I was there very early on. Late 2006.
The 'buzz' was just beginning. A bit of havoc really. At that time, my wait time was roughly 1-2 months (I think I waited 3). By the time I received mine, it was up to 6 months +. Out of the box it was like none of the other modelers I'd heard. Way over what the competitors were offering. Yes, it was a huge pain to figure out how to tweak (much of it was my learning curve on advanced digital devices as well.) But I was satisfied tweaking existing presets while I learned.
It went from 0 to 'fooking nuts' in a very short time (Cliff may chime in...it was probably the last time he slept). There were a pile of us trying to find information on it, as well as clips, etc. One person (not remembered...someone help here), did a few 'real world' clips as well as reviews, which sold pretty much all of us. There was about 3 reviews on HC, and I'm sure we all read them 400 times. Popularity grew pretty fast after that, and since most sites were sick and tired of us talking Axe-FX for days, so the setbb forum was born. In time the first incarnations of preset sites and WIKI, and finally Fractal took over the forum.
Helped from my standpoint that there were a few people here in Denver who were REALLY early adopters (cue Sean and Pete.) Eric was not long after me (solo-act), and a few amp fest's later, Denver was peppered with Fractal.
Really, we all just heard the potential of the technology early on, and jumped on board. And I can say I have not been disappointed.
Ron