Fractal Audio System’s rackmount Axe-Fx units awakened many players to the possibilities of modeled amps, cabinets, and effects. Nowadays many touring players, seduced by Fractal’s realistic modeling, travel with compact digital rigs in lieu of cumbersome amps and cabs. Fractal expanded into the pedalboard format with their FX8, which provided Axe-Fx effects minus the amp and cab modeling. Now AX8 adds those missing amps and cabs as the company's first "all-in-one" unit—at some $500 less than FX8’s original price.
The AX8 amp modeler and multi-effects pedalboard is almost a pedalboard version of Fractal’s flagship Axe-Fx II modeler. The main difference: less CPU. That means the sound quality is identical, but you just can’t pile on as many simultaneous models (though you can create parallel effect chains using a single amp model.) But there’s plenty of juice for most applications, and AX8 sells for nearly a grand less than the big box.
More on the Floor
Many will flip for AX8’s form factor, nearly identical to the FX8. Measuring roughly 16" x10" x 4" and weighing less than 12 pounds, the board fits into backpacks and overhead bins. Mind you, it has no built-in amplification—you must connect to a PA or full-range/flat-response amplifier. (Plugging into a conventional guitar amp might yield cool sounds, but you would need to disable the AX8's onboard sims to avoid stacking amp coloration on top of amp coloration.)
Despite its size, AX8 offers comprehensive connectivity, with 1/4", XLR and S/PDIF outputs. A USB jack lets you connect to a computer (which is almost essential, as we’ll see). There are MIDI in and out jacks. You can connect up to four controller pedals (not included). There’s also a programmable stereo effects loop for inserting external hardware. (One odd omission: there’s no headphone jack.)
The build is beautiful. Steel and aircraft aluminum form the rugged chassis. The silent relay footswitches have no mechanical connections to fail. The knobs feel substantial. A folded steel bar doubles as a handle and protection for the surface hardware. The power supply is built-in.
AX8 can save 512 presets. Each preset can include eight “scenes”—patches that use the same virtual components as the master preset, but with alternate settings. Each footswitch can also toggle between two stored settings when pressed for several seconds. (You might, for example, store high- and low-gain amp gain settings on a single switch, or alternate trem speeds.) The USB link makes it easy to load, archive, and exchange presets.
Super Models
AX8’s sounds are superb, thanks to a great-sounding signal path and ultra-detailed models. The fat, three-dimensional tones have stunning dynamic range. Delicate playing sounds … delicate, with detailed, naturalistic decay. There’s no hint of the squashed, boxy feel you get from some modelers. On a clean setting, you feel every playing nuance, each subtle scrape of finger or pick. Many new users will strum a chord or two and think, “Yup, I’m convinced.”
Metal, prog, and shred guitarists are among Fractal’s biggest fans, and macho high-gain rigs predominate among the presets. But AX8 is equally adept at clean, rootsy, and lo-fi tones. Many AX8 settings suggest John Petrucci, Steve Vai, and Mastodon. But it can also do Pops Staples and Curtis Mayfield.
The number of available amp, cab, and effects models is some huge integer I already forgot. Think of it this way: There’s a vast amount of raw material here, and you can manipulate it in a vast number of ways.
Model Impressions
Creating models is more subjective than many realize, so please indulge a few subjective impressions: The individual amps and cabs are shockingly realistic. But the virtual components don’t always interact as they do in the analog world. For example, most AX8 amp models (especially high-gain ones) aren’t as responsive to variations in touch and guitar settings as their analog equivalents. And it’s tough to get a clean-to-apocalyptic range of tones using only your volume knob like you can by, say, plugging straight into a great tweed or plexi.
Meanwhile, the fine-sounding effects can match most sounds you’d create with an analog pedalboard, but they don’t always interact in the same ways and often omit signature quirks. For example, the analog delay model faithfully mimics the spectrum of a BBD chip, but cannot capture the chip’s unique distortion. The Fuzz Face provides Hendrix-y bulk, but lacks the hair-trigger dynamic response of the real deal. The Muff model spews volcanic fuzz, but doesn’t include the signature scooper-duper tone stack.
But believe it or not, these aren’t really criticisms. You can create many of the “missing” characteristics cited above, but you might have to do it on AX8’s digital terms. Fortunately, they’re highly agreeable terms.
Computer Required?
You can access every AX8 function without connecting to a computer—but it won’t be fun. The sole visual feedback is a small, low-res LCD screen that reminds me of programming a Yamaha SPX-90 in 1987. Fractal expects users to do the dirty work by connecting to a computer. If you hate that notion, consider this a warning flag.
Ratings
Pros:
Fine amp and effect models. Compact yet ergonomic format. Superb construction. Ingenious operating system. Infinitely customizable. Great price.
Cons:
Editing on the bitmapped LCD screen? (Eww—use the computer!) No mobile app. No headphone jack.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$1,299
Fractal Audio Systems AX8
fractalaudio.com
Fortunately, once you fire up the included editing software, life is grand. The AX8-Edit software (for Mac and PC) boasts a large, lucid layout and intuitive drag-and-drop operation. You arrange modeling blocks on a simple grid and click on a block to access its parameters. Of course, you don’t have to perform deep editing—you can do plenty of damage with presets only. But Fractal makes tone creation easy and fun. (Crucial wish list item: an iOS/Android editor for tweaking at gigs and rehearsals.)
The amp and cab options are mind-boggling (in a good way). Amp parameters include not only the basics, but also such cool arcana as negative feedback amount, speaker distortion, and cathode squish. The cabinet options are equally impressive. These don't feel like static impulse responses (IR). Fractal has gone to great lengths mimicking the quirky and dynamic resonance—the thump—of physical cabs. You can also load your own cabinet IRs (or the add-on IRs sold separately at Fractal’s online store) and tweak them with the dedicated Cab-Lab app. Bravo!Assigning external controllers is a snap, and you can route almost anything anywhere. You can even insert the effects loop send and/or return anywhere in the virtual tone chain. The list of effect types might seem meat-and-potatoes at first glance, but the endless editing and routing options can get deep. (Not so meat-and-potatoes: the cool pitch-tracking mono synth and powerful single-track looper.)
Even if you plan to use presets only, brace for a learning curve. But after a few hours you’ll probably get the hang of navigating banks, presets, scenes, and the X/Y footswitches, and feel confident making basic adjustments on the fly. And thank you, Fractal, for creating such a lucid and skillfully written operation manual.
The Verdict
AX8 is a landmark product release. The sounds are stellar. It’s compact and portable, yet it can be as open-ended and flexible as you desire. Its construction and ergonomics are top-notch. If you’re not already an Axe-Fx user, plan to a) spend at least a few days getting acquainted, and b) do most editing and archiving on a computer. If you invest the effort, AX8 is likely to reward you in spades, clubs, diamonds, and hearts. And oh—it’s a bargain at $1,299.
Watch the Review Demo:
Electro-Harmonix Hell Melter Distortion Pedal
With its take on the cult-classic, chainsaw distortion pedal, the EHX Hell Melter takes distortion to its extremes. The Hell Melter features expanded controls and tonal capabilities, allowing the already in-your-face sound of the pedal to broaden by switching to more open clipping options and boosting the internal voltage for increased headroom, less compression, and more attack.
Originally designed as the ultimate in high-gain tone, this world-famous distortion circuit is known for the death metal sounds of Sweden’s Entombed and the shoegaze wash of My Bloody Valentine. It’s even found a home in the rig of David Gilmour!
The EHX Hell Melter’s expanded control set includes Gain and Level controls, and a powerful active EQ featuring with parametric mids for improved versatility. The Dry level control allows for blending your input signal for improved low-end when used with a bass or even blending in other distorted tones.
Boost Footswitch engages an input gain boost and volume boost which is internally adjustable. The Normal/Burn switch toggles between the classic chainsaw sound and the more open clipping option.
For the first time in the band’s history, the Dawes lineup for Oh Brother consisted of just Griffin and Taylor Goldsmith (left and right).
Goldsmith’s lyrics spoke to me the loudest, with lines like “Well, you can judge the whole world on the sparkle that you think it lacks / Yes, you can stare into the abyss, but it’s starin’ right back” (a casual Nietzsche paraphrase); and “Oh, the snowfall this time of year / It’s not what Birmingham is used to / I get the feeling that I brought it here / And now I’m taking it away.” The way his words painted a portrait of the sincere, sentimental man behind them, along with his cozy, unassuming guitar work and the band’s four-part harmonies, had me hooked.
Nothing Is Wrong and Stories Don’t End came next, and I happily gobbled up more folksy fodder in tracks like “If I Wanted,” “Most People,” and “From a Window Seat.” But 2015’s All Your Favorite Bands, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Folk Albumschart, didn’t land with me, and by the time 2016’s We’re All Gonna Die was released, it was clear that Goldsmith had shifted thematically in his writing. A friend drew a thoughtful Warren Zevon comparison to the single, “When the Tequila Runs Out”—a commentary on vapid, conceited, American-socialite party culture—but it still didn’t really do it for me. I fell off the Dawes train a bit, and became somewhat oblivious to their three full-lengths that followed.
Oh Brotheris Goldsmith’s latest addition to the Dawes songbook, and I’m grateful to say that it’s brought me back. After having done some catching up, I’d posit that it’s the second work in the third act, or fall season, of his songwriting—where 2022’s Misadventures of Doomscrollercracked open the door, Oh Brother swings it wide. And it doesn’t have much more than Dawes’ meat and potatoes, per se, in common with acts one or two. Some moodiness has stayed—as well as societal disgruntlement and the arrangement elements that first had me intoxicated. But then there’s the 7/4 section in the middle of “Front Row Seat”; the gently unwinding, quiet, intimate jazz-club feel of “Surprise!”; the experimentally percussive, soft-spoken “Enough Already”; and the unexpected, dare I say, Danny Elfman-esque harmonic twists and turns in the closing track, “Hilarity Ensues.”
The main engine behind Dawes, the Goldsmith brothers are both native “Angelinos,” having been born and raised in the L.A. area. Taylor is still proud to call the city his home.
Photo by Jon Chu
“I have this working hypothesis that who you are as a songwriter through the years is pretty close to who you are in a dinner conversation,” Goldsmith tells me in an interview, as I ask him about that thematic shift. “When I was 23, if I was invited to dinner with grownups [laughs], or just friends or whatever, and they say, ‘How you doin’, Taylor?’ I probably wouldn’t think twice to be like, ‘I’m not that good. There’s this girl, and … I don’t know where things are at—can I share this with you? Is that okay?’ I would just go in in a way that’s fairly indiscreet! And I’m grateful to that version of me, especially as a writer, because that’s what I wanted to hear, so that’s what I was making at the time.
“But then as I got older, it became, ‘Oh, maybe that’s not an appropriate way to answer the question of how I’m doing.’ Or, ‘Maybe I’ve spent enough years thinking about me! What does it feel like to turn the lens around?’” he continues, naming Elvis Costello and Paul Simon as inspirations along the way through that self-evolution. “Also, trying to be mindful of—I had strengths then that I don’t have now, but I have strengths now that I didn’t have then. And now it’s time to celebrate those. Even in just a physical way, like hearing Frank Zappa talking about how his agility as a guitar player was waning as he got older. It’s like, that just means that you showcase different aspects of your skills.
“I am a changing person. It would be weird if I was still writing the same way I was when I was 23. There would probably be some weird implications there as to who I’d be becoming as a human [laughs].”
Taylor Goldsmith considers Oh Brother, the ninth full-length in Dawes’ catalog, to be the beginning of a new phase of Dawes, containing some of his most unfiltered, unedited songwriting.
Since its inception, the engine behind Dawes has been the brothers Goldsmith, with Taylor on guitar and vocals and Griffin on drums and sometimes vocal harmonies. But they’ve always had consistent backup. For the first several years, that was Wylie Gelber on bass and Tay Strathairn on keyboards. On We’re All Gonna Die, Lee Pardini replaced Strathairn and has been with the band since. Oh Brother, however, marks the departure of Gelber and Pardini.
“We were like, ‘Wow, this is an intense time; this is a vulnerable time,’” remarks Goldsmith, who says that their parting was supportive and loving, but still rocked him and Griffin. “You get a glimpse of your vulnerability in a way that you haven’t felt in a long time when things are just up and running. For a second there, we’re like, ‘We’re getting a little rattled—how do we survive this?’”
They decided to pair up with producer Mike Viola, a close family friend, who has also worked with Mandy Moore—Taylor’s spouse—along with Panic! At the Disco, Andrew Bird, and Jenny Lewis. “[We knew that] he understands all of the parameters of that raw state. And, you know, I always show Mike my songs, so he was aware of what we had cookin’,” says Goldsmith.
Griffin stayed behind the kit, but Taylor took over on bass and keys, the latter of which he has more experience with than he’s displayed on past releases. “We’ve made records where it’s very tempting to appeal to your strengths, where it’s like, ‘Oh, I know how to do this, I’m just gonna nail it,’” he says. “Then there’s records that we make where we really push ourselves into territories where we aren’t comfortable. That contributed to [Misadventures of Doomscroller] feeling like a living, breathing thing—very reactive, very urgent, very aware. We were paying very close attention. And I would say the same goes for this.”
That new terrain, says Goldsmith, “forced us to react to each other and react to the music in new ways, and all of a sudden, we’re exploring new corners of what we do. I’m really excited in that sense, because it’s like this is the first album of a new phase.”
“That forced us to react to each other and react to the music in new ways, and all of a sudden, we’re exploring new corners of what we do.”
In proper folk (or even folk-rock) tradition, the music of Dawes isn’t exactly riddled with guitar solos, but that’s not to say that Goldsmith doesn’t show off his chops when the timing is right. Just listen to the languid, fluent lick on “Surprise!”, the shamelessly prog-inspired riff in the bridge of “Front Row Seat,” and the tactful, articulate line that threads through “Enough Already.” Goldsmith has a strong, individual sense of phrasing, where his improvised melodies can be just as biting as his catalog’s occasional lyrical jabs at presumably toxic ex-girlfriends, and just as melancholy as his self-reflective metaphors, all the while without drawing too much attention to himself over the song.
Of course, most of our conversation revolves around songwriting, as that’s the craft that’s the truest and closest to his identity. “There’s an openness, a goofiness—I even struggle to say it now, but—an earnestness that goes along with who I am, not only as a writer but as a person,” Goldsmith elaborates. “And I think it’s important that those two things reflect one another. ’Cause when you meet someone and they don’t, I get a little bit weirded out, like, ‘What have I been listening to? Are you lying to me?’” he says with a smile.
Taylor Goldsmith's Gear
Pictured here performing live in 2014, Taylor Goldsmith has been the primary songwriter for all of Dawes' records, beginning with 2009’s North Hills.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography
Guitars
- Fender Telecaster
- Gibson ES-345
- Radocaster (made by Wylie Gelber)
Amps
- ’64 Fender Deluxe
- Matchless Laurel Canyon
Effects
- 29 Pedals EUNA
- Jackson Audio Bloom
- Ibanez Tube Screamer with Keeley mod
- Vintage Boss Chorus
- Vintage Boss VB-2 Vibrato
- Strymon Flint
- Strymon El Capistan
Strings
- Ernie Ball .010s
In Goldsmith’s songwriting process, he explains that he’s learned to lean away from the inclination towards perfectionism. Paraphrasing something he heard Father John Misty share about Leonard Cohen, he says, “People think you’re cultivating these songs, or, ‘I wouldn’t deign to write something that’s beneath me,’ but the reality is, ‘I’m a rat, and I’ll take whatever I can possibly get, and then I’ll just try to get the best of it.’
“Ever since Misadventures of Doomscroller,” he adds, “I’ve enjoyed this quality of, rather than try to be a minimalist, I want to be a maximalist. I want to see how much a song can handle.” For the songs on Oh Brother, that meant that he decided to continue adding “more observations within the universe” of “Surprise!”, ultimately writing six verses. A similar approach to “King of the Never-Wills,” a ballad about a character suffering from alcoholism, resulted in four verses.
“The economy of songwriting that we’re all taught would buck that,” says Goldsmith. “It would insist that I only keep the very best and shed something that isn’t as good. But I’m not going to think economically. I’m not going to think, ‘Is this self-indulgent?’
Goldsmith’s songwriting has shifted thematically over the years, from more personal, introspective expression to more social commentary and, at times, even satire, in songs like We’re All Gonna Die’s “When the Tequila Runs Out.”
Photo by Mike White
“I don’t abide that term being applied to music. Because if there’s a concern about self-indulgence, then you’d have to dismiss all of jazz. All of it. You’d have to dismiss so many of my most favorite songs. Because in a weird way, I feel like that’s the whole point—self-indulgence. And then obviously relating to someone else, to another human being.” (He elaborates that, if Bob Dylan had trimmed back any of the verses on “Desolation Row,” it would have deprived him of the unique experience it creates for him when he listens to it.)
One of the joys of speaking with Goldsmith is just listening to his thought processes. When I ask him a question, he seems compelled to share every backstory to every detail that’s going through his head, in an effort to both do his insights justice and to generously provide me with the most complete answer. That makes him a bit verbose, but not in a bad way, because he never rambles. There is an endpoint to his thoughts. When he’s done, however, it takes me a second to realize that it’s then my turn to speak.
To his point on artistic self-indulgence, I offer that there’s no need for artists to feel “icky” about self-promotion—that to promote your art is to celebrate it, and to create a shared experience with your audience.
“I hear what you’re saying loud and clear; I couldn’t agree more,” Goldsmith replies. “But I also try to be mindful of this when I’m writing, like if I’m going to drag you through the mud of, ‘She left today, she’s not coming back, I’m a piece of shit, what’s wrong with me, the end’.... That might be relatable, that might evoke a response, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily helpful … other than dragging someone else through the shit with me.
“In a weird way, I feel like that’s the whole point—self-indulgence. And then obviously relating to someone else, to another human being.”
“So, if I’m going to share, I want there to be something to offer, something that feels like: ‘Here’s a path that’s helped me through this, or here’s an observation that has changed how I see this particular experience.’ It’s so hard to delineate between the two, but I feel like there is a difference.”
Naming the opening track “Mister Los Angeles,” “King of the Never-Wills,” and even the title track to his 2015 chart-topper, “All Your Favorite Bands,” he remarks, “I wouldn’t call these songs ‘cool.’ Like, when I hear what cool music is, I wouldn’t put those songs next to them [laughs]. But maybe this record was my strongest dose of just letting me be me, and recognizing what that essence is rather than trying to force out certain aspects of who I am, and force in certain aspects of what I’m not. I think a big part of writing these songs was just self-acceptance,” he concludes, laughing, “and just a whole lot of fishing.”
YouTube It
Led by Goldsmith, Dawes infuses more rock power into their folk sound live at the Los Angeles Ace Hotel in 2023.