ROB MATH: Hey there. I'm Rob Math with Korg USA, and I'd like to demonstrate the new AX3000G for you. This is an awesome new multi-effects amp modeler pedal from Korg's Toneworks division. It features Korg's award-winning REMS modeling technology to model 72 different types of effects. It gives you 16 different drive and amp models, 11 different modulation effects, 11 different delays, 11 different reverbs as well as programmable noise reduction. There's also 11 different pre-effects which offer the user some really unique type of different effects like synth modeling or pickup modeling which will transform the sound of a single coil to a humbucker. There's also compression, wah, and there's also a drone effect, which is very cool which will allow you to create sort of like Middle Eastern types of sounds like sitar-type of tones. You can also change the key of the drone depending on what key you're playing. Now, I'll demonstrate that for you in a little bit.

It comes with a dedicated expression pedal which allows you to control just about all your effect parameters in real time, so everything from the depth of the delay to the speed of the modulation effect which is very handy for live use. It gives you 96 storable locations to store your presets and it comes with 32 killer presets direct from the factory. It also gives you a mode in here called individual mode which allows you to turn on and off the different effect sections as if they were stompboxes that you would just have right at your feet, so it makes really again really handy for live.

On the back, as you'll take a look, there is a send and return. This is an insert effect pedal section. This allows you to plug your own favorite pedals in here, and you can run them in line with the AX3000G, and essentially you can turn them on and off with this dedicated control button. The control button is a really nice extra feature on the AX3000G. It allows you to turn on and off the different effects sections that could be anything you want. It essentially has variety of different functions. It could be a delay tap, a modulation tap, or you can go ahead and turn on and off your insert effect pedals.

So the AX3000G has a very unique feature called ESS, and this is something you're only going to find on the AX3000G. It allows us to control the effects on it in a completely new way, and allows the user to create sounds better that you're only going to be able to create on the AX3000G, so it allows you to create some really unique stuff. The ESS stands for Expression Step Sequencer and the way it works is it works between the parameter, the target parameter of the effect that you've assigned to the expression pedal, and the ESS. And what ESS does is it gives you eight different steps. It controls effects in a stepwise fashion, and it gives you seven different ways that you can play back those steps, so you can do what we call just a forward pattern where it goes one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight, seven-six-five-four-three-two-one and back down again, or we're going to do a random pattern where it will just choose different steps and play back that order, and I'll let you hear this in a second because hearing is believing.

So, when you assign the ESS to, say, the pitch shifter now, you can change the value of the pitch for each step, and thereby you're going to create a whole sequence of different notes with the effect as you get a real arpeggio-style sound like a synth-type arpeggiator or tapping style stuff. You can create some really cool, awesome, fast-sounding licks, and it's also a very cool thing -- technique for practicing because you can create some different patterns that you wouldn't normally think of. By just playing on the guitar, you can actually create them here with the ESS and go back and figure them out.

Now, the ESS also works with many of the other effects, not just the pitch shifter. It'll work with, say, the filter effect and create some awesome stepped filter-type pitch effects as well as the wah. So, I'm going to demonstrate that for you and let you hear this, and let's start with a couple of ESS examples. This example, the ESS is essentially -- again, it's assigned to control the pitch of the pitch shifter, and this is a 6A pattern and the notes that I've chosen are creating kind of like a pentatonic scale here, so fast it sounds like this.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING THE ESS FEATURE ON THE KORG AX3000G]

So I just hit the one note, and it does that. It's very cool. So, if I bring back the expression pedal, now I can control the speed of the ESS.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING THE ESS FEATURE ON THE KORG AX3000G]

So, I'll give you a little demonstration of what you can do with this then.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING THE ESS FEATURE ON THE KORG AX3000G]

Okay.

This particular example, the ESS is going to try to play like a trill-style of pattern. Essentially, on guitar, if you do this...

[ROB MATH PLAYING A MINOR THIRD TRILL MANUALLY]

This is a minor third open G to B-flat, all right? With this pattern now, if I just hit one note, it's going to alternate between the G and the B-flat.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING MINOR THIRD TRILL VIA THE ESS FEATURE ON THE KORG AX3000G]

You can control the speed with the expression pedal.

Pretty cool. Now, I'm going to show you how you can apply that with a riff or something using the control buttons. I'll play a little riff and then come in with the ESS.

[ROB MATH PLAYING A FEW RIFFS AND DEMONSTRATING TRILLS WITH THE ESS FEATURE ON THE KORG AX3000G]

Now, you can also apply that to the end of a lick. So, let's say you do sort of a sweeping thing.

[ROB MATH PLAYING SWEEP PICKING LICKS AND DEMONSTRATING TRILLS WITH THE ESS FEATURE ON THE KORG AX3000G]

Pretty cool, right?

[ROB MATH PLAYING SWEEP PICKING LICKS AND DEMONSTRATING TRILLS WITH THE ESS FEATURE ON THE KORG AX3000G]

Nice ending of a riff, so that’s a great application there for using the ESS with the pitch shifter. Here are some other examples. Here's a minor arpeggio.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING MINOR ARPEGGIOS WITH THE ESS FEATURE ON THE KORG AX3000G]

And here's a major arpeggio.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING MAJOR ARPEGGIOS WITH THE ESS FEATURE ON THE KORG AX3000G]

We'll slow it down.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING MAJOR ARPEGGIOS WITH THE ESS FEATURE ON THE KORG AX3000G]

Okay. So I can go ahead now and let's say I want to use that to play sort of like a little riff here.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING MAJOR ARPEGGIOS WITH THE ESS FEATURE ON THE KORG AX3000G]

Cool stuff right? I can also create some real out there patterns like this one.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING OTHER PATTERNS WITH THE ESS FEATURE ON THE KORG AX3000G]

It sounds almost like something like from Star Wars.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING OTHER PATTERNS WITH THE ESS FEATURE ON THE KORG AX3000G]

Okay. And as I mentioned, the ESS can control many of the other effects parameters to come up with some really cool sounds. Here is the ESS assigned to the filter or the Filtron effect, and basically this is a stock program that's called the Traveler, but when you just turn on the ESS this is what you get.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING FILTER SWEEP PATTERNS WITH THE ESS FEATURE ON THE KORG AX3000G]

So, cool stuff. I mean it's some really unique sounds. Here's the ESS assigned to the filter effect.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING FILTER SWEEP PATTERNS WITH THE ESS FEATURE ON THE KORG AX3000G]

That is you can do like a --

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING FILTER SWEEP PATTERNS WITH THE ESS FEATURE ON THE KORG AX3000G]

Cool stuff. So there's some, you know, boutique pedals out there that do these step filtering types of effects and you can easily create that with the ESS here.

Here's the AC30 Top Boost model with a stereo cross delay.

[ROB MATH PLAYING LICKS WITH THE AC30 TOP BOOST MODEL AND STEREO CROSS DELAY ON THE KORG AX3000G]

All right. So, as mentioned, we have a pre-effects section that allows you to create some really unique types of sounds. Here's a drone effect in the key of D. I'm going to be actually bringing the drone in and out with his expression pedal.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING DRONE PRE-EFFECT ON THE KORG AX3000G]

Pretty cool stuff. We'll check out some other sounds here. As mentioned, we got 16 different amp models here. Here's the Black 212 amp model. It models an Fender Twin.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING THE BLACK 212 AMP MODEL ON THE KORG AX3000G]

As I mentioned before, in individual mode you can go ahead and turn on and off your effects section. So, I'm going to turn on my delay section where I have preprogrammed a slap echo.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING THE BLACK 212 AMP MODEL WITH SLAP BACK ECHO ON THE KORG AX3000G]

Cool. Okay. Moving on here. Check out some other sounds. How about some over-the-top shredding wah type sounds.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING DISTORTED AMP MODEL WITH WAH ON THE KORG AX3000G]

Okay. And one of my favorite, the Traveler. This is a stock program.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING THE TRAVELER STOCK PROGRAM ON THE KORG AX3000G]

How about an acoustic simulator.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING ACOUSTIC SIMULATION ON THE KORG AX3000G]

Okay. So, we’ve got everything from great high-gain lead sounds to killer clean tones. Here's the boutique clean amp model with the wah-wah.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING THE BOUTIQUE CLEAN AMP MODEL WITH WAH ON THE KORG AX3000G]

Some great spatial effects like reverse delay.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING A HIGH-GAIN AMP MODEL WITH REVERSE DELAY ON THE KORG AX3000G]

All right, so you've heard some of the great sounds on the AX3000G and the ESS, and one of the things I'd like to show you is just how easy it is to assign an effect parameter to the expression pedal and how to manipulate the ESS to exchange different patterns. So, let's say we want to take this particular patch here, and we want to assign the delay to the expression pedal. We're going to mix the delay. I'm going to go over to my delay section here, turn on the delay, and we go to two-tap.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING A HIGH-GAIN AMP MODEL WITH DELAY CONTROLLED BY ESS ON THE KORG AX3000G]

Okay. Let's go ahead and alter the mix with the time with that.

[ROB MATH TWEAKING THE KORG AX3000G]

Okay. And if we go over to the mix parameter, we'll bring that up in the screen. Using a function called quick assign, we can easily assign the effect parameter to the expression pedal. So, when that parameter is up, if you have this little expression pedal icon, I can go ahead and just hold down the EXP control button for two seconds and we'll assign the mix of that delay to the expression pedal, so let's do that. Okay.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING A HIGH-GAIN AMP MODEL WITH DELAY CONTROLLED BY ESS ON THE KORG AX3000G]

So no delay. As I bring up the pedal, I'm bringing the delay.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING A HIGH-GAIN AMP MODEL WITH DELAY CONTROLLED BY ESS ON THE KORG AX3000G]

So, that's the quick assign function, really easy, really simple to use. In the back of me right here, on my laptop, I've got the editor/librarian software. This is a free download off of Korg's web site. It works with Mac or PC, and it allows you to easily edit the parameters of the AX3000 right here from your laptop or your desktop computer. It also allows you to import and export files and save file sets, and it just makes it really convenient as well for editing your parameters. Let's say you're just sitting down and you want to have this at your feet, you want to just easily edit the effects here, you can do that. So, if I go to let's say mute my amp models here, I can pull down this menu and I can go through all the different models, so we got U.S. model and U.K. model so there's a U.K. model. Let's go ahead and change our cabinet here.

[ROB MATH CHANGING AND AUDITIONING CABINET MODELS ON THE KORG AX3000G]

Okay. Let's go ahead and change our effects right here. Analog delay.

[ROB MATH ENABLING ANALOG DELAY ON THE KORG AX3000G]

We can go ahead and adjust the time of the delay here. Okay, we can go ahead and choose a much different reverb. We have 11 reverbs, and you can see them all here and easily edit the parameters. Now, if we want to switch programs, we cabn also do that over here, which is nice, so let's go to one of our ESS programs.

[ROB MATH DEMONSTRATING ESS PROGRAM ON THE KORG AX3000G]

Okay, and now you can see all the steps that are in this pattern. You have the first step is +0, the second is +7, +10, +11, and you can see the pattern six-step alternate. Let's go ahead and change these steps, so.

[ROB MATH EDITING ESS PROGRAM ON THE KORG AX3000G]

Yeah. Let's go ahead and change this step here, the third step.

[ROB MATH EDITING ESS PROGRAM ON THE KORG AX3000G]

So we can create some really unique sounds, things you wouldn't normally think of, okay?

[ROB MATH EDITING ESS PROGRAM ON THE KORG AX3000G]

Okay, I'm just randomly altering the sounds. And one of the things I'd like to mention with this pedal you can assign it to just control the pitch and not the speed, so this way I can figure out each one of those notes.

[ROB MATH EDITING ESS PROGRAM ON THE KORG AX3000G]

Okay.

[ROB MATH EDITING ESS PROGRAM ON THE KORG AX3000G]

So, it's very cool. So if we set it back to speed --

[ROB MATH EDITING ESS PROGRAM ON THE KORG AX3000G]

And again, if we assign the ESS to just let's say like something else other than the pitch shifter, like let's take the Traveler, this expression pedal is controlling the Filtron, the mangle parameter, and now if I go ahead and turn on ESS, here's what we got.

[ROB MATH EDITING ESS PROGRAM ON THE KORG AX3000G]

So, it's very cool. So there you have it, the AX3000G, an awesome new multi-effects amp modeler from Korg's Toneworks division. It gives you a real ton of control, over 72 different effects with a dedicated expression pedal. It comes with 96 locations to store your programs, it gives you 32 presets from the factory, 16 drive and amp models, 11 different modulation, delay, and reverb effects as well as 11 unique pre-effects, and it has a very unique feature called ESS, which stands for Expression Step Sequencer. This allows us to control the effects in a stepwise fashion and create some really unique sounds that you're only going to find on the AX3000G.

I'm Rob Math. Take care. I hope you've enjoyed listening and check out your AX3000G. Have fun.