Grateful Dead Music Forum

I, for one, would be interested. Not an AxeFx owner yet...but I think one will be in my future...and any info would be appreciated. And a thread complete with some music theory...damn this is a good site.

playingdead wrote:

seamones wrote:Are you considering taking this on the road?

Not unless DSO invites me to sit in ... LOL

If people are interested, I can provide a more detailed glimpse at how I have things set up as far as the routing and theory on the AxeFX.

From what I hear Playin you had better give them a call QUICK if your serious.(DSO that is)

playingdead wrote: If people are interested, I can provide a more detailed glimpse at how I have things set up as far as the routing and theory on the AxeFX.

OK i'll bite, more on the Axefx configuration and not so much the routing. I'm not into completely ripping your Garcia patch, but more of a detailed comparison of what i've come up next to what you've come up w/. The reality is I would love a sysex of your setup so I could look at each block. That goes for anyone here w/ an Axefx. I'm curious. I suspect that some folks have taken a road less traveled to get to what they think is the sound.

This is how my Garcia preset is set up. The name -- M4 S E120 Loop 1 refers to what I used modeling this tone with the "real" equipment ... Egnater M4 with T/D module for the amp, E120 speakers (custom impulse response file taken off my Hard Truckers 2X12 with E120s). Loop 1 is basically the effects loop I describe below; there is also a Loop 2 setting which is identical except for reversing the drive on the envelope filter, for the 76-79 Dancin' in the Streets sound. That's the only time I don't use Loop 1 during a show.



Following the white lines, which represent the digital "cables": The stacked blocks on the lower left represent the effects only, running through the guitar's effects loop. It starts from the bottom left, with a filter block to bring the signal level up louder, to the pitch (octave), wah #1 (q-tron), drive (distortion +), a send then a return that gets it up to the next row and has no effect on tone, phaser (10-stage ala phase 100, rate linked to expression pedal), wah 2 (wah wah pedal linked to expression pedal), delay (tempo linked to tap switch on ground control pro).

The FX Loop block on the right is where either just the straight guitar signal starts, or the signal from the guitar's effects loop hits. In other words, the guitar signal is either "entering" the chain down on the lower left Filter block, or it's starting right at the FX Loop block and never seeing those other blocks, just like the physical effects loop on the Garcia wired guitar. Basically, throwing the toggle on the guitar itself adds in all those effects blocks, and those individual blocks are either active or bypassed by hitting the assigned switches on my Ground Control Pro.

Then we have the amp block, a parametric EQ which is basically a little midrange shaping I came up with A-B'ing the AxeFX setup against my big "real" Jerry rig, then the cabinet block with the E120 IR active, without a microphone simulation turned on. The spring reverb I like to run in parallel, sounds a little crisper and springier that way to me, so it splits off the signal after the parametric EQ block and gets mixed back in with the signal from the cabinet block. That goes out through one last filter block, which is basically a 6 decibel clean flat boost that I like to kick on during my solos.

I own the AxeFX Ultra, which has more memory and a slightly improved reverb algorithm and pitch block algorithms. You can see at the top right that this particular preset is taxing the CPU at 74 percent of its capacity. If you get up in the upper 90s on capacity, you can have some issues.

The amp portion of it is pretty simple. I don't use any power amp simulation, just the basic Fender style preamp controls, a little tweak to the presence frequency and a couple of other things, then the parametric EQ to boost the mids a bit more.

The rest of it is in your fingers!

I'm not into completely bogarting your Garcia patch, but

...I'm not sure "bogarting" is the correct term...that would be more like me getting it from Vic and not sharing with the rest...That said...I would be interested in Vic's patches. One thing that keeps me from getting an AxeFx is I am a complete no-nothing when it comes to programming this kind of stuff. I know what I like the sound of but have no knowledge of how to get it...so someday Vic I may come to you pleading for a great deal of help.

Playing with the AxeFX is actually a great way to learn how things work and affect the sound. I didn't know a tonestack from a bright cap when I started messing with it. And the first set of presets I came up with were way, way convoluted ... two separate amps, lots of EQs and other things, much more CPU taxing. Less, ultimately, turned out to be more.

In the spirit of this community, I'm happy to advise anyone who goes this route. But I will also point out, as Hogan and Nashville Mike and the other AxeFX guys on here can probably attest to, that tweaking the various parameters is half the fun of the whole thing. And there are so many possibilities ... if you like Jerry's early 80s Garcia Band tone, where he used the Boogie, you can just start out with a Boogie preamp and build it from there.

The other thing I've noticed is this patch sounds terrific with my Tiger guitar. But if I plug my Suhr Strat, or PRS Custom 22 into it, it sounds terrible. Well, not terrible, but not Jerry-like at all. So, unless you have a Resurrection Tiger exactly like mine, the specific patch itself may not be of particular value to you.

jester536 wrote:

I'm not into completely bogarting your Garcia patch, but

...I'm not sure "bogarting" is the correct term...that would be more like me getting it from Vic and not sharing with the rest...That said...I would be interested in Vic's patches. One thing that keeps me from getting an AxeFx is I am a complete no-nothing when it comes to programming this kind of stuff. I know what I like the sound of but have no knowledge of how to get it...so someday Vic I may come to you pleading for a great deal of help.

You're right, i fixed it.
The Axe isn't that bad to get started w/. Keep it simple to start. When you start really diving into the minutue that's where it can get crazy, but you don't have to start there.

playingdead wrote: In the spirit of this community, I'm happy to advise anyone who goes this route. But I will also point out, as Hogan and Nashville Mike and the other AxeFX guys on here can probably attest to, that tweaking the various parameters is half the fun [...].

I've been having great fun with the Axe-Fx but having never owned the pedals I find it really hard to aim for anything but a completed tone. I'd really love to get a grip on the individual effects (been playing with the wah with reversed modifiers to get a Mutron type effect). I think a while back Vic was saying he had each effect saved separately and then built is patches by copying them in to the patches as required - that sounds like a great way to approach things and to define personalized garcia-rig based tones.

Thanks for some additional info on your setup Vic - has given me some new avenues to explore

Over the A- It looks like you are playing a mix of A dorian, and the chromatic notes you add in makes it an A blues scale also

It's bluedorian!

playingdead wrote:Playing with the AxeFX is actually a great way to learn how things work and affect the sound. I didn't know a tonestack from a bright cap when I started messing with it. And the first set of presets I came up with were way, way convoluted ... two separate amps, lots of EQs and other things, much more CPU taxing. Less, ultimately, turned out to be more.

In the spirit of this community, I'm happy to advise anyone who goes this route. But I will also point out, as Hogan and Nashville Mike and the other AxeFX guys on here can probably attest to, that tweaking the various parameters is half the fun of the whole thing. And there are so many possibilities ... if you like Jerry's early 80s Garcia Band tone, where he used the Boogie, you can just start out with a Boogie preamp and build it from there.

The other thing I've noticed is this patch sounds terrific with my Tiger guitar. But if I plug my Suhr Strat, or PRS Custom 22 into it, it sounds terrible. Well, not terrible, but not Jerry-like at all. So, unless you have a Resurrection Tiger exactly like mine, the specific patch itself may not be of particular value to you.

Very true. i find that it is very sensitive to the pickups. My Garcia patch sounds great with my Strat(jerry-fried) but it sounds nothing like GArcia's tone with my Carvin. I find this to be true with different FRFR speakers also.

Over D its mostly major. With passing notes. Gives it a mixolydian feel almost.

Hey Vic,

Been having moderate success getting some of the effects set up - but am having a bit of a challenge understanding the settings for the Mutron sim. The reverse envelope seems to be initially triggered by the threshold value but I can't figure out a way to get it more responsive in terms of how I attack the stings. It seems to hop from 100% (start) to 0% (end) immediately as soon as I hit that threshold value. My understanding is the start -end travel should be determined by how hard the stings are played?

I've been through the posts over at the axe-fx forums but didn't really see this addressed. Any ideas?

My settings on it are:

Wah block
Frequency: 200hz
Resonance 5.00
Filter type: lowpass
Freq min: 200hz
Freq max: 1915hz
Tracking: 5.00

on the frequency modifier:
Source controller: envelope
Auto: off
Program change: off
Start 0
Mid 45.3
End 100
Off val: 0.5
Slope: 59.8
Scale: 100
Offset: 35.4
Damping: 0ms

I do feed it a nice, fat signal from the git-go using a filter block to boost the signal up about 15db (and can't recall exactly why I did that in the grand scheme of things), so experiment with that a little.

Adjust to taste