Quantum 1.05 update

What's new :
- I started using global blocks for my basic lead and rhythm sounds. These sounds have been tweaked a lot. Here's how they sound live :



- This preset, which has been requested by many :



- I changed the place of many presets in my bank A to have all those I use live closer to each other

There are also many tweaks here and there...

Quantum 1.01 presets update

I didn't record a proper video for my Quantum 1.0 presets, here's a short one for the 1.01 update :



See http://axefremen.blogspot.com/2015/09/quantum-10-presets.html for all the basic information.

What's new :

- I made my basic high gain lead & rhythm sounds brighter, I think they were too dark in version 1.0. This affects presets 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 17, 19, 20, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 35, 36, 45, 47, 49 in Bank A (with display offset = 1)

- preset 19 now has three scenes, with different whammy settings : scene 1 = 1 octave, scene 2 = 2 octaves, scene 3 = both, which generates funny intermodulation distortion and dissonant effects

- preset 94, which uses two custom mixes of new Ownhammer cabs (one is the Justin York Mesa 2x12, the other the Bogner 4x12, see the video for the recipes)

- preset 95, which also uses two new cab mixes from the Ownhammer Justin York Mesa cabs. I used it for the "Fountain of expression" solo (right click to open in a new tab) :

https://youtu.be/lXlT9AuJ6vs?t=5m15s

- preset 180 also uses the new Ownhammer Bogner 4x12 cab (recipe in the video)

- I also added an old version of the "With or without you" U2 preset, the one used for that video, with the "ebow" effect generated by one pitch block, and a sequencer pattern  by the other. Amps and cab settings have been updated



There are also various minor tweaks here and there...

Live videos with Atomic Amplifire

Here's three videos of a recent gig where I used the Amplifire. I'm often under mixed, I only had a wedge controlled by the soundguy, and the friend with the camcorder had the FOH speakers in his back.  It was a jam night, there were around 30 singers and musicians, and a proposed setlist of rock classics, we didn't rehearse anything and most of these musicians never played together before ! It was really great nonetheless, I think I played my first song at 9:30 PM and the last one at 3:05 AM :)

Videos : three songs reamped through the Axe

I reamped the guitars from a few songs my (now inactive) band, Feedback, released in 2009 through the Axe-Fx with Quantum firmware. On the original album, "A moment of transition", I used Amplitube 2/Revalver 2 and lot of post-processing. Here, there's no post-processing at all, in "Fountain of expression" I just used my "Modern Savage" preset (one side for each rhythm track) with Ownhammer's Justin York's Mesa 2x12 and 4x12 cabs, and made a new lead preset with one of these cabs. In "Ten thousand years" I used my Bogner blue lead preset with some multiband compression mid scoop/bass and treble boost, and in "Twilight zone", the "Modern savage" preset again, also with mid scoop/bass and treble boost through the multiband compressor block. The lead in "Fountain of expression" is a new recording, I didn't have a rhythm track for this one. Note that the 2009 DI tracks were recorded with a Jackson Professional, which sounds quite different than my current Ibanez with Bare Knuckle pickups.

Atomic Amplifire 2.0 : videos and presets

Besides the Axe-Fx II, I'm also a Studio Devil/Atomic Amplifire pedal user. I did a few videos displaying some sounds, I won't post them all here because some are obsolete (older presets) but there's this one about using it with pedals. Unfortunately the recording level was too high and there's clipping in some parts, apologies for that...



This one shows my latest presets, for firmware 2.0 :



A few of those are from Amp Factory, but heavily modified, except 2 which are stock. I sort my presets by type of sound, from clean to high gain (001-059). When I have a gig, I just copy the presets I'll need to 060 and above, in the order I'll need them, as I configure the AmpliFire like this : footswitch 1 preset decrease, footswitch 2 preset increase, footswitch 3 boost on/off.

Quantum 1.0 presets

Some people have been requesting them, here's my three banks of Quantum 1.0 firmware presets.

I used them to record these two videos :





Some details about my banks

Note that I use display offset 1 so my presets are from 001 to 384

Bank A
1-64 : main presets, for live. Many are song-specific.
65-92 : 5 scenes preset collection ( http://axefremen.blogspot.com/2015/05/1812-focus-on-5-scenes-presets.html )
94-101 : blank presets, I do the programming here.
102-128 : various presets, for the fun or testing purposes.

Bank B
129-212 : high (and sometimes mid) gain presets sorted by amp model.
217-221 : a few Vox amps presets, for U2 etc.
223-256 : blues and fusion presets, sorted by amp model.

Bank C
257-281 : Marshall presets
283-291 : special effects with crunch or high gain amps
298-323 : clean presets - most can be used as alternates to my go-to cleans (004 and 012)
324-367 : special effects with clean amps
368-384 : synth presets

* indicates that the preset is stock or from another user, and not or barely tweaked

** indicates that the preset is stock or from another user, and that I tweaked it a lot. Almost all the from 324 to 367 use my own amp and cab settings.

[TM] at the end of a preset name = tonematch of a Kemper profile. Each of these presets uses a specific IR captured from the profile, the key of the sound is here (plus the amp matching by ear), the tonematch block only does a small fine tuning. I don't share the IR from the commercial profiles so those presets will be useless unfortunately - but you can always try them with stock IRs.

Custom harmonizer scales
"A tout le monde" preset : Custom scales 1 & 2
"Hurricane LD"  preset : Custom scales 9 and 10
"Arabic harmonies" preset : Custom scales 3 (Voice 1) and 4 (voice 2)
"Major penta harmonies" preset : Custom scales 5 (Voice 1) and 6 (Voice 2)

Custom scale 1 : starting from 'A' SHIFT : 3, 3, 5, 5, 4, 3, 4, 3, 3, 4, 3, 4
Custom scale 2 : 3, 3, 5, 5, 5, 3, 4, 3, 3, 4, 3, 4
Custom scale 3 : 4, 3, 4, 4, 3, 4, 4, 4, 3, 4, 3, 3
Custom scale 4 : 7, 9, 9, 8, 7, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 6, 7
Custom scale 5 : 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4, 5, 4, 3, 4
Custom scale 6 : 8, 7, 8, 7, 8, 7, 7, 8, 7, 7, 8, 7
Custom scale 9 : 4, 5, 4, 3, 4, 3, 3, 4, 3, 4, 3, 5
Cutom scale 10 : 4, 5, 4, 3, 5, 3, 3, 4, 3, 4, 3, 5

Write to me at thibderob@yahoo.fr or d3usxm4ch1n4@gmail.com for questions.

Drive pedals shootout + Firmware 19 presets

Although I'm mostly an "amp distortion" kind of player, I thought about doing this shootout for a while, and specially when the drive models were "G3'd" in firmware 19. This is a general overview, not an exhaustive one, as some models works better as boosters, others as drive pedals in clean amps ; and some pedals works better with specific amp models etc. : the Xotic BB Preamp works great on a Mesa Lonestar (Andy Timmons), MXR Distortion+ on a Hiwatt (David Gilmour) etc...



Here's the timeline of this demo :

0:00 The "BB pre" model in a slightly tweaked stock preset (I only touched the delay and reverb settings, amp and cab are stock) (also check this thread : http://forum.fractalaudio.com/axe-fx-ii-preset-exchange/101673-what-some-tweaks-can-do-stock-patch.html )
0:59 Various drive models as distortion pedals in a dual clean amp custom preset
5:57 Various drive models used to tighten/boost high gain amps. I used a "Rose of Sharyn" DI track for that.

18.12 - Focus on 5 scenes presets collection

I recorded a proper demo for the "5 scenes" presets :


One more video for the road :

Firmware 18.12 presets

'sup guys ?

Time for a little update...

Pay attention to new presets 074 to 096 (74 and 75 were already there but I tweaked them a little), I worked a lot on these. And it wasn't always easy :



Above, I'm trying to work on preset 078, 5153 green 5 SC. It's from a new collection of presets where I use one amp, one cab, and set it with various amount of gain through five scenes - from clean (or almost clean) to high distortion. Scene 1 is clean, and from scene 2 to 5 it goes dirtier. It was an interesting experiment : first, most of the time, the clean sound (scene 1) is not as clean as I'm used to on my basic presets ; and the lead sound (scene 5), too, is often less polished (more raw) than what I normally use. Having to use one IR for the various amount of gain was also interesting. I find these presets very useful for jamming in many styles.

I also updated presets 131 to 134, which are tonematches of free Kemper profiles using the MKIIC+. Those from my firmware 18.08 banks were OK but as the amp model changed, I had to redo the amp matching, and borrow my friend's KPA for this.

Also new : presets 072 and 073, and some more KPA tonematches (presets 204, 205, 264, 268, 272, 285)

See my previous posts (firmware 18.07 and 18.08) for more details.

Firmware 18.08 update

This is a small update, but an important one, as my main high gain amp, the MKIIC+, as been G3'ed in firmware 18.08. This mean changes to 33 presets in bank A.

Here's a video I did while I was tweaking the MKIIC+ (I use the Bright/Deep version). The final version is slightly different.



Apologies for the low framerate, I recorded that to test a capture mode of my webcam. As the clothes I'm wearing suggest, I didn't plan on uploading it, but as it was a fun jam. Apologies also for the clams and "oops" moments, I'm not in my comfort zone when I improvise over jazzy chord changes...

Besides the MKIIC+ updates, the novelties are :
- a test preset in bank A called "Mesa LD paracomp" where I'm testing post-amp parallel compression, focused on the mids (that's why I used a filter block in bandpass mode)
- Bulb's presets in bank B and C. I changed the user cab for the clean one in bank C
- small tweaks to the Herbie stock presets in bank B

And two new presets, using the D30 and AC20 :



Here, each scene selects various input trim and input drive settings, from clean (scene 1) to crunch (scene 2-3) to lead (scenes 4-5)

Check my previous post ( http://axefremen.blogspot.com/2015/04/firmware-1807-presets.html ) for other details regarding my banks and user IRs

Firmware 18.07 presets

You know the drill...



About the presets

Bank A
1-69 : main presets, for live. Many are song-specific.
70-99 : blank presets, I do the programming here.
100-128 : various presets, for the fun or testing purposes.

Bank B
129-203 : high gain presets sorted by amp model.
208-212 : a few Vox amps presets, for U2 etc.
214-256 : blues and fusion presets, sorted by amp model.

Bank C
257-289 : Marshall and Marshall clones presets - some other Marshall-like amps are in 129-203, because used for higher gain)
291-299 : special effects with crunch or high gain amps
301-324 : clean presets
325-362 : special effects with clean amps
363-384 : synth presets

* indicates that the preset is stock or from another user, and not or barely tweaked

** indicates that the preset is stock or from another user, and that I tweaked it a lot. All the 325-362 presets use my own amp and cab settings

Some recent videos

I don't update my blog often, I know... Here's a few videos I uploaded these last months.

First, Linley Marthe, a friend pursuing a successful musical career. Among others, he played for Joe Zawinul. I was the first journalist in Mauritius to write an article on him, he was maybe 16 years have a time. While he was in holidays here a few months ago, I invited him to test the Axe-Fx II. The amazing thing is that he didn't touch a bass guitar at all for two months before this day ; I had to borrow a Jazz Bass with almost dead strings for him. Here's a few stolen moments.



I also borrowed a friend's Kemper for some tonematching fun, here's the result. Note that I redid those and a few more since, for firmware 18.07



Here's a short video about an useful Cab-Lab tip. I use the search feature to find specific mics and compare them with the auto audition feature.



Just for the fun, a recent gig in which I was a guest

Axe-Fx II presets - Firmware 17.03 update

A quick firmware 17.03 update...

What's new :
- a few new personal presets, like the one I used for these videos :






- some presets from other users (Yek, jazzhooligan, Victor Mancini...), identified with a * or ** (* = no or small tweaks, ** = bigger tweaks)
- some new user IRs (see screenshot), mostly from FAS cab pack 7
- presets level in bank B, and beginning of bank C, adjusted using the RMS utility. Most for rhythm playing, some are for lead so a little bit louder.
- The presets from my "high gain starting pack" are now merged with other presets in bank B (sorted by amp model)