After owning ax8 for years, a week ago, I received my axe3 mk2.
I have been checking fw 15.01 quite extensively.
I was totally amazed by how this fw sounds compared to ax8 10.01.
Yesterday, I had finally a bit of time for myself, so I wanted to check at least a dozen of my favourite amp models in ax3 running on cygnus beta fw.
In the end, I tried only 2 models for straight 3 hours
- cameron ccv and herbie - two of my absolutely favourites for higher gain stuff.
I must say I am beyond impressed - these 2 amp models punches so hard, that I was double checking, if output of ax3 goes into my tiny "Marley frfr" speaker as seen on a pic.
The note bloom, feel and low end is just amazing.
Side effect of that is that I had to add more treble/presence than before - no complains though.
Then I plugged ax3 into Fryette PS-2 and orange 2x12.
What the F... ?????????
This Cygnus goodness is much, much more noticable when using tube power amp !
It´s the best sound I ever had (I used to own tons of friedman amps, diezels, fortin, mesa boogies, etc.).
Then of course, I wanted to compare cygnus friedman models to my real Friedman JJ 100 with deluxe mod (as seen on a pic).
Here I feel like the friedman models has some mistake in this beta, as they sounded much closer and better in fw 15.01. to the real amp.
Needed to say, I know how friedman amp works and how to dial them in.
No amount of tweaking in cygnus could help me, no preamp low cut, no negative feedback settings.
I was not able to try more models, so Camerons and Diezels are outstanding, but friedmans I am not impressed at the moment.
ALL things considered, this Cygnus fw is like buying again new ax3 after owning it for a week.
Edit : pic added
Edit : I also found that the amp level now vary a lot.
for example : CCV models 1B loud, 2A normal level, 2C very quiet, 2D very quiet... they used to be equal volume wise.
