The Effects
70
By carefully balancing Drive and Master Volume you can achieve the tone you desire. Experiment
with the two to achieve your ultimate tone. Sometimes the tone you desire may be mostly preamp
based and as such turn the Drive up and the Master down. Other times the tone may be mostly from
the power amp so crank the Master up and back off the Drive. Amps with negative feedback
(damping greater than zero) tend to have a crunchier power amp distortion and this can even get
raspy if driven too hard. This is due to the negative feedback attempting to linearize the power amp.
The resulting transfer function is harsher at clipping than an amp with little or no feedback. You can
experiment with the damping control and master volume to achieve the desired power amp
distortion timbre.
If the Master Volume is set very high best results are usually achieved by reducing the drive control.
Try setting the Master around 9 or so and then slowly bringing the drive up until the desired tone is
achieved. At high Master settings less drive is usually required, especially for high-gain types.
Amp types that are designed for preamp distortion typically sound better with lower values of this
control and too high of a value can make the tone muddy or excessively noisy. This includes the
USA Lead types, SOLO 100 and others. Lower gain amps such as Plexi, Brownface, and others can
benefit from higher settings as this can reduce the harshness of the amp.
If the power amp simulation is off (Sag at zero) this control then becomes a simple level control.
This control has 40 dB of range. A setting of ‘5’ is therefore 20 dB less than maximum.
Advanced Parameters
The advanced parameters allow you to further craft your tone by adjusting various parameters that
affect the sound and response of the amp block.
INPUT SELECT - This parameter selects which input(s) are fed to the block.
WARMTH - Adjusts the warmth of the output transformer. Higher values simulate “older”
transformers which tend to sound warmer. This is a dynamic response and the harder the power amp
is driven the more noticeable the effect.
THUMP - Adjusts the “thump” of the output transformer. Higher values simulate more interaction
which increases the low frequency enhancement. This is a dynamic response and the harder the
power amp is driven the more noticeable the effect.
LOW-CUT FREQ - This control allows you to reduce the amount of low frequency content at the
input to the amp simulator. This parameter defaults to a value for each type but can be overridden
if desired.
HIGH-CUT FREQ -
This control sets the cutoff frequency of a lowpass filter at the very end of the
preamp simulation. It defaults to a preset value for each amp type but can be overridden if desired.
Experiment with this to fine tune your tone. For example, some of the higher gain types are
characterized by fairly heavy filtering after the preamp stage but with this control you can reduce
the amount of filtering and achieve a brighter tone. Conversely you can reduce this value to achieve
a darker or less brittle tone.
If using the Axe-Fx along with a separate tube power amp you may wish to experiment with this
control to achieve the desired tone as the power amp may have its own high-frequency filtering.
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