FAWNXS
There’s no getting away from that signature British chime. The Essex A30 version of the XS system I made had a bit more bite, and I needed a rounder, smoother build, and so the Fawn Vox AC30 amp with its twin Celestion bells was selected.
The patch has been set up with twin delay pedals set in parallel to allow for both individual and dual delays. They’ve been set to the standard 1/8th and dotted 8th delay timings to cover most rhythms. A low gain King of Tone and a pushed tube screamer type pedal have been added in series to provide three gain stages even on the clean snapshot. The Ampeg Liquifier adds a subtle modulation option that adds space and movement without going too classic 80’s prog rock. The Glitz reverb adds a beautiful glow to the sound and the Dynamic Plate has been set to replicate Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah tone. On top of this, there is a polyphonic pitch set to +12 semitones with a sweep in and out of it when activated.
The XS system
After many years of developing patches with a similar Snapshot layout which ranged in options from Ambience, Delay, through to Drive, Lead and Swell effects, I decided to develop a separate format that highlights aspects of the Amp and sets it up at different gain stages.
I have found that with my style of playing, I use the ‘Stomp’ mode more often than ‘Snapshot’ mode. Having come from a pedalboard, it’s a more natural method of guitar effects.
Rather than set up each snapshot as a different array of enabled and disabled pedal effects, I’ve set up each snapshot as an Amp setup. This allows the user to set their preferred “base” tone of the amp, and then switch to stompbox mode to enable and disable effects as they see fit.
Snapshots 1 through 4 are set up for a clean tone, an edge of breakup tone, an overdriven tone and a lead tone. These are labelled “Cleantone”, “Edge”, “Overdrive”, and “Lead”.
Realising that I could also then use snapshots to modify the “room reverb” as well, Snapshots 5 through 8 are the same as the first four Snapshots, but with the “room reverb” boosted in both mix and decay to create a longer ambience for creating deeper atmosphere with the delays and reverb effects. These are named “Cleanverb”, “Edge+”, “Overdrive+”, and “Lead+”
By default, the presets are set to the edge of breakup Snapshot (2) when loaded, which is the amp tone I most often use.
