Four men can't chop down a Joshua Tree without four Axes...

Cirrus

I'll just leave this here. Quite a departure after 35 years of Vox AC30s...

guitarfishbay

It is more the floorboard the size of a post code that I find nuts in that picture.

Cirrus

It's one button for each date on the tour.

stickyfiddle

I'd put money on it he's still going to be running all that into an AC30

Bron_Yr_Aur

stickyfiddle said:

I'd put money on it he's still going to be running all that into an AC30

Like the one it's hooked up to in the picture?

Cirrus

Is that one of the new SDD3000 pedals instead of his old rack units too?

Cirrus

If I can put on my "totally wild speculation" hat for a paragraph or two...

For the last few tours his sound has been racks of effects into a phalanx of amps - the sound is often some combination of his two main AC30s, 22watt fender combos, and another couple of AC30s off stage which IIRC are ran hotter - and each patch is various combinations of those amps, sometimes with different signal chains eg clean boost into AC30, eventide shimmer patch into Fender. He's also not against running modelled tones direct to the PA system - on the Elevation tour at least I'm pretty sure his Pod Pro rack units were ran direct for the heavy distortions in Beautiful day and Elevation, you can hear the dryness and non-ac30ish tones there.

I know him and his tech are big fans of redundancy - basically, two of everything that might break so the show can go on with minimal disruption. And I think with such a big change in the rig as this, they're going to have done that here. So two of the Axes can be discounted as the backup pair.

So what's he going to do with the other two? I'm not sure exactly what they're capable of since the limit of my experience of the axe was about 10 minutes at last year's Birmingham Guitar show (I can't remember, was that yours @Handsome_Chris?). Is he going to use them as effect and amp modellers with multiple signal chains, go direct, and use an amp as basically a monitor to get some feedback/ as a tactile thing? or are the axes mainly going to do effects, replacing the SDD3000s, TC2290s, Eventides etc, fed into his usual bunch of Voxes and Fenders? Or some combination of both approaches? Or is it all smoke and mirrors and the tour is going to involve a banjo, harmonica neck brace and bar stool?

Drew_TNBD

I just wouldn't want that complex of a rig. I guess when you've got someone else to tech it for you, it's not too bad. But shitting crikey...

guitarfishbay

Cliff is on record as recently as last month stating they don't pay anyone to play Fractal, and that artists do pay for their units (he has maintained this as long as I remember).  So the Axe FXs aren't smoke and mirrors - they'll be there to do something otherwise why bother.  I couldn't tell you what they're doing though!

You could feasibly need a second one as part of your rig if you had complex needs - e.g. use or seamless access to 3 or 4 amps (you can use 1 or 2, or switch between 2 individual amps seamlessly on a single unit within a single preset) or if you use a high number of CPU intensive effects within a single song.  The Axe FX does a lot, but it isn't without limits.

Cirrus

The smoke and mirrors bit was a joke.

guitarfishbay

Yeah fair enough but it isn't unheard of for people to be seen with certain pieces of gear but actually be using others.

vasselmeyer

The rig in Birmingham belonged to @clarky and he spent nearly an hour talking me through its capabilities and we didn't even scratch the surface of what it can do. I can't really think of a sound on a U2 album that a single unit couldn't deliver. I'm sure there is redundancy there, so two of the four will be backup for the main two units.

However, I'm sure there must be a reason why he feels he needs two units rather than just one. I suspect it is the mixing and matching of amp units to get him the exact sound he wants. If the sound he wants is the sum of four amps at once then he could conceivably need two units.

Handsome_Chris

I did a bit of teching for @Clarky and we used my AF2 for redundancy, I cloned his. He also used two 1960B (4x12s) . That wasn't for redundancy: It's because it sounds, and looks, AWESOME!!!

Handsome_Chris

@cirrus, yes it was mine. I've now changed from baby FRFR cabs to using a 4x12. It's a bit disrespectful to play Black Sabbath through anything less.

drwiddly

Wot, no Kemper? ;-)

ICBM

It could be as simple as something do do with routing - depending on what comes before, he may need two in parallel, eg if the signal has already been split into dry and delayed by that point.

The real answer is probably "because he can", anyway...

DesVegas

That's not a live rig set-up, that's a space station!!

Jalapeno

Must be an army of programmers maintaining the patches in 4 AxeFX - bit much for Dallas Schoo to wrangle on his own

Handsome_Chris

AF2 programming is a piece of piss. It's the keeping up with the updates; however, they do rectify problems pretty rapidly.

Handsome_Chris

@Cirrus, as much as you appeared to be impressed with me AF2 rig, I was wowed by your Insanity Wolf t-shirt. :P

richardhomer

Possibly the only man-made structure visible from space?