Thinking about upgrading to the MKII

steadystate said:
That's a shame, because modelers are the best way by far to accurately recreate a huge variety of tones.
Click to expand...

I hear ya.

That said, I've seen some guys who have enough dynamic control over their hands where they can take one guitar, one amp and a couple pedals and pull off a whole set where they're ballparking so close that never at one point am I thinking "Man, if he just changed this it'd be that much closer".

Whatever works, works. I find myself fighting myself sometimes to not make a new preset for another hi-gain tone that is just slightly different than another preset I've made with such a similar sound. My buddy who I've played in bands with for nearly 20 years just can't decipher anything aside from clean or dirty. We'll sit here in my studio jamming and when I show him a different preset, I get the "How is that different from the last one?", and I'm going "Dude! Do you not hear how the lower mids are reacting to your right hand? Roll back the volume and listen.....hear that? It's like 100 tiny granules of distortion opposed to millions of granules! WTF are you talking about?!"

At the end of the day, I'm just fucking stoked that we have this awesome black box that we can pull up any and every tone we've ever wanted with.

At the end of the day, some of us are really into guitar tones and some of us are really into just playing. 99% of an audience doesn't give a shit, which leaves that 1% really giving a shit.
 
Last edited:
Zedhed said:
And yet here you are generalizing, insinuating a different opinion is doing so out of sour grapes.

I don't need to express my opinion out of sour grapes, I own two MKI's so I'm better off than if I owned one MKII.
Click to expand...
Sorry to make presumptions. But phrases like "less than irrelevant" made me wonder about the motivation. "Irrelevant" is an opinion. "Less than irrelevant" is more of a dis. I know you didn't intend that, but that's how I read it.
 
Sorry my post created such a storm of protest, but I highly doubt me upgrading to a MKII is going to cause thousands of Axe FX-III MKI units to be tossed into landfills, so the consumerism comments can go where the sun doesn't shine.

Fractal Audio seems to be a very customer oriented company, and they decided to up the preset storage as well as the firmware storage. All of you suggesting this isn't needed, take it up with Cliff.

I'll purchase an Axe-FXIII MKII and sell my MKI after I receive the new unit.
 
GotMetalBoy said:
If you really need to have lights that change colors, go buy a Disco Ball Light from Amazon.com for under $20 shipped to your door in a couple days. Most of them include a remote control to change colors and patterns and sound activated strobe lighting.
Click to expand...
One of my very few complaints about my AxeFX3 is the super bright blue logo killing low-light vision. It borders on painful to look at. Not as bad as the 50W blue laser that MINI used for the high beam indicator in my R53, but still a bit hard to look at. The logo being dimmable and having choice of colors is actually a pretty big temptation for me. Being able to store the AB Naked Amps and still have 6 more banks free for whatever else is convenient, too.
 
JoKeR III said:
Why can't guitar players simply accept the fact that their way is not the only way to do something? I'm in the camp that 512 presets is more than enough. Others would like to or need to have more. Who am I to say they're doing something wrong in their approach to how they use their gear? T
Click to expand...
This ^^^^
 
Moke said:
Because one person can't see why anyone would want/need something, doesn't mean that no one does? It's the root of a lot of issues that our world faces.
Click to expand...
This ^^^^

The world could use a lot more 'live and let live' and a lot less 'judgemental jerks trying to force everyone else to live within their tiny mindset'. If it doesn't affect you, and it doesn't harm anyone else, why not?

Do as ye will, and harm no other.
 
Considering the ability to use scenes, and the included channel-switching options for each block in a scene, I can't fathom building more than 100 presets.

If you really need that many, and saving them to your HD and swapping isn't an option, then I guess the MkII is there exactly for you.
 
RevDrucifer said:
In this context, ya gotta keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of people playing out, namely cover guys, have taken a ballpark approach to their tones. Tribute guys generally take it a step further, but in all my years of going to see bands or playing in them, ballpark was the overwhelming average. I still can't think of any bands I've gone to see where the guitarist was using a modeler and going for as close as possible tones. So that's why you're seeing people question the need for that many presets.

Also, you're using one preset per sound. I'm curious, how did you find that was the best approach? I'd assume the seamless changing between scenes/channels would be enough of a selling point.

All my presets are dependent on the amp. The effects are pretty much the same unless I'm doing something unusual. I just want different amps to choose from. If I had to play a cover gig now, it'd be one preset maybe 4-5 different scenes. I'm definitely a ballpark kinda dude.
Click to expand...
While my vast majority of time is spent in the 'ballpark', I can see the use in having a 'per-song' approach, and in planning ahead, and within the limitations of equipment back in the '90s, tried to ride the fence between the 'ballpark' and 'per-song' as needed even then. I had a Quadraverb GT (later the Q2) and a DataDisk in my rack to back it up and store more than the unit could store by itself. Thankfully our list never got that long, but it was headed that way. Digital storage is cheap. Why not expand to 4096?

Point is, a 'per-song' approach lends itself to leaner presets, with better ability to set up scenes and/or controllers to match the song arrangement, with, ultimately, less tap dancing and more ability to focus on the song, the crowd, and the enjoyment if being there doing it all....

If it makes [one] happy, it can't be that bad.
Some folks make me ask, 'Why the hell are you so sad?'
 
Last edited:
ModelGuitarist said:
Considering the ability to use scenes, and the included channel-switching options for each block in a scene, I can't fathom building more than 100 presets.

If you really need that many, and saving them to your HD and swapping isn't an option, then I guess the MkII is there exactly for you.
Click to expand...
Also this ^^^
A good example of 'live and let live'....
 
To me, the beauty of this product is 1) It has evolved and continues to evolve to allow you to do things YOUR way, 2) Cliff keeps pushing the envelope and whether it's firmware or hardware, it will keep getting bigger and better.

Myself - I COULD get by with 99 presets, especially since I can store unlimited presets on my laptop. Having 512 is great, and I can see the desire for more. So... I'm happy about the MKII.

I would love to have 1024, (or even 2048) onboard so that they are all just right there to be called on without having to go look for them and load them and replace others. I do like and use the per song approach for a lot of reasons. (Just some of which are: I like the song name in front of me. I order my shows in the AXE preset list before the show, and actually use my FC as my setlist in front of me - hit the button - see the song name - go. I sometimes launch trax from my FC which is a per song thing. I use custom FC layouts for most of my songs. Tempos are set for me. Etc etc.) So...even though my TONE stays fairly consistent, I still use the per song approach for those other reasons.

Maybe you run a studio, and having a huge library of sounds is a benefit. Maybe you play in 3 bands and each has a 250 song catalog, and maybe you fly around and don't want to deal with loading and unloading presets. Who knows? If you dig it, and it's good for you - go for it and do it that way! I'm thrilled with the new expanded memory of the MKII and look forward to upgrading to that one day when it makes sense for me. (I also find the blue LED too bright, so I appreciate that change too.)
 
steadystate said:
I'd never use them in a single night. That's not the point. My main band has over five nights of material with no repeated songs.
Click to expand...

Do you have different presets for each song? I’m just asking for the sake of curiosity, with no intention whatsoever to start a flame 🙂
With my band I use one preset for song but many of them are just identical (anxiously waiting for the setlist coming to the FC).

I guess I could shrink the number of presets to maybe less than 10 with the setlist feature.

I’m just curious to know what’s the need for a radically different preset for every song.
 
HI Joe,
I was the same - horrible in a dim studio environment.
If you're really careful, you can slide a piece of gel... (uumm.. the coloured light filter they used to use on light cans for colour... sure they still do) in between the leds and the case - Worked for me.

Joe Bfstplk said:
One of my very few complaints about my AxeFX3 is the super bright blue logo killing low-light vision. It borders on painful to look at. Not as bad as the 50W blue laser that MINI used for the high beam indicator in my R53, but still a bit hard to look at. The logo being dimmable and having choice of colors is actually a pretty big temptation for me. Being able to store the AB Naked Amps and still have 6 more banks free for whatever else is convenient, too.
Click to expand...
 
pauly said:
HI Joe,
I was the same - horrible in a dim studio environment.
If you're really careful, you can slide a piece of gel... (uumm.. the coloured light filter they used to use on light cans for colour... sure they still do) in between the leds and the case - Worked for me.
Click to expand...
I will likely apply a similar solution to the one I used on the MINI's high-beam indicator: A piece of Scotch invisible tape with blue sharpie scribbled on it, or two layers if needed. It kept the color and just knocked down the brightness a bit.

I did use gels as part of my son's Hallowe'en costume back in the '90s, when he was 8 or so. He wanted to be a traffic light. I made it happen with a big box, an old t-shirt, some wire, a few low-voltage lightbulb sockets, some aluminum foil, and construction paper, and the aforementioned gels. It was complete with a three-button control inside that let him light the red, yellow, or green light. One car even stopped for his red light. :D
 
I'm also a "preset per song, with scenes" person.

Besides not having to tapdance, it allows me to set the tempo for each song, assign scenes names accordingly and automate displaying notes and lyrics per song on my iPad.

I also prefer to keep a library of interesting presets on the unit itself, including factory presets, AustinBuddy's presets, creations of my own and others, demo presets for the Amp and Drive Guides etc.

It quickly adds up, and 512 slots do not suffice for this approach.
Sure, I can do it offline, but it's just easier to have the presets available directly.
So it's great for owners of the Mark II to be able to do this.
 
Last edited:
If the next step is improve store capacity more amp cab models could means that the sound aspect has no more to improve? I think so and i can t find nothing to do better in the sound aspect of these wonderful machines.
 
Obviously if people want it they should buy it but Axe 3 hardware got everything so right in the first instance a refresh this soon after initial design has nowhere to go until tech moves on .
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom