‘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.
Today, I want to briefly talk about the consequences of (what is probably) Fractal Audio’s greatest strength: their regular stream of firmware updates to make their products get closer and closer to the real amps that they’re replacing.
Table of Contents
- A Bit of Background
- My Project: Building Pedal Platform Presets
- Moving To Firmware 27.00
- Final Thoughts
A Bit of Background
What Is Fractal Audio’s Mission?
From the outside, as a customer who lurks on the Fractal Audio forums, it looks like the Fractal Audio team are driven by a singular goal: to make their amp modelling indistinguishable from real amps.
“Digital convenience, analogue parity.”
If they had a company motto, that would be a pretty good one.
How Does Fractal Audio Achieve This?
Fractal Audio are constantly looking to make additional breakthroughs in their amp modelling techniques – and to get those out the door in new firmware.
New firmware doesn’t just include improved amp modelling. It normally delivers bug fixes and new and/or improved effects too. (Although amp modelling is what everything thinks of Fractal Audio for, I bought my Axe-FX 3 because it’s a fantastic effects processor.)
And (very rarely) new firmware also drops a completely new feature, such as DynaCabs. Or it adds a new amp (such as the FAS Stealth Blue in the upcoming Firmware 27).
So there’s often real incentive to go and grab the latest firmware.
What Are The Consequences?
Whenever the amp modelling techniques change, the guitar tones change.
I can’t speak for how it works in competing units (I don’t own any), but it’s rare for Fractal Audio to change the tone of a single amp at a time. In Fractal Audio’s firmware, multiple amps share common modelling algorithms (because the real amps share some common circuit designs).
So new firmware normally means a whole bunch of amps change in tone. Sometimes, all the amps change.
Do Not Upgrade Mid-Project
If you’re working on any sort of recording project, you probably don’t want your guitar tone to change part-way through.
You’ll need a consistent, repeatable tone, so that you can go back and revise a track at any time. You might also be looking for a consistent tone across multiple tracks.
Whatever the reason, the only way to be sure of a consistent guitar tone for a lengthy period of time is to stick with your current Axe-FX 3 firmware. If you upgrade, you have to accept that you can’t match your old tone any more.
Arguably, I’m in this position. I’m currently mid-project. It’s just not a recording project …
My Project: Building Pedal Platform Presets
Built On Firmware 25
I’ve been building my pedal platform presets for Firmware 25. I started on Firmware 25.02 iirc, and then shifted to Firmware 25.04 when it came out.
As far as I can tell, my two main presets – 57 Vintage and 65 Clean – weren’t affected by the amp modelling changes in Firmware 25.04. And I was on Firmware 25.04 by the time I started building my JTM-based preset.
Since then, I’ve remained on Firmware 25.04, skipping both Firmware 26.00 and 26.01. (There was a Firmware 26.02, but it never made it out of beta.) There are amp modelling improvements in Firmware 26.00, but I wanted a stable target to work with.
However, Firmware 27.00 is on the horizon (technically, it’s late; for the first time ever, the flagship Axe-FX 3 is lagging behind the FM-3 and FM-9 firmware!), and it brings major improvements to amp modelling that affect the presets I’m building.
Building The Presets Has Taken A Lot Longer Than I Planned
When I started work on my pedal platform presets, I honestly thought I’d be done within a month or so. And (arguably!) the key parts were complete by mid-July, once the gain-staging was done.
There’s still a lot more to do, though, including:
- tools for supporting multiple guitars
- tools for supporting outlier drive pedals
- compression tools
- delay and reverb
- managing noise
- adding spice and sauce for fun
- which controls to add to the front panel
Realistically, that’ll take me the rest of the year to do.
It didn’t help that I’ve lost the last six weeks to emergency surgery and recovery! But that’s real life – and all of us home hobbyist amateurs will have life events that have to come first.
Projects take many months at a time, if not even longer!
Moving To Firmware 27.00
What’s So Tempting About Firmware 27.00?
Firmware 27.00 will deliver three amp modelling improvements that (together) should have a noticeable effect on my audio demos for the blog:
- improved phase-inverter modelling (from Firmware 26.00), adding more “weight” to the guitar tone;
- improved power-amp modelling, adding more “punch” to the guitar tone; and
- improved preamp modelling, to react more like a valve amp when there’s a drive pedal in front.
Professional YouTubers have been using the Axe-FX 3 for pedal demos for years, so it’s not like there’s anything wrong with how the Axe-FX 3 currently takes pedals.
Firmware 27.00 should just sound even better.
A Good Time To Move
It’s been good for me to spend so long on Firmware 25.xx.
The stability has helped me figure out how to use the Axe-FX 3 to chase the tones that I want. My approach has evolved from “one preset to rule them all” into more of a toolkit mindset. When I run into a pedal that needs a tailored approach, I’ve now got a bunch of techniques to reach for.
I’ve also had some very positive feedback from a couple of pedal builders. Very unexpected, and very kind of you both!
So, from a guitar tone point of view, I think that the pedal platform presets – and my approach to using the Axe-FX 3 – are in a good place. I should be able to move to Firmware 27.00 without too many problems, and without losing a lot of time.
I Want A Stable Setup To See Me Into 2025
There’s a few things that I really want to get started with soon:
- Monday Blues – exploring the world of pedals based on the Marshall Bluesbreaker circuit.
- Tweed Tone Pedals – documenting my collection of pedals that chase the sound or vibe of old tweed amps.
- Klon Klones – documenting how different Klon klone pedals compare to my real Klon KTR.
All of these have something in common: they’re all about comparing sets of pedals across multiple blog posts. I think those comparisons will be far more useful if they’re recorded using a stable setup.
I think I’ll produce more useful comparisons if that stable setup is built around Firmware 27.xx.
Firmware 27.00 … or later?
I can’t know in advance whether Firmware 27.00 will be what I settle on, or whether there’ll be important (to me) improvements or bug fixes in (say) Firmware 27.01 or 27.02.
I’m going to start with Firmware 27.00, see how that goes, and then see what’s in the next firmware release (or two) before I decide which firmware version to stick with for a few months.
It probably means that I won’t start work on these pedal series until November. I’m okay with that. It gives me the opportunity to get a few in the can (so to speak), with a view to starting to publish them in January.
And it gives me time to finish off the pedal platform presets this year – and to finally publish them up on Axe Exchange.
Final Thoughts
For the first couple of years, I upgraded the firmware on the Axe-FX 3 early and often. I didn’t need sonic stability; the upgrades brought big improvements in tone and effects; and skipping lots of firmware can make upgrades a little more challenging.
I’ve really enjoyed having a stable platform to learn and work with this year.
So much so, that I think I’d be better off sticking to this approach for 2025, and only upgrading the Axe-FX 3 firmware when I need to.
I can’t sit here and say that I’ll stick with Firmware 27.xx (or whatever I settle on) for the whole of 2025. I simply don’t know what improvements Fractal Audio will ship next year, or whether I’ll run into bugs that I can’t live with (very rare, but it has happened to me).
But I tell you what – if I can, I’ll try and limit myself to only two or three firmware upgrades next year, and take advantage of the stability to make the audio demos more comparable between blog posts.