I am on the teetering edge of ordering one of these bad boys. I would love to know if anyone has put it through its paces by using 2 inputs and independently setting up 2 separate paths for the bass and melody sides? I know Karma mentioned he has. How does it perform under the stress of dual amp/cab sims plus multiple FX on both sides? In addition do you use the MFC-101 with it? Is that the best solution? Overkill? Just looking for a "buyer's guide" of insight from actual users.

Stick138

I have an ultra and love it. I think it's a great solution for stick players. I do run into limits with two effects chains and have to keep it simple on the bass side (run compressor and eq only, can't run two amps plus full pedalboard on guitar side). The 2 is supposed to be a little better, I'm told because it has two chips but not more than 150% better in terms of simultaneous effects as the sims are more processor heavy.

So for me, I love it but crave more power if you want lots of bass side effects. Apparently the 2 sounds even better and I have one on order. The MFC or liquid foot sound like the best controllers if you like a virtual pedalboard, with lots of IA stomp buttons. Btw if you use presets and not a virtual pedalboard you will be fine and even an ultra will fit the bill.

A guy with a guitar is demoing all preset patches on a couple of YouTube videos. If you want to hear all banks you need to click the "Watch On YouTube" link to get the other videos as well.


Foot Control:
Since I am a happy owner of a Gordius Little Giant I have learned on the support mailing list that this MIDI pedalboard is very popular as Axe-Fx controller pedal. The Gordius can even snag and display the Ax-Fx's patch name I hear.
http://gordius.be/midi-footcontroller-lg.php

I've posted elsewhere in the forum that the AXE-FXII is excellent for processing two simultanious signal chains with tapping instruments. I use it with my Stick (12 string grand with Stickup) and my 12 string Warr TGSS (active with 2 Audere 4 band preamps - one for each side). The Axe is outstanding with both. I owned an Ultra before the II, and the processing power difference is significant between them. I could occassionally run out of CPU on the Ultra but it's almost unheard of on the II. And the effects and amps are outstanding.

For controllers, any decent one will work. Per is right that the Little Giant is supposed to work great and is popular. The MFC-101 is most popular and is obviously designed work with the AxeFX seamlessly. Personally, I still use an old Ground Control that I've had for years and years, but my control needs are fairly simple.

Best,
Karma

. Great news that the "2" can handle the processing of two instruments simultaneously. I use alot of fx on the bass side as well as the melody side so I was concerned. I sucked it up and made the purchase yesterday. I just said screw it and went with the MFC-101. This is a pretty expensive setup so I am hoping it lives up to the hype. Thanks for your responses

Stick138

Nice! Looking forward to hear about your impressions when you get around to post.

[quote="Stick138 Great news that the "2" can handle the processing of two instruments simultaneously. I use alot of fx on the bass side as well as the melody side so I was concerned. I sucked it up and made the purchase yesterday. I just said screw it and went with the MFC-101. This is a pretty expensive setup so I am hoping it lives up to the hype. Thanks for your responses

Stick138[/quote]


Congratulations. I was thinking about this thread yesterday as I was playing through mine (4th of July so I had a quiet morning and got in several hours).

If you have not done so yet, I'd strongly suggest you keep an eye on the AxeFX forums here;
http://forum.fractalaudio.com/forum.php#axe-fx-ii
This forum is very helpful to new owners.

And bookmark the Wiki;
http://wiki.fractalaudio.com/axefx2/ind ... _Wiki_Home

Here's a good blog on connecting multiple instruments (or in our case two sides of the same instrument)
http://blog.katsukurimedia.com/2011/12/ ... s-at-once/

For routing two signals, there are a couple of different things to learn/keep in mind.

1. There are several ways to get you signals into the AxeFX. These include;
- Both signals routed into both sides of Input 1 on the back directly
- Both signals through a stereo preamp and then into both sides of Input 1 on the back
- One side of the Stick through the front input jack (which has vaiable impedance loading) and the other thorugh the right side of Input 1 on the back

I send my active Warr through Input 1 directly. With my Stick I ususually have a small preamp in the path.

2. An important concept to remember is that you can set up virtual sends within the signal chain grid on the AxeFx. The most obvious example of this would be to use a common Reverb block for both sides of the signal. You would do this by setting up each signal chain without reverb (say you used the 1st row of the grid for melody and the 4th for bass). You then create a reverb on row 3 near the end of that row, and create a mixer block just before it on row 3 also. Set the reverb to 100% wet. You then branch row 1 and row 4 to the mixer block on row 3, and use it to control how much of the bass and melody signal is fed to the reverb. This example uses only one reverb block (leaving the other for something else) and saves CPU. You can do this with any of the effects blocks of course.

This box sounds great right away, but that it is amazingly deep. If there's a sound in your head, there's a strong likelihood that you can create it.

Also remembr that for clean sounds, you can create signal chains that do not have and amp/cab model in the path at all. Just put one of the graphic or parmatric EQ's and one of the multiband compressors in each chain to shape your tone. This is really clean sounding.

If you get stuck, put a post up here and I'll try to help. Also happy to send you one of my presets (that you load with Sysex or the editor software) if you like.

Good luck,
Karma

Thanks for those references. They are still on holiday until July 9 so it will be a while I imagine. I'm sure once it arrives I'll lock myself in my studio for days. I just hope I remember to eat or this will all be for nought.

I've had my AXE FX 2 for a little over a week and I've been reading the manual and checking out the Fractal Forum for info. It took me a while to play through all of the presets, which I did with my guitar. Then I finally got around to plugging my Stick into it (bass side only) to try to make a nice bass patch. Now I am attempting to setup a dual preset configuration so I can run the bass and melody side through it and process them independently. I am sure I will need to make some adjustments to my bass preset because it is using 65% CPU. Karma , you had mentioned you could post a preset that you've made with the dual input setup. It would be cool to check it out so post if you can.

Congratualtions! The more I use mine, the more I love it. It's deep and a bit to learn, but so good.

Anyway, here's a link to a basic patch for processing each side of the Stick independently.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fr1usa2k4n5s4 ... 0PATCH.syx

I have this patch set to process the bass side from the right input and melody side form the left input (using the Input 1 jacks on the rear).

*Important* - To use this patch, set the Axe to use the rear inputs (2nd page of the I/O menu)
(Main Input Source = Analog, Input 1 Left Select = Rear, Input 1 Mode = Stereo)

You can see I use one common reverb for both the melody and bass sides and can adjust the send amount for each. I also have both a graphic and parametric EQ on the bass side (for no good reason really). I have a multiband compressor on each side. EQ is set based for monitoring through my headphones so it may or may not be close to the real world EQ you'll want. Regardless, you can see how to process each side independently.

Also, learn to program using the editor software as well as from the front panel if you ever plan to use the unit live.

Last thing... remember that each effects block is really two blocks in one. Each has an "X" and "Y" set of values. This will let you get a lot of versatility without eating CPU. Example: If you have a bass side patch with two phasers in it (one set for a setero analog deep slow phase and one set for a 8 stage digital faster shallow phase) you could get the same thing with one phase block using the "X" and "Y" instances to crate two totally different phasers that you can switch between. I do this with Amps for my guitar patches (one amp block that can flip between modeling a Marshall JVM and Fender Twin as an example).

Feel free to contact me or ask any questions. Takes a little time to learn the ins and outs of the box. Happy to help.

Take care,
Karma