Atomic Amplifire and M Britt presets UPDATE

kennedydream1980

Hi there,

I'm seriously thinking about ditching my amp for playing live with my covers band. I've recently started using a wired in ear monitor setup which sounds fantastic, so a high end ampless solution really appeals.

I've been thinking about going for the Amplifire 12 and the M Britt preset pack. I like the idea of this unit as it's more affordable than the competition, and it's right in my price range.

I've listened to the sound clips on M Britts website and watched the YouTube clip of him demoing his presets, and I have to say they sound mighty impressive.

My question is this, does anyone have any experience of using the presets in a live setting? How well do they translate live, do they require much tweaking to work live?

I really don't have a lot of spare time to delve into settings and start endlessly tweaking presets etc. I just want to plug in and away I go.

I really need a quick and quality solution that sounds great.

monquixote

Yep I gigged an Amplifire using the MBritt patches and other than having to dial back the amount of compression it worked really well. 

They were actually designed for the keyboard player of Lonestar to use at gigs to run his guitar through so they are live patches.

I would only recommend gigging an Amplifire using the MBritt patches because programming it is quite tedious and though it's capable of very good sounds you really need to know what you are doing and take a lot of time to unlock that potential.

kennedydream1980

That's exactly what I wanted to hear @monquixote many thanks for that. How are the effects on the unit?

simonbeckwith

I have an AF and have the MBritt presets. I shall be testing some out at practice on Wednesday so can teport back then if you like? A mate of mine has used the AC30 and Plexi type tones he has created to good effect live and said they required minimal editing, and that was with another guitarist as well, no problems getting lost in the mix. Probably the best set of presets out there that require the least amount of editing

gearaddict

Can you assign any parameters you like to the expression pedal on the Amplifire 12? Like the amp drive level?

Has anyone directly compared the sounds from the Amplifire with the Helix or Fractal in real life? Does is hold up, quality wise?

simonbeckwith

I believe so and theres the option for two seperate expression pedals on the AF12

monquixote

gearaddict said:

Has anyone directly compared the sounds from the Amplifire with the Helix or Fractal in real life? Does is hold up, quality wise?

Yep I have.

It's broadly on a par in terms of modeling though the fx on the others are much more sophisticated.

The main difference with the helix is how much nicer it is to use.

kennedydream1980

I've now purchased the Amplifire 12 and have downloaded the M Britt Preset pack. I'm Looking to gig this setup on Saturday night so any update on how you got on at your practice @Simonbeckwith would be most helpful :-)

simonbeckwith

@kennedydream1980 hey dude, not bad tbh. I had dialled in a few tones myself and had a few mbritt tones loaded in, mainly the plexi type tones. They sound decent, still needed tweaking though, as did my own. Lower gain 800/plexi type tones seemed to work well but the higher gain 800 patches still need a lot of work as they lacked a bit of clarity. Not a million miles off though. Worth taking a laptop with you for quick tweaks i would say. The other guys did start to get a little annoyed with me tweaking in between songs though lol!!

kennedydream1980

First gig done with the Amplifire. In the end I ended up going with my own presets. I dialled up 5 presets, clean, light crunch, crunch, lead and light crunch with a Slapback delay. I pinched the M Britt compressor settings and used it on my clean preset, I just had to adjust the level a bit.

I also dialled up a nice chorus and delay.

I ended up using the deluxe amp for my clean and the Brit 800 for my crunch tones. Added the distortion boost for leads.

The game changer for me with this unit was downloading some official Celestion IR's, got the Greenback 4x12 for the 800 amp, and the 2x12 Creamback cab for clean tones. It took the sound to another level for me.

Ive only scratched the surface with this thing. I'm looking forward to delving deeper into it.

simonbeckwith

IR's are definitely the key with this unit.

im buying the Celestion Greenback and Creamback 65 412 packs tonight 

In MBritt news, my friend gigged last night using a Les Paul into the Vox boosted with a tubescreamer preset. He said the key was the Amplifire level being set to about 70% to sound good.

monquixote

simonbeckwith said:

IR's are definitely the key with this unit.

im buying the Celestion Greenback and Creamback 65 412 packs tonight 

In MBritt news, my friend gigged last night using a Les Paul into the Vox boosted with a tubescreamer preset. He said the key was the Amplifire level being set to about 70% to sound good.

That's a good tip.

It's quite easy to get digital clipping if you aren't careful.

simonbeckwith

I usually set mine to half and leave it be just to be safe

kennedydream1980

The M Britt presets are very loud compared to mine. So my levels were absolutely fine. The Amplifire outputs are Line level so if the mixer you are running to doesn't have line level inputs or level pads on the inputs, you might find the signal a tad hot.

I run a wired monitor setup with a behringer P1 attached to my pedalboard. It has 2 XLR Ins. I run an aux send from the desk with my own monitor mix of the band to one of the inputs, and I run the Aux out of the Amplifire to the other input.

Ive set the Amplifire up so the level control only effects the aux outs, so my output to the desk stays constant regardless where the level is set. That way I can mix in as much or as little guitar as I like in my in ear monitors without affecting the front of house sound. It works great.

simonbeckwith

Wow! The Celestion IR's are awesome. I went for Greenback and Creamback 65 4x12. Absolute game changer!

kennedydream1980

Loving the Celestion IR's more and more. So far I've purchased:

Vintage 30 4x12

G12H-75 Creamback 2x12

G12M-65 Creamback 4x12

G12M Greenback 4x12

G12-65 4x12

All are exceptional in their own way but my personal favourite at the moment is the G12M-65 Creamback 4x12, using the option with all 3 mic's blended plus the room mic's. I'm using this with the Friedman BE amp model and the Deluxe model.

simonbeckwith

Agreed on the Creamback 65 4x12 mate!

simonbeckwith

@kennedydream1980  are you setting up your presets through the pa, or at home through headphones. I had a bunch set up through headphones and my pa monitor at home that sounded great but through the band pa, sounded very thin. Not e easiest thing to be able to crank the band pa up and test presets!

kennedydream1980

I dialled my presets in using quality flat response headphones at home.

However I have access to many multi track recordings of me playing a few different amps over several gigs.

What I was able to do with these old recordings was isolate my guitar tracks and tone match them EQ wise using the amplifire.

I always try to dial in a nice thick tone with my conventional amps, that can still cut through a live band mix. I must stress I wasn't trying to copy the actual tone more the EQ characteristics of the Mic'd amp sound. I figured that way it wouldn't sound too thin when using the Amplifire live direct to the desk. It seemed to work well.

After discovering the Friedman amp this week I've dialled in a new crunch preset and a heavier overdrive preset, kicking in the SD-1 boost for lead stuff. Got a gig on Saturday and I'm planning on using these new presets.

Also I found the key to getting the amps to 'feel' right on the Amplifire is to max the damping on the amp block to 100%.

simonbeckwith

Makes sense really. Ill check out the 'damping' control too. Ill need to adjust my floor wedge's eq to respond more similarly to the FoH PA i think so i get a better idea of how my presets will sound. A few tweaks on the fly got it sounding better pretty quickly dont get me wrong!

kennedydream1980

Well I can safely say the new presets I dialled in were absolutely fantastic. Really nice meaty tones on Saturday nights gig that sounded great. I'm loving this unit more everyday, I really couldn't be happier :-)