Fractal Audio AX8: 3 Most Versatile Factory Presets

The AX8 is complicated! If you want to avoid the complexities of it and just plug the beast in and play than this is the video you must watch. I've handpicked 3 mighty presets that will cover almost every style of playing imaginable. 

As many of my readers will know I play covers for a living. That entails me copying a vast array of sounds from guitarists down through the ages. What I have found in my years of playing is that you can get away with a few basic sounds or presets with your guitar pedals and you'll be able to cover 95% of whatever you hear in the Top 40 song lists from the past 60 years. 

Guitarists will understand how many hours, weeks, if not years it can take to emulate the sounds of your favourite guitarists. Tone is an elusive beast that can be difficult if not impossible to capture. So, what we are often left with is a resigned sigh and a feeling that 'this will just have to do'. I truly believe that the AX8 is the most powerful and useful floor-based unit in existence today. Other units may have more features but this is about live playing and real-world useful applications at a gig and for me the AX8 edges out the competition. That being said it is not a simple piece of gear - especially if you start digging deeper into the blocks, routing options, series and parallel chains and so on. Sometimes all of this is just too much and you just want to listen to it and try to gig with is asap! This is where my video comes into play. I spent quite some time running through every preset. Some were extremely close and only narrowly missed the selection only because my ear preferred that sound at that particular time. Other guitarists may disagree with my choices and that's to be expected. Tone is in the ear of the beholder. 

For those of you that don't know the Fractal AX8 is the floor-based version of the Fractal Audio AX FX II. Whilst not as powerful it's rack-mounted 'big brother' the AX8 still packs a mighty wallop and posses most of the processing power of the rack units without the weight and the need for a pedal board controller. I'm going to include a link here to the Fractal Audio Systems website:

Fractal Audio Website

I have created an entire series of tutorials for the Fractal Audio AX8 pedal. Here is the link to the YouTube playlist:

Fractal Audio AX8 Tutorials

JTC March 2016 'Altered Reality'

Jam Track Central create backing tracks once a month for guitarists to jam over. All they ask is that you video your jam and then post it to YouTube and then post that link on the JTC Facebook page. Doing this not only helps you to improve your chops but it also exposes you to the multitude of great players that share their 'jams' on the page too. 

JTC Jam Of The Month Facebook Page

This March 2016 jam was the first jam that I had contributed to the group. I had fun recording and I used my iPhone 6 to capture the sound and video. My guitar is an Ibanez RG8527 that I had imported from Japan to New Zealand in February 2016. My friend Jason McNamara works at Ishibashi Music in Tokyo and is able to get you just about any guitar you can think of.

Ishibashi Music Contact page

If you get enough likes or if your jam is considered to be one of the most awesome then it will be combined with a couple of other jammers' jams and posted on the official JTC YouTube channel. 

Have fun checking out the jams and don't forget to head to the Facebook page and join if you want to be part of this amazing group of guitarists.

Let your fingers fly!