Good day everyone! This is going to be a long thread...
Over the past several months (actually, over a year!), I've been thinking a lot about my entire setup from the amp, cab and FX standpoint.
Taking a quick step back, most of you likely don't know about my production. I'd say band, but we're not "just" a band. We are a group of between 50 and 60 people who perform solely in theatres. The music part is heavy metal. However, there are breaks in the music where dialog and acting take place, much like "normal" or classical theatre. We also have a chorus. Our lead female vocal is a classically, operatically trained Soprano and violinist. For the most part, we're pretty decent musicians, and our actors are superb. On top of that, fire dancing, real medieval combat, aerialists are part of the experience.
In any case, a pretty unique situation. If you want more info, www.HeavyMetalOpera.com is where to go.
I've played around with lots of pedals from other people who graciously let me borrow them. That was a good experience, and I got to play around with some cool gear. In this process I of course found ones I liked, didn't like, and had my mind swapped a couple of times when I tried ABCs version of XYZ pedal, instead of DEFs version. Now I start to understand this entire sub-forum and what you all go through. Thankfully, it didn't cost me a dime.
Having a beginning of an idea of things in my head, backed with that data, I started planning how I'd route all of this, especially for the changes and what not, given that my blocking on stage may keep me away from my pedal board, or I may only have a split second to change say, 5 pedals. Kind of difficult, so I was struggling with how to manage that.
At the same time, I've been looking hard at my amp setup. For our big theatre productions, we run no cabs on stage for anyone, and the drummer is in a full enclosure. Pretty dang quiet on stage, though we have two side-fills, and some of us run IEMs. Until recently, my setup has been simple. EBMM Bongos -> Line6 wireless -> SansAmp RPM -> FOH ==> IEM. Pretty nice, simple setup that did well.
With a few empty rack spaces, I begun thinking about buying more preamps and trying them out. Also, a rack compressor might not be a bad idea if I don't want one on the floor. Oh, and a tuner so I can see it from across the stage easily. Man, this is getting big, expensive, and complex! And I still have to explore which preamps to try, buy them, try them, sell them, rinse and repeat. Sometimes, a preamp may not even be available, so I might have to buy a whole head, run DI out of it and carry extra weight. Man, what a drag. There's gotta be a better option.
Well, better is relative. For me, I didn't want more complex, more expense, and a ton of time buying, selling etc. I was willing to sacrifice a little on quality, which of course lead me down the multi-FX path. I read review after review, listened to video after video, thread after thread here on talkbass too. Nothing at all jumped out at me as a good, complete solution. With multi-FX, they still are pretty terrible at amp modeling. And they give up a lot when it comes to the actual effects. Forget about expandability too... Line6 giving up on products and firmware is pretty much a given. Boss doesn't even really seem to bother with them in the first place. There has to be other options.
There are. Or rather, there is. It's by a tiny company right here in the US called Fractal Audio Systems (FAS for short). They have but three physical products: The Axe-Fx 2, The Axe-Fx XL and the MFC-101. The MFC is the MIDI controller for both Axe-Fx units.
From the get-go, this thing is by guitarists, for guitarists and little more. They do some light lip service to bassists by including an SVT model, a 400+ model, and an Orange AD200B. Good amps, but [Invalid or Expired Link Removed], very lacking. Digging into the cab emulation is a similar story... hundreds of cabs and mics, but little in the way of offerings for bassists. I'll get to it a bit later, but for a moment, realize that in this thing, it doesn't matter what the amp is used for in the physical realm. We're in DSP land, where magic happens.
Hesitant, especially at the $2200 (Axe-Fx 2 Mark 2) entry price (+$750 for the MIDI controller if you want FAS's), I simply waited. I did more reading, more listening. Not much out there in the realm of bass using this thing. Eventually, I said "heck with it", took the dive, and bought my own. I went "used" and saved myself a good bit of coin. First thing I did was a factory reset, followed by updating the firmware.
Let's talk about firmware really quickly. FAS, as a whole, is utterly *insane* about firmware. Presently, 15.07 is "current". On average, every 4-5 months a major (13.x, 14.x, 15.x) version is dropped, for free. These firmwares aren't just bug fixes. New functionality, new models, new cabs, new FX, new routing possibilities, new switching. The owner and main developer/visionary/engineer behind this thing participates on their forums, takes feedback (from a "wishlist" forum) and implements things. So community feedback is taken to heart. Awesome!
The Axe-Fx 2 has a *ton* of cool features. I haven't even begun to explore them all. I did, however, take a minute to screen cap some of the details you can tweak:
Lets start with amp tweaks:
The cab parameters:
I like this compressor:
And this is one feature I'm having a lot of fun with, scene changing:
Scene1 in Preset1:
Scene2:
Scene3:
With a single button press on my MFC, I can change either presets or scenes. So I can switch entire signal chains changing amps, cabs and which FX are even available (preset), and then I can toggle those on/off (scene). You can also use up to 4 expression pedals to change values on the blocks as well. In the above, between scene 2 and 3 I have a split second (not even 1 beat) to change all of those FX states. Wouldn't be very easy to do with physical pedals. With the MFC, just one button to change to each scene.
All in all, these things are freaking amazing. I'm entirely glad I went with it. In the above Scene2 screenshot, you see the green block "T-Match", next to the "Amp" block (2nd row, 5th column). That is what's called a Tone Match. Say you have a favorite FX pedal, chain of effects pedals, or heck, a solo track from your favorite bassist. You can use their software to grab a tone match of it, which then can be used as an effect block. In the above, my TM block is a B7K with settings I really liked. You could say, grab a multi-track of a Rush song, play just Geddy's track, grab a tone match of it, and effectively sound like him. Player ability aside, it's crazy accurate.
On top of that, you have the standard "IR" or Impulse Response you can take of speaker cabs. So if none of the several hundred built-in speakers work for you, you can take an IR of your favorite and use it as a block. Leave the power amp, cabs at home and run to FOH with your exact tone. The B7K tone match is identical to the "real deal" in the above. if I want different B7K settings, I'd have to take a new TM and place it in the grid, but that is easy to do.
Speaking of speakers, and in turn amps. In the "real world", playing bass guitar at high volume through guitar cabs isn't exactly a great idea. The amp itself will be fine, but the speakers are likely to go poof. But, in the Axe-Fx, it doesn't matter. I can use a 10W head with a 1x10 guitar speaker and it might actually sound *good*. Not a distorted fuzz box, but an interesting texture. Or of course, it might sound like crap. So even though there's only a few bass amps and cabs from factory, you're not limited to them. In a few of my presets, I actually like some of the guitar cabs. And, as you can see in the pics above, if you like a particular mic on your cab, you can put one on it, too. And even play with position, a little bit. There are quite a few people out there that have taken bass cabs and make IRs of them - a lot for free even.
I'm still exploring, tweaking, learning about this thing. I have about 9 or 10 hours behind this thing so far and I feel like I have only begun to scratch the surface.
The amount of config you can put into it is amazing. At the same time, the out of the box presets are good - for guitarists. For bass, the community is coming together for it, slowly but surely, but the "out of the box" experience leaves a bit to be desired.
There is a place called AxeChange used to share presets, IRs, TMs among users. There's quite a few pretty nice ones out there that are very useable with zero tweaking. Putting a preset, IR, or TM onto the Axe is three mouse clicks. Buy one, throw on a handful of presets and start tweaking. Also be quite prepared for 2 or 3 hours to go by in what feels like 15 minutes. Even though it's obviously geared to guitarists, everything in there works just fine for bass. Even the tuner tracks low A# just fine.
Overall "usability" is a piece of cake really. Programming the MFC is super easy. Making changes in Axe-Edit (the UI you see above) is a piece of cake as well. Knowing what to tweak and when is the difficult part, just like in real life.
Yes, it is pretty spendy, but it, IMO, is worth every cent. And, they even do a trial period of I believe 14 days - so you can try it out and send it back if you don't like it. Find a local person with one and ask if you can spend a few hours with it.
It's a very versatile and useful product for us in its current state. If we can get FAS on board to do more direct modeling of popular bass equipment, it will be simply unreal. As it stands, this thing has replaced a huge amount of equipment and headache for me, and I won't be looking back.
I truly hope some of you read all of this and ask me questions. I'll try to take some recordings and post them here for you to hear over the next few weeks. I know this product has been talked about here, lightly, in the past, but I strongly feel this thing deserves a lot more attention from the bass community. If wanted, I'll also share any presets that I build here for you to play with and tweak.
TL;DR? Too bad.
Over the past several months (actually, over a year!), I've been thinking a lot about my entire setup from the amp, cab and FX standpoint.
Taking a quick step back, most of you likely don't know about my production. I'd say band, but we're not "just" a band. We are a group of between 50 and 60 people who perform solely in theatres. The music part is heavy metal. However, there are breaks in the music where dialog and acting take place, much like "normal" or classical theatre. We also have a chorus. Our lead female vocal is a classically, operatically trained Soprano and violinist. For the most part, we're pretty decent musicians, and our actors are superb. On top of that, fire dancing, real medieval combat, aerialists are part of the experience.
In any case, a pretty unique situation. If you want more info, www.HeavyMetalOpera.com is where to go.
I've played around with lots of pedals from other people who graciously let me borrow them. That was a good experience, and I got to play around with some cool gear. In this process I of course found ones I liked, didn't like, and had my mind swapped a couple of times when I tried ABCs version of XYZ pedal, instead of DEFs version. Now I start to understand this entire sub-forum and what you all go through. Thankfully, it didn't cost me a dime.
Having a beginning of an idea of things in my head, backed with that data, I started planning how I'd route all of this, especially for the changes and what not, given that my blocking on stage may keep me away from my pedal board, or I may only have a split second to change say, 5 pedals. Kind of difficult, so I was struggling with how to manage that.
At the same time, I've been looking hard at my amp setup. For our big theatre productions, we run no cabs on stage for anyone, and the drummer is in a full enclosure. Pretty dang quiet on stage, though we have two side-fills, and some of us run IEMs. Until recently, my setup has been simple. EBMM Bongos -> Line6 wireless -> SansAmp RPM -> FOH ==> IEM. Pretty nice, simple setup that did well.
With a few empty rack spaces, I begun thinking about buying more preamps and trying them out. Also, a rack compressor might not be a bad idea if I don't want one on the floor. Oh, and a tuner so I can see it from across the stage easily. Man, this is getting big, expensive, and complex! And I still have to explore which preamps to try, buy them, try them, sell them, rinse and repeat. Sometimes, a preamp may not even be available, so I might have to buy a whole head, run DI out of it and carry extra weight. Man, what a drag. There's gotta be a better option.
Well, better is relative. For me, I didn't want more complex, more expense, and a ton of time buying, selling etc. I was willing to sacrifice a little on quality, which of course lead me down the multi-FX path. I read review after review, listened to video after video, thread after thread here on talkbass too. Nothing at all jumped out at me as a good, complete solution. With multi-FX, they still are pretty terrible at amp modeling. And they give up a lot when it comes to the actual effects. Forget about expandability too... Line6 giving up on products and firmware is pretty much a given. Boss doesn't even really seem to bother with them in the first place. There has to be other options.
There are. Or rather, there is. It's by a tiny company right here in the US called Fractal Audio Systems (FAS for short). They have but three physical products: The Axe-Fx 2, The Axe-Fx XL and the MFC-101. The MFC is the MIDI controller for both Axe-Fx units.
From the get-go, this thing is by guitarists, for guitarists and little more. They do some light lip service to bassists by including an SVT model, a 400+ model, and an Orange AD200B. Good amps, but [Invalid or Expired Link Removed], very lacking. Digging into the cab emulation is a similar story... hundreds of cabs and mics, but little in the way of offerings for bassists. I'll get to it a bit later, but for a moment, realize that in this thing, it doesn't matter what the amp is used for in the physical realm. We're in DSP land, where magic happens.
Hesitant, especially at the $2200 (Axe-Fx 2 Mark 2) entry price (+$750 for the MIDI controller if you want FAS's), I simply waited. I did more reading, more listening. Not much out there in the realm of bass using this thing. Eventually, I said "heck with it", took the dive, and bought my own. I went "used" and saved myself a good bit of coin. First thing I did was a factory reset, followed by updating the firmware.
Let's talk about firmware really quickly. FAS, as a whole, is utterly *insane* about firmware. Presently, 15.07 is "current". On average, every 4-5 months a major (13.x, 14.x, 15.x) version is dropped, for free. These firmwares aren't just bug fixes. New functionality, new models, new cabs, new FX, new routing possibilities, new switching. The owner and main developer/visionary/engineer behind this thing participates on their forums, takes feedback (from a "wishlist" forum) and implements things. So community feedback is taken to heart. Awesome!
The Axe-Fx 2 has a *ton* of cool features. I haven't even begun to explore them all. I did, however, take a minute to screen cap some of the details you can tweak:
Lets start with amp tweaks:
The cab parameters:
I like this compressor:
And this is one feature I'm having a lot of fun with, scene changing:
Scene1 in Preset1:
Scene2:
Scene3:
With a single button press on my MFC, I can change either presets or scenes. So I can switch entire signal chains changing amps, cabs and which FX are even available (preset), and then I can toggle those on/off (scene). You can also use up to 4 expression pedals to change values on the blocks as well. In the above, between scene 2 and 3 I have a split second (not even 1 beat) to change all of those FX states. Wouldn't be very easy to do with physical pedals. With the MFC, just one button to change to each scene.
All in all, these things are freaking amazing. I'm entirely glad I went with it. In the above Scene2 screenshot, you see the green block "T-Match", next to the "Amp" block (2nd row, 5th column). That is what's called a Tone Match. Say you have a favorite FX pedal, chain of effects pedals, or heck, a solo track from your favorite bassist. You can use their software to grab a tone match of it, which then can be used as an effect block. In the above, my TM block is a B7K with settings I really liked. You could say, grab a multi-track of a Rush song, play just Geddy's track, grab a tone match of it, and effectively sound like him. Player ability aside, it's crazy accurate.
On top of that, you have the standard "IR" or Impulse Response you can take of speaker cabs. So if none of the several hundred built-in speakers work for you, you can take an IR of your favorite and use it as a block. Leave the power amp, cabs at home and run to FOH with your exact tone. The B7K tone match is identical to the "real deal" in the above. if I want different B7K settings, I'd have to take a new TM and place it in the grid, but that is easy to do.
Speaking of speakers, and in turn amps. In the "real world", playing bass guitar at high volume through guitar cabs isn't exactly a great idea. The amp itself will be fine, but the speakers are likely to go poof. But, in the Axe-Fx, it doesn't matter. I can use a 10W head with a 1x10 guitar speaker and it might actually sound *good*. Not a distorted fuzz box, but an interesting texture. Or of course, it might sound like crap. So even though there's only a few bass amps and cabs from factory, you're not limited to them. In a few of my presets, I actually like some of the guitar cabs. And, as you can see in the pics above, if you like a particular mic on your cab, you can put one on it, too. And even play with position, a little bit. There are quite a few people out there that have taken bass cabs and make IRs of them - a lot for free even.
I'm still exploring, tweaking, learning about this thing. I have about 9 or 10 hours behind this thing so far and I feel like I have only begun to scratch the surface.
The amount of config you can put into it is amazing. At the same time, the out of the box presets are good - for guitarists. For bass, the community is coming together for it, slowly but surely, but the "out of the box" experience leaves a bit to be desired.
There is a place called AxeChange used to share presets, IRs, TMs among users. There's quite a few pretty nice ones out there that are very useable with zero tweaking. Putting a preset, IR, or TM onto the Axe is three mouse clicks. Buy one, throw on a handful of presets and start tweaking. Also be quite prepared for 2 or 3 hours to go by in what feels like 15 minutes. Even though it's obviously geared to guitarists, everything in there works just fine for bass. Even the tuner tracks low A# just fine.
Overall "usability" is a piece of cake really. Programming the MFC is super easy. Making changes in Axe-Edit (the UI you see above) is a piece of cake as well. Knowing what to tweak and when is the difficult part, just like in real life.
Yes, it is pretty spendy, but it, IMO, is worth every cent. And, they even do a trial period of I believe 14 days - so you can try it out and send it back if you don't like it. Find a local person with one and ask if you can spend a few hours with it.
It's a very versatile and useful product for us in its current state. If we can get FAS on board to do more direct modeling of popular bass equipment, it will be simply unreal. As it stands, this thing has replaced a huge amount of equipment and headache for me, and I won't be looking back.
I truly hope some of you read all of this and ask me questions. I'll try to take some recordings and post them here for you to hear over the next few weeks. I know this product has been talked about here, lightly, in the past, but I strongly feel this thing deserves a lot more attention from the bass community. If wanted, I'll also share any presets that I build here for you to play with and tweak.
TL;DR? Too bad.
. You should get the idea from this though.
. Part of the reason I hope Cliff ends up putting it in Axe-Fx 2 as its own block!
