New Firehawk FX owner. Couple questions.

[EldestGruff]

Bought a FH a couple days ago and went to GC today to test out some powered PA speakers and powered studio monitors. Front runners were a single Alto TS 212 and a pair of JBL LSR305's.

 

I ended up going with the JBLs and am quite happy with their sound when playing music through them. However, just about all of the patches are dull, lifeless and very woofy. Cranking down the bass on the amp is not at all helpful.

 

Couple things I have tried:

1. Turn on the EQ for each patch. Set the low at ~320Hz and drop about 8db. Crank the 1.1KHz and 3.5-4KHz a a few db. This takes out the wood and brightens things up a tad but not near as much as...

2. I put a Dano Fish&Chips EQ in the effects loop, cut the bass almost completely and upped the mids/highs. Doing this just brought each patch to life. The low cut isn't really needed on the clean patches but doesn't hurt too much.

 

So, the questions.

1. Has anyone tried the JBL LSR305's, and what's your experience with them? The Alto TS212?

2. Has anyone tried both studio monitors and powered PA? Can you offer a real life comparison?

3. Is there a better way than changing the EQ on every channel to brighten things up and cut the woof?

 

Carrying a FH to church and laying an EQ pedal on the board is inconvenient, seems unnecessary and just kind of looks foolish.

 

Would love some opinions. Thanks!

Andy

[mcbeddall]

I run into a stagesource lt3 speaker and sometimes studio monitors for recording, if you upload one of your tones I'll check it out and see if it's woolly for me.

A tip I learned recently has really opened up a lot of the amp models for me, basically just start with your presence up full and then adjust the amps bass/middle/treble to suit, works stunningly well with the older amps (almost like that's the way it was always meant to be) I have no problems with dullness or woolly sounding tones unless that's what I'm aiming for

[EldestGruff]

I uploaded a copy of a stock preset tone that I EQ'd to passable.  It's called "Lead the Way - lsr305".  I set the guitarist as "PAF Music" to make it more easily found.  Not sure how long before you'll be able to find it.  The EQ in my effects loop does a better job, but this is ok. It takes out the boomy/woofy low end without castrating it and opens up the mids/highs a bit, but not quite enough.

 

Andy

[mcbeddall]

OK cool I found the patch and I'll try it out when I get back from work

What kind of guitar and pickups are you using?

[EldestGruff]

I'm using a PRS SE Custom 24 with stock buckers and a Carvin with AP11 singles.

 

Andy

[mcbeddall]

OK so I just had a play with that tone and the first bit of bad news is that it actually sounded ok to me , not dull at least, in fact it was a bit brighter than what I would normally go for

 

The only way I could get it sounding the way you describe was by reducing my tone pot on the guitar but you say you have 2 guitars so I'm guessing you've tried both and different cables

 

I'm using a variax on the les paul model so obviously our different guitars are going to give us completely different results but in case it's any kind of help I altered the tone to try and improve it slightly as it sounds on my gear and I uploaded it as "lead the way -mcb"

 

First thing I noticed was that your using the pod farm screamer so I changed that to the hd screamer, I found it gave slightly better articulation

 

Then I turned the presence up to full in the amp model , it didn't introduce any harshness for me and it improved the clarity a bit so I left it there

 

The drive on the amp seemed too high for me with my guitar, by that I mean I was able to reduce it significantly without it making hardly any difference to the amount of distortion I was getting on the tone and that helped clear things up quite a bit

 

I cut a few problem frequencies in the eq as I was getting an underlying fizzy noise and I dropped the low end cut a bit lower to about 100 hz as I wasn't getting enough low end

 

I lowered the reflections on the cab as I find that while it sounds nice in headphones once amplified it only clutters things up

Same with the reverb , hall is nice in headphones but amplified I find the room reverb keeps things tight

 

Try out the patch and see what you think, if there's no improvement to your ear then maybe try a lower volume through your speakers , I wonder if you could be pushing them too hard perhaps

[EldestGruff]

I'll give your patch a go when I get home.  The patch I pointed you to is the quick 'after' version of the stock bank 1, number 2 preset.  This is the one that is nearly acceptable.  If you want to hear the before, just turn off the eq on the patch as that was the only thing I changed on it.  The EQ was not used previously.

 

If I don't take out the 320Hz on the low end, palm muting on a low E power chord will resonate for a bit like poorly designed car stereo.  So boomy.  This has happened with 2 sets of speakers now, but I have not tried headphones.  As far as over-driving, not an issue.  I'm just a bit over bedroom volume, max volume from the FH at about 75% and the speakers are on 4.

 

The thing that is driving me crazy is that playing music sounds just fine.  Great actually.

 

This is one of those things that could kill the thing for me if I don't come up with a decent solution in a few days.  I got rid of my HD500 because I couldn't make the thing sound good.  I though't I'd try this because of the convenience but if I have to go in to every patch I want to use and deep edit it, back to Guitar Center it will go.

 

Andy

 

Just though of this...  Have you ever played something and then tried the same thing with a BBE Sonic Maximizer?  The difference in the life of the sound?  What I am hearing is the pre-BBE version.

[mcbeddall]

I'm not familiar with the maximiser but I had the problem you describe with the vintage amps (marshall, vox etc) turning up the presence solved most of it

 

Try running the firehawk output at 50% and turn up your speakers a little

Another thing to check is when you push the volume wheel in and the led's turn white have that at half way as well

You can push those up for more volume later but seeing as volume isn't your problem at present I'd keep them down to rule out the possibility that your running into the speakers too hot

The white led volume does seem to affect tone in a bad way when it's up quite high

 

As always double check your output mode is set to "line" and not "amp"

[Lynchworm12]

This may have been already mentioned but, I find almost every amp on the Firehawk is muddy unless some sort of overdrive pedal is activated.

[Lynchworm12]

This may have been already mentioned but, I find almost every amp on the Firehawk is muddy unless some sort of overdrive pedal is activated.

[EldestGruff]

Tried your suggestions and your patch.  As I'm only running XLR, the output mode was already in the right position.  It definitely sounded different but I can't say I thought it was any better, overall.  It was definitely more articulate, had even less bass than mine and substantially less gain but still sounded dull to me.  Again, putting the EQ in the effects loop brightened it right up.  Maybe it's my ears and i'm starting to lose some of those frequencies, but this is the only thing I'm noticing it with.

 

The FH is turning out to be more irritating and more stressful than using my amps and pedals, which is what I was trying to eliminate in the first place.  I'm sure there are great ways to make some awesome sounds with it, but not sure I have it in me to get this deep (and I know it can go much deeper) with every patch just to make it sound good.  I bought this device for convenience and it's failing miserably.

 

The one thing I like is the bluetooth streaming and playing along with songs.  That's pretty fun, but it's not with $450 to eliminate the 6-foot 1/8" cable I normally use.  I think I'm going to take it back to Guitar Center this weekend unless I find something simpler to fix the issue.

[mcbeddall]

If you want to try one last thing search for "Paul hindmarsh" in the tone search

He has some marshall and mesa tones that sound really direct and punchy

I've had to program all my own patches pretty much from scratch , I could find tones that were OK but nothing that really blew me away, after spending quite a bit of time with it I now have some patches that DO blow me away but like you it wasn't a plug and play experience for me either

[cmk6234]

"I bought this device for convenience and it's failing miserably."

 

Unfortunately, this quote perfectly sums up my FH FX experience.  I bought one last weekend and couldn't get it to function as a stand alone device or when paired with my iPad.  The suggestions I received (which I do appreciate) involved factory resets, software downloads, etc.  I wanted something low maintenance/low hassle but at least the FH I got is anything but.  Mine never did function and it is back in the box waiting for the return trip to Guitar Center. 

[mcbeddall]

When I started out with it I found my live tones going through a stagesource lt3 hard to tame , harsh high frequencies and booming low frequencies were to blame, (I too was incredibly frustrated at this , I mean I was running a variax guitar into the firehawk and out to a stagesource speaker, so I fully expected them to play nice straight out of the box, in contrast I found most of the presets didn't sound good and only about 6 or 7 sounded like they could be a good starting point to build a tone)

However what kept me going was that most of my playing at home was through headphones and the sounds were astounding and inspirational once I started dialling my own patches, so I knew the sounds were in there I just needed to get them working live, with perseverance and a lot of help from guys on this forum I feel like I'm very close to getting all my sounds exactly where I want them.

 

In the end I put a lot of my struggle down to inexperience and lack of understanding of certain aspects but the work for me was worth it

 

I find the firehawk much easier than the hd500 to dial in but yes it still takes work, I'm yet to find a modeller that didn't take work to get it right though