AX100 MKII - My experiences setting up string sensitivities

Started by joegold, January 23, 2016, 04:42:42 PM

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joegold

Hi

So I've spent much of the last several days tinkering with my AX100 that I bought many years ago but never got around to using very much.

I'd like to detail my setup experiences here for other future tinkerers and also to see what the rest of the community here thinks about my methods and my conclusions.

A couple of days ago I posted in the GK forum here about my GK-3 setup.
I asked if the 1mm rule for the distance between the GK pole pieces and the bottom of each string was a hard maximum or a hard minimum.
I was having an issue with my low E string being a little bit less than 1mm away to the pole piece, as measured by the L-shaped 1mm spacing tool that comes with the GK-3, no matter how low I set the GK-3 pickup.
I.e. I'd have to force the tool between the string and the GK a bit raising the string a slight amount in the process.

Elantric responded that 1mm was a hard minimum and he suggested that I should try shimming my neck pocket and raising my bridge saddles which I did then try.
But this caused too many issues.
E.g. The height adjustment screws on my bridge saddles were not high enough to achieve decent action.
So I tried a different bridge (this is a hard-tail Strat Partscaster) whose saddles had longer height adjustment screws.
Now I could get decent action and I could also get the required 1mm spacing on all 6 strings including the low E.
But still, no matter how I tweaked my Axon's parameters I couldn't get tracking that was even as good as I had it before let alone better tracking.

So I went back to the old setup, w/o the neck shim, and tried raising the low E saddle high enough to give me the desired 1mm spacing.

Then I set out to really fine tune the Axon's individual string sensitivities.
At some point I noticed an overload indicator that flashes on the Axon LCD if I hit the strings really hard while a high sensitivity value was entered.
I did not know that this overload indicator even existed because it's not mentioned in the manual.
In the past I'd been using the software editor to set the sensitivities, not the Axon's front panel.
But the Axon's documentation is not really clear about the functions of the various parameters and especially how the Global Trigger Level parameter, the 6 individual Sensitivity parameters and the Preset pages Velocity Offset and Velocity Sensitivity parameters (all of which affect the MIDI velocity control for external synths) all interact with each so it was all very hit and miss and pray.

I'd been trying to use the lowest individual sensitivity values I could based on things I'd read online as well as the fact that the factory setting for the Axon start off with values between 18 and 22 for each string. (22 22 18 18 22 22)
The stock sensitivity values for a piezo equipped guitar were a lowish 16 on each string and this worked pretty well with a Godin LGX-SA with RMC transducers that I rented a few days ago.
So I used to think that low was the way to go with these settings.

But this time I decided to use the overload indicator as my guiding principal.
I'd set each string's sensitivity to max (64), whack the string as hard as I could to trigger the overload indicator and then gradually lower the sensitivity until the overload indicator didn't flash anymore.

[Note though that in order for me to even be able to achieve an overload indication on my low E string, even at the maximum sensitivity value of 64, I had to lower its bridge saddle down to where it was originally, i.e. the way I usually set up this guitar's action, before I got all sidetracked with the neck shim as described above.
The string appears to never make physical contact with the GK no matter how hard I whack the string.
So I can only conclude that that 1mm spacing "rule" is not actually a hard minimum but rather a general suggestion for a maximum.]

Using this method my sensitivities have ended up as follows:
E = 52
A = 53
D = 51
G = 52
B = 53
E = 61

These numbers seem high to me, but now the Axon plays much better than I'd been able to get it to play before.
In the Global pages my numbers for Trigger Level and Note Off Limit seem to work pretty well (triggering Logic's Bosendorfer piano SI which always serves as my main test SI patch) at the stock values of 3 and 5 respectively.
In the Preset pages I'm using the stock values of 12 and 82 for Velocity Offset and Sensitivity respectively as well.
But I can also affect velocity "feel" inside Logic in various ways as well if and when I need to.

At the moment I think I can probably get some work done with this setup.
It's the best I've been able to get it thus far.

I'm just wondering how far off of the norms of other users my current setup seems to be and how off-base my experiences/conclusions might be or might seem to be.

Any input from the community here appreciated.

Thanks

Joey

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Quote
Elantric responded that 1mm was a hard minimum and he suggested that I should try shimming my neck pocket and raising my bridge saddles which I did then try.