Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Guitars, Amps and Effects => Topic started by: Nadz1lla on April 23, 2009, 12:17:51 AM
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Shows how "out of the loop" I am, just heard one of these properly for the first time, didn't realise I was listening to an Amp modeler.... I have no words to describe it that are fit for a public, family friendly forum. Needless to say, I was fairly impressed by the "Amp" sound I was hearing, and when it turned out to be a modeler I made a sticky mess in my undergarments.
I've listened to some of Bulb's and Nolly's clips and I think I have found the be all and end all of my home recording needs. Just my luck this revelation had to come about just as I lose my job. :( Wonder how many years of washing cars it'll take me to afford one. £1500 or thereabouts? Well worth it though if the clips are anything to go by.
Anyone here who has one, have you used it Live at all? And if so, how is it, and how would you use it? (Through PA or some other arrangement.)
Please excuse the n00b questions, I've never been great at figuring this stuff out. :lol:
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yeah, they seem to be awesome ay. i think you can run it straight through the PA or turn all the cab simulation off and run it through a poweramp and cab.
Im starting to sell off all my amp gear since im moving overseas, might scope out one of these when i can afford to invest in gear again. but probably still a bit outta my price range unless i find a good job quick (like thats gonna happen these days)
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meshuggah plug their axefx's straight into PA systems
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Counting the moments until Hunter arrives ...
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lol I was just thinking the same as I was reading this!
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yeah, we need someone to break the forum again so he cant see it!!
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Yeah... where is he?
Wakey wakey hunter! :D
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Hunter to the Axe-FX phone please, Hunter to the Axe-FX phone........
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Yeah, I'm here, sorry, bit busy, too many amazing tones on tap here to hang around in forums... :lol:
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Haha! Proof that I need one of these! Amazing that Meshuggah just plug straight into the PA, I'd have thought they would be the kind of guys to use a power amp and cab. But then if they use the PA I have no excuse but to get one! :D
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Haha! Proof that I need one of these! Amazing that Meshuggah just plug straight into the PA, I'd have thought they would be the kind of guys to use a power amp and cab. But then if they use the PA I have no excuse but to get one! :D
Plus Clawfinger. The guy from CF is a regular in the Axe FX forum and provides his own library of speaker IRs for free. You can upload up to 10 IRs in the Axe. By the way, I recorded a sweep of my 4x12 Bogner and sent it to him, the IR has become very popular amongst FRFR players now :O)
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I've listened to some of Bulb's and Nolly's clips and I think I have found the be all and end all of my home recording needs.
Hah, I guess you liked them then!
You can either get them from the sole EU distributor for €2000, or you can do what I did and order one within the states, fly over, and bring it back with you (though I was going there anyway so I don't count that as part of the cost). The unit itself cost me around £1300 that way.
As has been said, you can run them direct into PA or interface or whatever or into a power amp, be it a dedicated power amp, or just the power section of your head/combo. There are also other connecting possibilities such as the one I am looking into, where I run my Diezel's preamp through the power amp/cab modelling section of the axe-fx to great line-level tone to send to PA, while I still have the Diezel's power amp hooked up so that I can get onstage monitoring via my cab.
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Yeah dude, totally liked them! Love the project you've got going with Bulb! Sounds as though this thing has a plethora of options for both live and home recording to take advantage of. Possibly one of the best innovations I've seen in a loooooong time. :D
Oh, by the way, is it good to go out of the box or would I need to go fiddling around with setting up impulses etc? I'm afraid I am much the n00b at things like that and if it becomes too complicated I will not get the best out of it, essentially wasting a lot of money on a dumb-ass who can't work everthing needed to run it! I am assuming it already has cab modelers? May sound like a silly question, hehe. Feel free to give me a virtual slap!
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is it good to go out of the box or would I need to go fiddling around with setting up impulses etc? I'm afraid I am much the n00b at things like that and if it becomes too complicated I will not get the best out of it, essentially wasting a lot of money on a dumb-ass who can't work everthing needed to run it! I am assuming it already has cab modelers? May sound like a silly question, hehe. Feel free to give me a virtual slap!
It is set up with 350 or so factory presets, though as is usually the case with modelling stuff, the presets are often designed more to show off the potential of the unit than to generate usable tones. That said, generally just dialing back the seemingly omnipresent reverb and delay on the factory presets often makes them much more usable, and they are a good place to start if you want to try your hand at the tweaking options available to you.
On the other hand, creating and editing patches is very simple compared with other modellers I've used. It took me about 10 minutes to get oriented and to understand how things work, then it took me about 4 or 5 minutes to create the patch you hear on the Snuggles tracks, though we did add some presence and treble after hearing it in the mix for the first time.
It already has cabinet models, lots of them in fact, Hunter is pointing out that there is also the possibility of adding impulses you have downloaded elsewhere or even created yourself too.
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Phroawrr! They do sound the bees knees.
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Ah awesome! Thanks Nolly and Hunter...for making me have to start saving again.... :(
:lol:
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i'm planning to get one but i started having a little suspect... the options are 1) paying it twice in europe 2) flying to the USA to buy one...
not what i expected... don't they ship to other countries?
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i'm planning to get one but i started having a little suspect... the options are 1) paying it twice in europe 2) flying to the USA to buy one...
not what i expected... don't they ship to other countries?
If you order direct from Fractal they won't ship it to Europe. That would be screwing over their sole EU distributor completely :lol:
I imagine things will get better - the Axe-FX is getting featured in the guitar magazines and seems to be creating a genuine stir outside the internet community of guitarists, so hopefully Fractal/their distributor will step up to the plate and provide easier ways to buy their products.
On the other hand, with the £ to $ conversion being pretty uncompromising these days, perhaps they won't be able to do anything about the end prices - as a small boutique company, Fractal can't have particularly large profit margins on their products, so the trade price that their EU distributor is buying at probably isn't that low. Add on the fact that they have to pay shipping and import duties, and of course, want to make a profit themselves, there might not actually be that much room for them to lower their prices.
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Cliff himself has said that their profit margin is already pretty much minimal. I doubt the prices will change any time soon to be honest. But let's face it, most of us would pay it anyway, it's the tone that matters, not the moolah. :lol:
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The price difference is from shipping, customs/VAT and retailer margin. Also the European distributor G66 install a better, silent fan as standard service, plus they are very helpful. They make a profit, but I don't think it's exaggerated.
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i'm always a bit perplexed when i see that something that costs little more than 1000 € is sold at 2000 €... if i bought it directly from the USA i'd pay not more than 50-70$ for the courier plus a 20% "ransom" after a month of wait in some custom office... so a pessimistic total of 1400 €. i don't think that any other country in the world has got taxes and custom policies as punishing as italy's. and that's what i, a private customer, would pay. of course distributors have better conditions, or there would be no sense in distribution.
so 600-700 € margin is not what i call a fair deal...
they do it because they've got the monopoly in europe.
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i'm always a bit perplexed when i see that something that costs little more than 1000 € is sold at 2000 €... if i bought it directly from the USA i'd pay not more than 50-70$ for the courier plus a 20% "ransom" after a month of wait in some custom office... so a pessimistic total of 1400 €. i don't think that any other country in the world has got taxes and custom policies as punishing as italy's. and that's what i, a private customer, would pay. of course distributors have better conditions, or there would be no sense in distribution.
so 600-700 € margin is not what i call a fair deal...
they do it because they've got the monopoly in europe.
Axe FX US Price: 1,799 $ => 1,360 €
Let's say with shipping: 1,400€
Customs/VAT (20%) =>1,680 €
New Fan + Installation (20 €) => 1,700€
Axe FX EU Price at G66: 1,599 €
I don't understand your problem or maybe am I making a mistake?
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Phroawrr! They do sound the bees knees.
Uh-oh, anyone else getting visions of Johnny taking an axe to his koch in order to improve his tone...
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i'm always a bit perplexed when i see that something that costs little more than 1000 € is sold at 2000 €... if i bought it directly from the USA i'd pay not more than 50-70$ for the courier plus a 20% "ransom" after a month of wait in some custom office... so a pessimistic total of 1400 €. i don't think that any other country in the world has got taxes and custom policies as punishing as italy's. and that's what i, a private customer, would pay. of course distributors have better conditions, or there would be no sense in distribution.
so 600-700 € margin is not what i call a fair deal...
they do it because they've got the monopoly in europe.
Axe FX US Price: 1,799 $ => 1,360 €
Let's say with shipping: 1,400€
Customs/VAT (20%) =>1,680 €
New Fan + Installation (20 €) => 1,700€
Axe FX EU Price at G66: 1,599 €
I don't understand your problem or maybe am I making a mistake?
no, my fault.
my hollow mumbling was based on two (one true, the other wrong) assumptions... the last time i gave a look to the fractal website the price for a standard axe-fx was 1.499.95$. i did not calculate the actual conversion in euros, was just guessing...
anyway nolly was talking about the ultra while i was talking about the normal unit, so i thought that 2000 € was tre price for a 1.499$ axe-fx...
fortunately i was wrong, i can still think about one of those... :)
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Phroawrr! They do sound the bees knees.
Uh-oh, anyone else getting visions of Johnny taking an axe to his koch in order to improve his tone...
An extension more than a circumcision I think Andy! :P I was also thinking of the new Koch, but I don't know....oh f*ck it why not! :P
Those AxeFX are amazing though, the recording possibilitys are endless. Do you fancy one (AxeFX) Andy?
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Do you fancy one (AxeFX) Andy?
I'm not sure I do yet Johnny - not at the price it has to go for anyway...
It's mainly because I'm happy with what my current beast does.
I only went the modelling route because I couldn't use my valve amp in the flat, and I wanted a recording solution:
1. I tried a POD 2.0 one day, was stunned, and took it home immediately. After a while I started getting frustrated that it didn't have the clarity I was after.
2. So I tried a POD XT Live to see if the newer XT technology from Line6 was as better as some were saying - it was... bought it and used it for a couple of years (still do for bass work, and some of my old guitar patches - and when I want to record accoustic stuff with the Variaxes).
However, I started to get into older guitar sounds, and then I started using BKPs. Most of the tones I was heading for were Fender amps or JTM45, and I found the XT was failing me in two areas for these models - a) I wasn't able to get the warmth in "just breaking up tones" that I can hear in my head for these amps, b) all modellors (even the axe, I understand from a website or forum dedicated to them - I read an article that explained it to me) all modellors suffer from a resonance thing that can occur at certain frequencies, it all depends on how you're using it on where you might get it or whether it's in the way for you. For me it was happening on my Fender/JTM45 models, I could hear it as an extra harmonic one or two octaves below the note you were bending on the g-string - not a big deal, hardly notices in a mix, but...
So...
3. I tried a VOX Tonelab LE about a year ago (after some posts by MDV). It's not as flexible as the POD, but the amp tones I want seem more alive, vibrant, warm... and there are a lot less resonance issues with the VOX for me (a different player might find its the other way round).
Through my studio monitors, at a decent volume, the VOX feels and sounds like I remember a valve amp feeling and sounding, with no (as yet!) annoying issues... so for me, spending over a grand to "improve" things when I'm not actually suffering any problems at the moment doesn't seem to be the route forwards :roll:
Having said that - I haven't managed to get anything sensible (for me) out of the VOX's plexi and more "modern" models (nor out their vintage 4x12 cab model with 30W drivers!)... if my musical journey moves in a direction that requires such amps, then I will be wondering how to justify an axe to the missus :lol:
I'm more likely to go down the "low wattage valve amp just-for-the-hell-of-it" route first... but I'm resisting it (quite easily) at the moment :D
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meshuggah plug their axefx's straight into PA systems
I thought it was Line6 heads?
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i don't know in the past, but now they use axe-fx for sure