Category: Series

All of the recurring features – #CoffeeAndKlon, First Impressions, #LongTermReview, New Arrivals – all in one place.

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Studio Diary #42: Why I Need To Support Different Guitars In One Preset

‘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.

In this post, I want to explain something that I haven’t seen other people do; namely, why I build support for different guitars into the same pedal platform patch.

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Studio Diary #41: Revoicing The Axe-FX 3 Pedal Platform Patch – Amp & Cab Requirements

‘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.

The heart of the preset is the amp & cab combination, so let’s get straight into that, and work out what I actually want.

Continue reading “Studio Diary #41: Revoicing The Axe-FX 3 Pedal Platform Patch – Amp & Cab Requirements”
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Studio Diary #40: It’s Time For A New Pedal Platform Patch

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.

So let’s start by taking a step back, and revisit how the Axe-FX 3 sits in my overall signal chain.

The discussion here applies to anyone who’s swapped real amp & cab for a digital modeller of some kind. It’s not specific to Fractal Audio’s Axe-FX 3; it’ll work with any modeller that supports the four-cable method (4CM for short).

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#CoffeeAndKlon 37: Why So Much Gear?

#CoffeeAndKlon is my (irregular!) Sunday morning magazine series, where I talk about whatever’s on my mind right now. There’s always coffee, and there’s normally chat about the Klon and its many competitors.

This week, I want to address a question (and associated sentiment) that crops up in comments from time to time: why do I try so much gear?

You’ll want to make yourself a drink first; this is going to be a longer post, as there’s a lot to unpack.

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(Belated) New Arrivals: December 2023 & January 2024

Yeah, I’m a little late with this. I’ve had a rough start to the year, and I’ll leave it at that.

Despite not blogging for months, I have been playing guitar … and enjoying a couple of new pedals that arrived over the festive season. Together, I’ve found them to be especially inspiring, and they’ve become my preferred signal chain for my Silver Sky.

Read on to learn about them.

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#TweedTone: Can I Dial In A Better Speaker Emulation For My Tweed Deluxe Amp?

I’m lucky enough to own a physical Tweed Deluxe amp. I also think that a Tweed Deluxe amp rig for home use has become so expensive in 2023, it’s difficult to justify. So I’ve started looking at alternatives, to see how they compare to the real thing.

Last time out, I sat down and built a preset for my Axe-FX 3 that gets pretty close to the speaker emulation in the UAFX Woodrow amp+cab sim pedal. My real Tweed Deluxe amp sounded really good through that.

Today, I want to continue tweaking the preset, to see if I can get my real amp sounding even better.

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