Thinking about ditching my Ultra

tele0123, you may end up not liking your Ultra, in which case your curiosity will be satisfied and you'll probably be able to get a good amount of your money back when you sell it. But, like everyone has said, if you look at the majority of posts here it's pretty clear that there are a lot of very pleased Ultra owners. I'm just not one of them. One piece of advice though: try to judge with your own ears, not by what everyone else says about it. There's SO much hype around the Axe-Fx that it can be hard not to second guess yourself if you're not liking it.

sixstring: I know I'll end up taking quite a hit on the resale but I'd rather have $1,000 to put toward a new amp than a piece of equipment I'm not going to use. :)
 
campersand said:
tele0123, you may end up not liking your Ultra, in which case your curiosity will be satisfied and you'll probably be able to get a good amount of your money back when you sell it. But, like everyone has said, if you look at the majority of posts here it's pretty clear that there are a lot of very pleased Ultra owners. I'm just not one of them. One piece of advice though: try to judge with your own ears, not by what everyone else says about it. There's SO much hype around the Axe-Fx that it can be hard not to second guess yourself if you're not liking it.

sixstring: I know I'll end up taking quite a hit on the resale but I'd rather have $1,000 to put toward a new amp than a piece of equipment I'm not going to use. :)
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Actually I got my asking price so I'm happy with the sale. Axe II is in the very near future :D. I thought about going back to a tube amp (Suhr Badger 35) but after playing a bit with the Ultra before I sold it and comparing tones with other real amps I decided to stay the Axe II corse, Just to much versatility for what I'm doing right now.
 
campersand said:
One piece of advice though: try to judge with your own ears, not by what everyone else says about it. There's SO much hype around the Axe-Fx that it can be hard not to second guess yourself if you're not liking it.
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+1. This is huge. If you give too much weight to the opinons you read (here and elsewhere), you'll wind up chasing rabbits.

It works both ways, too. There are plenty of Axe-haters on other forums who have convinced many others that the Axe-FX is the worst thing since the invention of the turd sandwich. And they'll never know the truth, because they hear and think what they're told to hear and think.
 
My 2c worth: OP, You need to understand that the Axe FX isn't just a plug n play amp, its a studio processor (in theory).

I found with the Ultra that there was alot of tweaking to be made and every subtlety needed attention, dont see it as a negative see it as a positive which would be improving your ear and studio knowledge. I know Im not the only one saying this on this forum, but my studio skills increased a shittonne once I started using the Ultra and all the different Global Settings, EQs, compression, filters etc. Take the positive from the situation and know that you have learnt ALOT through your tweaking!


Im biased in saying this (so feel free to tell me to get stuffed), but the Axe FX II was a whole new different level for me man, its a HEAP more user friendly, tweaking is a breeze in comparison to the ultra (not to say the Ultra is a superior unit as I have owned both!).

Just give it a little more time man, and get onto some RedWirez Cabinet IR's, best thing I ever did with my Ultra.



If you aren't satisfied, no problem, go and try a II out, borrow from someone you know or something, I can guarantee it'll have that 'thump' on a WHOLE new different level.
 
Just a quick one from recent experience: Just went through a recording session with a guitar player I play with in my band (mainly classic rock setup) using the AxeFX Ultra. He's never used any type of virtual amp, always playing through tube amps - his current rig is a Mesa combo + speaker stack. I just set up five default presets for him: compressed clean, rhythm clean, crunch, and two lead sounds (more or less gain), based on the Brownface and Marsha amps (almost no gain on the Marsha!). Ran the whole piece through my studio monitors (some old Tannoy 8''s).

He was completely blown away by the sound - said it really felt like a tube amp plus pedals setup - minus the noise ;-)

The presets I used were really pretty basic: mainly amps, speaker sims plus a bit of delay and reverb (excluded from the recording path but included in the monitoring path). The main "tweaking" activity was actually in the selection of speakers and microphones. In my experience, these decisions really make a difference. And I am quite agnostic about the "original" speaker; I mainly mix and match depending on intended tone: pick 4x12 20W or 4x12 25W for the "fundament", flavor with 4x12 German or 4x12 Cali to taste for a bit of brilliance, then fine-tune with microphones: SM 57 for "edge", R121 for warmth and hi end definition, ...

Hardly any EQ or Amp Geek finetuning necessary if you get this right...

Well, actually, the ONE tweak that can put the icing on the cake in is Scott Petersons "stacked PEQ" trick: [thread=32799]click here![/thread] - I tend to use two of these amp-specific PEQ blocks in my standard preset template, one with a 3 dB and one with a 5dB boost and just turn them on/off as part of tweaking the preset. Important: these PEQs definitely need to be tuned to the center frequency of the selected amp model (see Scott's post)! Activating one or both of these PEQs can really help boost the characteristics of the respective amp - again, customize to taste.

Another observation: it really helps to go easy on the drive control - most presets (again my experience is more in the Classic Rock, Blues, Mainstream area, not so much in the ultra-high-gain arena) really profit from a light hand on the drive control - I usually, once I have the sound in the rough ballpark, I try to dial the drive as far back as possible within the limits of that sound. Usually makes presets far more responsive and less "buzzy".

I certainly have no intention to get rid of my Ultra - great piece of kit!

Cheers,

Torsten
 
davo_guitarman: I won't tell you to get stuffed :), but I will say that I fully understand that the Ultra isn't a plug & play amp. Like I said in my original post, I've spent countless hours tweaking the Ultra and have never arrived at a sound that I loved. This only became more apparent when I started comparing the Ultra to other amps/plugins. So unfortunately, I can't really say that I've learned all that much from my time with the Ultra other than to trust my ears more! And whether it just isn't able to get the sound I want or whether the problem is with my programming, the fact remains that I wasn't happy with it and, after a couple years of trying, I probably wasn't going to ever be happy with it.

Again, I appreciate everyone's advice. I've actually already sold my Ultra and feel very happy to have moved on. Not sure what I'm going to get to replace it but I'm gonna make sure it's something I love BEFORE I buy it this time. :)
 
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