CHOOSING THE RIGHT floormounted multi-effects processor can be like deciding between two conflicting goals. On the one hand, multi-effects should be powerful, flexible, and capable of covering wide sonic territory. On the other hand, guitarists like the simplicity of stompboxes; engineering in too much complexity defeats the purpose.
The Korg ToneWorks AX1500G, which builds on the success of the AX1000G, does a nice job of balancing those contrary factors (see the April 2000 issue for a review of the AX1000G). It offers a deep arsenal of effects, giving you everything you need to get through a typical gig and of few other items that can take your sound outside the box. But its design and operation are simple and enough to let you take advantage of those capabilities without registering for a course in decryption at your local spy school.
THE BASICS
Basic features include amp and cabinet modeling; modulation, ambient, and pedal effects; a built-in pedal with a toeswitch; and an onboard tuner. You also get a few interesting extras, including a built-in metronome and a Phrase Trainer — a practice aid that lets you record a snippet of audio and slow it down without changing its pitch. That's a lot of juice for a relatively small unit. (The AX1500G fits in my gig bag's oversize pocket.)
The AX1500G's easy user interface makes getting started a snap. You get 48 factory presets and 48 additional slots for storing your own sounds. Patches are organized into banks of three, an arrangement that makes it easy to group sounds by song, genre, or whim.
If you hold down the Bank Up switch for a few seconds, the AX1500G goes into Individual mode, in which you can toggle effects on and off by foot. Tap Bank Up a second time, and you're back in Preset mode. In practice, that gives you the best of both worlds — quick access to a variety of sounds (using the presets) and immediate real-time control over the elements that make up the sounds.
The AX1500G also has a nice channel-switching feature that distinguishes it from much of its competition. When you select a preset, you actually get two sounds to work with — channels A and B — and you can toggle between them with the Effect Channel switch. Each channel can have independent amp/distortion and cabinet-emulation settings, so you can set one for a clean compressed sound while the other dishes out gut-shaking distortion. The rest of the elements in the preset — the modulation, pedal, and ambience settings — remain the same. Note that you can do this in Individual mode and in Preset mode. Nice.
Although the presets run the gamut from the basic to the bizarre, most of the factory patches were designed with working guitarists in mind. The patches include tight, clean sounds, a variety of gritty patches suitable for rock and blues, a healthy dose of metal-caliber grind, and more.
AROUND THE BLOCKS
Effects are grouped into five blocks, with each block covering an effects category: Drive-Amp, Cabinet, Modulation, Pedal, and Ambience. You can activate or bypass blocks with their corresponding top-panel buttons or, in Individual mode, with the corresponding footswitches. Whenever you call up a new preset, the Block Select switches light up and show the active presets.
For editing, you use the rotary Effects Select knobs to choose among the effects within each block and the bank of multifunction Value knobs to tweak them. A color-coded matrix shows which parameters the value knobs control within each block. That scheme may sound confusing, but it's actually dead simple. As you turn the knob, the parameter value shows up in the LCD. If you simply hate knobs, you can also choose to edit effects using the Master/Value and Cursor switches — one of several examples of how the AX1500G gives you more than one way to accomplish the same goal.
The Drive-Amp block supplies your tonal brick and mortar. Settings include Compression; nine types of distortion/tube-amp modeling, which range from warm overdrive to vintage fuzz to metallic meltdown; and a decent-sounding acoustic-guitar simulator. The Cabinet block completes the core tone. You get 11 speaker models to choose from, ranging from the squeezed-down 1-by-8 Tweed to some impressively open-sounding 2-by-12 emulations to a number of 4-by-10 and 4-by-12 cabinets.
Space doesn't permit a rundown of all of the permutations, but suffice it to say that you can dial up just about any kind of clean or distorted tone. However, because the compressor resides in the Drive-Amp block, you cannot combine it with distortion. The moderate distortion settings were warm and rich, though they were less dynamic than other models I've heard. The more aggressive settings offered plenty of kick and clarity. As with a real amplifier, the choice of (virtual) speaker cabinet has a major impact on the sound.
The Modulation, Pedal, and Ambience blocks provide the icing on the cake. Modulation includes effects such as chorus, flanger, phaser, tremolo, pitch-shifting, and filter effects. Ambience delivers a range of echo and delay effects, including the deep vintage EchoPlus, more standard fare such as ping-pong and stereo delay, and a range of nice-sounding reverbs, including spring, plate, and room. You also get some useful echo-reverb combinations.
The Pedal block is the wild card. In addition to the standard volume, wah, and other filter-type effects you'd expect in this category, you'll find several dynamically controllable modulation and delay settings. The pedal mods include pitch-bend (which offers a smooth whammy pedal — type effect), Chorus/Flange (pedal controls effects mix), U-Vibe (a fairly convincing re-creation of the vintage Uni-Vibe), and Ring Modulator. When any of those effects are active, the Modulation block is automatically defeated.
The Pedal block roster of pedal-controlled delay effects includes Hold Delay (use the pedal to hold a repeating figure), Tap Tempo (use the pedal's toeswitch to define the tempo), and Sample and Play, which lets you record up to eight seconds of your playing and use the pedal to trigger it in forward or reverse. As with the modulation effects, choosing a pedal-operated delay defeats the Ambience block. That's really too bad, because the ability to combine them with reverb would be nice. (However, you can run the modulation and ambient effects with the volume pedal.)
The AX1500G's excellent sound makes up for that small annoyance. I was especially impressed by the richness of the modulation, pedal, and filter effects. If the AX1500G is any indication, digital wah is finally catching up to the sound and feel of the classic analog units.
IT'S A WRAP
As a stage device, the Korg AX1500G has much to offer. It's easy to get the sound you want when you want it. The speed with which you can move between preset and individual modes is impressive. You can fine-tune most sounds within a matter of seconds without having to go into arcane edit menus.
However, the AX1500G does have some flaws. It would be nice to have the ability to combine mod-delay and reverb effects, or compressor and distortion effects, for example, and the closeness of the footswitches might prove problematic if you have large feet. Also, the Korg lacks digital I/O — a feature that's becoming more and more useful, especially in recording situations.
Sonically, the AX1500G gets high marks. It sounds especially good when driving a tube combo. Its fat, searing distortion; big, cutting wah; and well-adjusted mod and ambient effects give you stompbox sound with digital multi-effect performance.
