cut the flub. I wonder if changing my pickups will help that out?

[MaxTwang]

Drive - turn it down a bit

Low/High cut - Turn up Low Cut, turn down High Cut to adjust for your monitoring system.

Speaker Resonance (Amp block) - slight tweaks produce amazing results. Also adjusting for your ears and monitoring system.

The default settings are really good, for me it's just tweaking for the specifics of the system I'm listening through.

[mmcm4]

I like turning up the Room Level in the Cab block when I'm using headphones, it adds some depth to the sound.

Room Level: 50%
Room Size: 2
Mic Spacing: 20%

Almost all of my patches use stereo cabs for a fatter sound.

For overdrives, I turn the drive down and the level up. It pushes the amp and helps tighten up the low end.

Also, I turn the Level up to +2.00dB in the delay block because I get a slight volume loss otherwise (when using heavy delay patches)

[Deaj]

With 6.0 I've yet to use any of the advanced tabs in the amp block when building a preset. The basic amp controls are getting the job done for me.

I have demo'd a few advanced parameters since upgrading to 6.0. The Definition control. It does seem to provide a more 'record ready' polished sound (much like the gen1 Axe FX v11.0) when turned counter-clockwise. Pretty cool! I've yet to actually use it but it's a nice addition to the tool box. The Speaker drive parameter seems like it could be useful for anything from adding a little character to an overdriven amp to pushing speakers waaaay too hard.

All of the other parameters mentioned thus far are well worth a look. The Speaker tab can be very helpful when pairing an amp model with an unusual speaker IR for the selected amp (i.e. Plexi normal amp / 6" Oval speaker IR -or- Hiwall brilliant amp / 8" Tweed IR). Scott Peterson's video tutorial provides a quick and easy approach to using this tab.

[Yek]

None except Saturation (the "Arredondo mod").

[Genghis]

Originally Posted by Yek

None except Saturation (the "Arredondo mod").

Yeah, that is one that I like on my hi-gain patches as well. I think that and the low-cut are the only Advanced tab features I go to these days. Occasionally I'll tweak some of the settings on the speaker tab, but much less since 6.0 came out.

After seeing a thread on the Fractal forum I'm revisiting the multi-band compressor on hi-gain sounds. I always dial it in so it's fairly transparent, leaving the mids to pass through it untouched, level on 0, highs just slightly taking a couple of dbs off the top with a very low ratio (about 1.5), and compressing the lows fairly hard while boosting the level a bit. Seems to give the oomph I like on the lows while keeping palm mutes under control. Still experimenting to find the right ratio on the lows.

[Gasp100]

I like messing with the cab delay to give a little schmear between two cabs in a stereo cabinet configuration. I also do light panning (~-15/+15) and usually end up with a standard (ie. nearfield cab) paired with one of Jay's FF cabs). Somethings I will drop back the level on one of the cabs ~-1. I also set the room tab to ~25% level, ~20% size, ~25% mic spacing depending on what I'm after.