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Looper's Delight
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so is it time now really to get rid of your amps and just clone them with this thing?
short answer, no., at least for moi'I've had an AXE FX II in my hands for the better part of 3 months. It sounds really really good, it feels really really good, its really really deep, and of course its really really expensive.I don't own it but if the person who lent it to me forgets I have it, I wouldn't mind. i agree they could have had a few more stomp box models, but with a galaxy of amazing pedals on the market how do you go about choosing which ones to clone? all of of the other effects are of excellent quality, but an early claim I heard that its DSP was equivalent of the processing power of an Eventide Eclipse seems like hyperbole. One of the things I have noticed is it sounds only as big as what you are using as monitors so a small pair of studio monitors might be a bit lacking but a nice pair of stage ore pa powered monitors might get you there, or you could get some of those atomic tube power driven cabinets like the Dweezils use. What i don't like about it and multi processors of this ilk is the sound doesn't quite move me in the way that some great pedals in front of a good tube amp does. I don't even now why that is but i suspect the digitally modeled sounds are more fatiguing to my ear. I know there's lots of people who like to get in there and program for hours on end but thats not me. I appreciate what the AXE FX can do but the degree with which you can tweak parameters and the number of options is staggering to the point of overkill form me. Give me a handful of stellar sounds and I'm set.
I was skeptical at first, but when I got my AF2, I quickly sold off my Two Rocks and collection of tweed Fenders and late 60's Marshalls. It's really like having a Pendulum, all the best electric guitar amps you ever wanted plus a huge effects rack full of your favorite TCs and Eventides etc. with great connectivity to PA, powered speakers, DAWs. All I have in my rack right now is the AF2, a couple EDPs and a mixer.
I could not see parting with my vintage amps unless financial hardship forced me to and I don't know to what degree you play out, but those old tweed amps and marshall's will be running long after the AXE FX gets trumped by the next best thing. Two Rock's, well those are amps that will be vintage collectables in the future, but built even better than 50's-60's stuff.. I can understand the desire to go smaller, lighter more portable, less power, but not if the sound is as good or an improvement and I just don't want to pay for 50 different amps and speaker cabinets if I'm only going to uses 10. I'd like to see someone come out with a build your own library approach to this kind of hardware or software processor, along the lines of what UA does but so you could , for example buy a suite of vintage amps, or pick and choose which amp plugins to use and buy, same with effects... oh I'd like those tape delays and those overdrives please, no thanks I don't need a phaser. And the programming architecture would be simple and strait forward. I'd like to see a show of hands of AXE FX users, how many of you when dialing in an overdrive find they are dialing in which diode, tube or FET will be used in that overdrive, or change the bias on their amp model, or mis match an 8"champ speaker with Bogner Uberschall amp? That kind of parameter overkill drives me to distraction, and believe me I've spent some hours tweaking. this is where products like this fall short for me. So a profiling amp? hhhmmm is the plan to scour the country side to find cool amps that people will let you profile (hopefully in good working condition)? PSSSST hey mister you got an AC15 I could spend a few minutes with?This product seems designed for a pretty narrow demographic. I hope my sarcasm doesn't offend anyway, I'm a tube snob/brat what can I say?
Bill