‘Studio Diary’ is an occasional series where I talk about building a home recording setup for hobbyists and enthusiasts like us. I share my personal experiences, and the thinking behind some of the decisions that I’ve made along the way.
Fractal Audio have recently overhauled their amp modelling in the Axe-FX 3 / FM-9 / FM-3. And my recent dive into the Orange Getaway Driver has shown me that I need to revoice my signal chain. I’m taking this as an opportunity to re-evaluate everything about the pedal preset I’ve built for the Axe-FX 3.
I’ve just finished documenting the thought process behind the scenes that I will use for my beloved tweed tone pedals. Now it’s time to switch my attention to the scenes that most pedals will use: a ’65 Fender “blackface” tone.
Series Tracker
This is the seventh post in this series.
You can see the full list of these blog posts over on the dedicated FW 25 Pedal Platform Preset page.
Table of Contents
- Series Tracker
- An Upfront Caveat
- Requirements – A Preset For Tweed-Tone Pedals
- Requirements Discussion
- Choosing The Amp & Cab
- Dialling In The Amp
- Dialling In The Virtual Speaker Cabs
- Other Notes
- How I Auditioned These Settings
- Final Thoughts
An Upfront Caveat
In this blog post, I’m going to mention some extra EQ tools to help with dialling in support for multiple guitars. At the time of writing, I haven’t blogged about these EQ tools yet. Once I have, I’ll link to them from here.
Requirements – A Preset For Tweed-Tone Pedals
I’m using the MoSCoW system for ranking requirements:
- Must have
- Should have
- Could have
- Want
Must-Have Requirements
I don’t have many hard-and-fast requirements, because my needs here are very broad.
- I need a blackfaced-voiced amp and cab combination to use with the majority of pedals.
- I need this preset to support the three types of guitar voicing that I identified earlier.
Should-Have Requirements
There’s a few extra things that I need, to help me get the best out of some specialist drive pedals.
- It should be possible to swap out the DRRI-style speakers for early Marshall-style speakers.
- It should be possible to swap out the DRRI-style speakers for classic plexi-era Marshall speakers.
- It should be possible to swap out the DRRI-style speakers for modern-era Fender speakers.
Requirements Discussion
Why Is It Called The “Blackface” Voicing?
Generally-speaking, Fender’s vintage amps are named after their appearance.
- “Tweed” amps are named after the distinctive yellow cloth that was used to cover them.
- “Brownface” amps are named after the brown tolex covering that replaced the “tweed” era cloth covering. (This term also covers Fender amps that were covered in a blonde tolex.)
- “Blackface” amps get their name from their black control panel and black hat-style knobs.
- “Silverface” amps get their name from their highly-reflective metallic control panel.
When someone talks about a ‘blackface-voiced amp’, they often mean an amp that sounds like a Fender Deluxe Reverb or Fender Princeton Reverb from the “blackface” era.
Why Target The “Blackface” Voicing?
Somewhere along the way, the “blackface” voicing (aka “a Fender-style clean channel” or “an American-style clean channel”) has become the amp voicing that most drive pedals are designed for.
I think it’s because most drive pedals today are designed in the USA, where amps based on Fender’s circuits are far more common than anything else. The boutique pedal industry seems to have started with folks making pedals for professional musicians over in the USA, and it stands to reason that many of those musicians would have been using the Fender or Fender-style amps.
It’s become so prevalent that even non-American amp manufacturers (like Blackstar and Boss) have incorporated Fender-style clean channels into their amps. It’s basically the de facto standard voicing for pedal platform amps today.
No Such Thing As One Speaker To Suit Them All
I’ve already done some testing, and learned that that a one-size-fits-all solution … it works, but we can do better.
For example, Marshall-in-a-box pedals fall into three flavours:
- early Marshall tones (JTM45 and the like) – very common
- classic plexi-era Marshall tones (50w Super Lead et al) – most common
- 80’s hair metal Marshall tones (JCM 800) – quite rare
These pedals sound even better if I pair them with the kind of virtual speakers that the real amps would have used.
On top of that, it’s quite a common mod to change the speakers in a Fender combo amp – especially their modern valve amps. We do have some of those in the Axe-FX 3. It’s fun to experiment with those, to see if that mod makes a particular pedal sound even better.
In this blog post, I’m going to focus on the classic Fender DRRI speaker setup. I’ll do a follow-up blog post on what I’m calling the 65 Clean Speaker Toolkit block library.
Choosing The Amp & Cab
Going With What Sounds Best To Me
Early readers and Twitter friends may remember me talking about passing on the opportunity to buy a Fender Deluxe Reverb Reissue (DRRI for short) all the way back in late 2017.
To this day, that amp remains the single best-sounding pedal platform amp that I’ve played. Everything I put through it in the shop sounded fantastic.
If I could recreate that sound, I would. But I have not been able to.
Part of it is the passage of time. It’s going on for seven years now since I last heard that specific amp. I can’t recall the actual tone from memory any more; I mostly remember the pleasure I had from running pedals through it in the shop. I don’t have any recordings of it to refer back to.
And part of it is that I’ve never been sold on the Deluxe Reverb models in the Axe-FX 3. I can’t get them sounding right … I can’t get that classic slightly mid-scooped clean Strat tone from them. If anything, the mids sound pushed to me, the complete opposite of what I expect. Obviously, the problem is me; I must be doing something wrong with how I’m setting it up.
But I can get exactly that sound from the Princeton Reverb model, with no effort and no fuss. It just nails that tone.
So I’m going with that here.
Starting With Deluxe Reverb Cabs
The Princeton Reverb uses a 1×10 cab. But I really want to stick with 1×12 cabs for the extra low-end. This is the Home Tone blog – not the Recording Tone blog – and we home players do enjoy a bit of low-end in our tone.
So I’m going to pair the Princeton Reverb amp with Fractal Audio’s 1×12 Deluxe Reverb cab. That should give me that extended low-end that I want while still having the right characteristics for chasing the overall blackface voicing.
Dialling In The Amp
Choosing An Initial Amp Setup
Once again, I’m going with one of the seemingly classic Princeton Reverb settings: Bass and Treble above 6.
Compared to my 57 Vintage preset voicing, I’ve bumped both controls up a little higher this time around.
When I’m trying out a new (to me) pedal, sometimes I’ll end up dropping the Bass down to below 4. I find that very pedal-dependant.
Going Beyond The Real Amp
I’ve taken advantage of the Axe-FX 3’s advanced settings, and really bumped up the Presence control:
This helps bring out the detail around how the note attack varies from drive pedal to drive pedal, I find.
Mids Move Around A Lot
Just as with my 57 Vintage preset, I find that I end up moving the Mids control from 4 to 5 or 6 quite a lot. There doesn’t seem to be a single value that suits all pedals and guitars that I use.
When I was using my Marshall DSL 20HR as my pedal platform, I had to tweak the EQ controls every time I changed to a different pedal. In some ways, this isn’t really any different. It’s just taken me two years to accept that I should be treating it like a real amp, and that I shouldn’t be chasing a set-and-forget setting that doesn’t exist!
Low-End Resonance
The Depth control emulates low-end resonance that gets added in the power amp stage of a valve amplifier. By and large, it tends to clash with the low-end of pedals that I run through this preset.
So why keep it set above 0? It just suits how I approach a new (to me) pedal.
I’d rather start with (potentially) too much low-end resonance, and only turn it down if it’s a real problem. I guess hearing the problem reminds me that there’s a Depth control that I can go and tweak.
The One Big Tweak That I’ve Made
Yes, once again I’ve gone in under the hood and made a very non-standard change to the amp’s settings. In the 57 Vintage preset, I changed the power amp tube emulation.
This time, I’ve felt the need to adjust the speaker impedance curve emulation.
Here, I’ve turned down the emulated cab resonance to below 70%.
It’s mostly a decision based on what I’m hearing. I’m just hearing too much resonance for my taste (and my memory too!), so I’ve turned it down until it’s no longer annoying me.
Output EQ To Add Final Polish
This is probably me correcting for how my room sounds?
I’ve added a small EQ cut at 250 Hz to take away a little bit of boxiness from the final tone.
Dialling In The Virtual Speaker Cabs
I’m using three different speaker cab settings, one for each kind of guitar that I want to support.
For Most Guitars
Once again, I’ve gone with the classic SM57 and R121 mic combination, on a Deluxe Reverb cab:
I’ve also thrown in a little bit of a 1×10 Princeton Reverb cab too, just to add a little bit more detail into the mid-range. It’s just personal preference.
I’ve gone with per-virtual mic low cuts, so that I can apply a slightly larger cut to the virtual ribbon mic.
For Darker Sounding Guitars
For this scene, I’ve rebalanced the tonality of the three virtual mics by making the cabs sound brighter overall.
I found that this was necessary to help preserve each pedal’s note attack character (when A/B’d against the 4 Most Guitars scene).
There’s a lot less top-end coming from the guitar in the first place … but I don’t want to massively boost that top-end before it hits the pedal. Through trial and error, I found that I preferred to bring that detail back here in the Cab block instead.
I’m using exactly the same low cuts that I did for the ‘Most Guitars’ setting.
For Brighter Sounding Guitars
Here, I’ve done exactly the opposite, and reduced the brightness of all three virtual mics.
Again, through trial and error, I discovered that I preferred to tame the top-end of my Strat’s bridge pickup here in the Cab block.
This is just me not being a fan of just how bright and cutting a Strat bridge pickup can be. With these settings – and some EQ toys between the guitar and the pedalboard – my Strat bridge pickup can end up sounding closer to a Tele bridge pickup.
I’m using exactly the same low cuts that I did for the ‘Most Guitars’ setting.
Other Notes
Max IR Length Is Too CPU Expensive For Me
On the DynaCabs, I’ve had to set the ‘IR Length’ parameter to 1024.
I honestly can’t hear a difference between the 1024 and Max settings. But there is a noticeable CPU difference. The 1024 setting saves me about 7% of CPU, which is quite a lot.
Mis-Aligning The IRs To Smooth Out The Top End
This is another trick I’ve copied from Leon Todd.
I’ve put the three virtual speakers to be slightly out of phase. This has the effect of smoothing out the top-end of the tone just a little bit.
How I Auditioned These Settings
SOMETHING HERE
| Scene Name | Pedals Used | Guitars Used |
|---|---|---|
| 65 4 Most Guitars | Mad Professor Amber Overdrive Wampler Pantheon Fire Custom Shop Carpe Diem MXR Duke of Tone Marshall Bluesbreaker Vintage Reissue Volta 1987 v2 | Gibson Les Paul (middle position) Gibson Les Paul (bridge position) Fender Postmodern Telecaster (bridge position) PRS Paul’s Guitar (bridge position) PRS Custom 24 (bridge position) |
| 65 4 Darker | Fire Custom Shop Carpe Diem Volta 1987 v2 | Fender Postmodern Telecaster (middle position) Fender Postmodern Telecaster (neck position) PRS Paul’s Guitar (middle position) PRS Silver Sky (neck position) |
| 65 4 Brighter | Fire Custom Shop Carpe Diem Volta 1987 v2 | PRS Silver Sky (bridge position) |
The basic idea here is that my 65 Clean preset should work well with most pedal and guitar combinations – pretty much anything that is meant to go into a clean amp.
Some amp-in-a-box pedals are a special case:
- most tweed-tone pedals sound best through different amp settings and through different speaker cabs (see my 57 Vintage pedal platform preset for these)
- some Marshall-in-a-box (MIAB for short) pedals sound best when I pair the Princeton Reverb amp with the kinds of speakers typically found with Marshall amps (see my upcoming 65 Clean Speaker Toolkit blog post for more details)
The ’65 4 Darker’ scene is built for two specific guitars, both of which put out a lot of low end: my Fender Postmodern Telecaster and my PRS Paul’s Guitar. This scene also includes some additional EQ tools between the guitar and the pedal to help make it all work.
And the ’65 4 Brighter’ scene is built to tame the top-end cut and brightness of a Strat bridge pickup. I’ve found that this scene sometimes also suits bridge humbuckers, but that’s definitely a bonus and not by design.
I did most of my testing on the ’65 4 Darker’ and ’65 4 Brighter’ scenes with the two plexi pedals (Carpe Diem and 1987 v2) because (in my experience) they’re both quite cutting and revealing pedals (but with very different mid-ranges).
I might have to come back and tweak these virtual speaker cabs some more as I get more experience.
Final Thoughts
I’m expecting that this will be the pedal platform preset voicing that you’ll hear in most of my demos from now on. Assuming, of course, that I don’t simply disappear into tweed-tone pedals for the rest of the year 😁. (No promises there!)
Whether I’m revisiting pedals I’ve tried before, or trying new (to me) pedals, I’m going to be hearing them in a way that I never have before.
I’m excited for that.
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