Troubleshooting

It is driven from the front panel. Add an FC-6 or FC-12 over FASLINK II — one XLR cable, which also powers the controller.

Layouts are complete sets of footswitch functions and you step between them. Holding a switch usually moves you back.

Only Input 1 has the instrument front end. Inputs 2, 3 and 4 are line level.

Use a Humbuster cable from the quarter-inch output — TRS at the Axe-Fx end, TS at the amp. The wiring is built in and an ordinary cable simply does not use it.

Use the ground lift switch on the output.

A preset change reloads the grid. Scenes load nothing and switch seamlessly — build song sections as scenes.

Fractal let you build what fits rather than capping block types. Replace duplicate blocks with channels — four channels in one block cost far less than four blocks.

An edited indicator lights as soon as you change anything. Press STORE. Changing preset with it lit discards everything, without a prompt.

Empty grid slots do not pass signal on their own. Insert a shunt to bridge the gap.

Most of the time it really is a faulty or disconnected cable. Plug headphones straight into the unit: if the preset sounds fine there, the fault is downstream and nothing on the unit needs changing.

A grid can look connected and not be. Check the preset begins with an Input block and ends with an Output block, and that those correspond to the jacks you have actually cabled. Then change each block to a shunt in turn, leaving the Amp and Cab until last, and listen for where the sound returns.

If something is assigned to a volume or level control and the pedal or switch it expects is not plugged in, the level sits wherever that missing controller says — usually silence. Either remove the modifier, or set the external controller's initial value to 100% instead of 0%.

Presets you downloaded often reference a cab IR that lives on the author's unit and not yours. Point the Cab block at a factory cab and the sound comes back.

Fractal put this first for a reason — it is startling how often a brand new or long-trusted cable turns out to be the problem. Swap before you diagnose.

Check whether you are clipping the inputs or the outputs. Clipping that only appears on the loudest notes reads as a crackle rather than as distortion.

Above about 80% the unit starts running out of room and the artefacts are audible. Remove a block and see whether they stop.

Outputs 1 and 2 ship at −10 dBV for consumer line inputs, which is noticeably quieter than an Axe-Fx II at the same settings. Set Output 1: Output Level and Output 2: Output Level to +4 dBu under SETUP : I/O : Audio.

A pedal has to be calibrated to the jack before the unit knows its travel. Until then it may read as a fixed value rather than a sweep.

Expression needs a TRS cable, not a standard guitar lead — and a volume pedal is not an expression pedal, even though it has the same socket.

Calibrating the pedal does not connect it to anything. It has to be attached to a parameter with a modifier before it does a job.

Power down, wait five seconds, then power on holding HOME until the boot progress bar first appears. It comes up on an empty initialised preset in location 000, which you can store to any location to overwrite the one causing trouble.

Power down, wait five seconds, power on holding EDIT until the progress bar appears, then SETUP > Utilities > Reset and run Reset System Parameters. Resetting these never deletes or modifies your presets.

Power down, wait five seconds, then power on holding both PAGE LEFT and PAGE RIGHT until the Emergency Utility page appears, and update as normal with Fractal-Bot. This is the emergency boot loader, and it exists precisely so a failed update is recoverable.

A preset is a list of settings, and those settings are interpreted by whatever firmware is running. The usual culprits are a firmware version change, a different guitar, a different amp at the other end, or external controllers sitting at different values than they were. Global Blocks that have since been edited will also change every preset that references them.

Axe-Fx II, AX8 and FX8 presets do not load on an Axe-Fx III and vice versa. In practice this is less painful than it sounds: the same amp models are present, so transferring settings by hand generally works, and the older units' factory cabs live in the Legacy bank here.