I've had my axefxII and mfc for just about 2 weeks now and wanted to chronicle my experience - both to help me come to terms with my feelings about this new rig, and to share with others who may be thinking about it.
First, a bit about me. I've been playing guitar for 25 years - most recently for The Bitteroots in Atlanta GA. I've been fortunate enough to be able to afford some pretty sweet gear of late. My current rig is a badcat lynx head and a badcat 4x12 closed back cab with v30's. The head is all handwired with matchless components & a custom brown/tan ostrich skin covering. I have a pedaltrain pro board with a cusack loop switcher and the following pedals: ernie ball wah > moog phaser > boss chorus > OCD2 > suhr clean boost > strymon el cap > strymon blue sky. This rig is a F'ing BEAST - chimey clean (very DC-30 sounding) with a high gain modded marshall overdrive. I typically play some combination of aggressive rock and blues and am constantly riding my volume control to move between edge of breakup and medium gain tones.
Yet even at half power, which kinda sucks away all the meat in the low end, I find I can rarely get it above 3 or 4 in most clubs around here - even the big ones. It's also huge, and breaks my back every time I move it. I think the head weighs 65 pounds alone. For reasons of portability alone, I've been wanting to try a modeling rig. And I have tried out a few. I've had an ultra, 11rack & HD500 - which all went packing after a week or so. I hate fizzy sounding distortion and clean tones with no tube sag or harmonic vibe. I tried very hard to keep an open mind when the axefxII arrived, and I'm glad I did.
The first thing I did after sampling the presets was to back them up using Axe Manage and delete the first bank from the AxeFX. I set out to create 5 really good, usable presets that can replace my current rig. I spent about a week futzing with Axe Edit. Great visuals for laying out the presets, but I kept having issues with presets getting corrupted on the AxeFX. Patch names were haywire, random blocks were getting inserted... I was ready to pull my hair out. Ditching the software was a smart move. The AxeFX is very easy to program via the front panel. I found that I could move almost as fast using the front panel - and with no issues whatsoever.
The MFC was a piece of cake. I think it took me about 5 minutes to unbox, hook up, and program the instant access buttons to my liking. The thing is built like a tank. The display is easy to read at any angle. The lights are bright - and I like the way they autoconfigure used / on / off status based on the AxeFX patches. I would have spent years programming another midi footswitch to get that much. The cat5 connectivity worked great. I set up a volume and wah expression pedal, and they both worked out of the box (an ernie ball 250k with the easy expression converter and a mission engineering pedal). The only issue I had was the #4 preset getting stuck. I finally figured out that if I pressed the #4 button a second time, it would 'unlock' it and allow me to select another one. Hopefully FAS will sort that one out via a firmware update in the future.
After not a lot of time, I got my 5 patches. Clean (based on USA Clean 1), Edge (based on AC30 TB), Crunch (based on CA3), Lead (based on CA3) and Blister (based on ODS100). I set up a script 90 phaser, rotary and analog chorus. Then I added a studio compressor after the cabs feeding parallel tape delay and plate reverbs. All channels also had a +3db boost just after the compressor. I used the x/y controls to provide two variations of th delay and reverb - this was surprisingly easy to do and worked well in practice. The raw amps and cabs sound great. So do the effects. I did not find a lot of mediocre or unusable stuff in there.
After I built the presets on my KRK studio monitors, I re-eq'd them over my PA. A little less bass, more low mid, less presence, and I was good to go. My PA speakers are not great... behringer powered 12" wedges. Since my plan is to only use these for stage monitoring, I found that they are passable but I will replace with something better when I save the ching. I copied the output 1 (mains) to output 2 (monitor) and set up the ernie ball pedal to control output 2. Thus, I could adjust the stage mix on the fly without impacting the FOH levels.
I made a bold move an decided to use it for a gig this past saturday night. And I couldn't have been more pleased! My stage levels were great - so easy to hear. I was getting plenty of punch and nice chimey tone out of that crappy behringer! The FOH sound was great as expected, though maybe a little thin next to my fellow guitarists 100 watt 2x12. All of my stage volume was pointing back at me... I think aiming my stage monitors at the audience might have thickened it up a bit. The MFC performed great. It was rock solid, and so easy to use mid-performance. All I can say is that I really enjoyed my sound and had a huge grin on my face all evening. The axefx is just so playable... I never felt like I didn't have the kind of tube vibe behind me that I've grown accustomed to.
I was very hesitant to ditch a real guitar cab, but embracing FRFR worked out well in the end. I can see how a great full range monitor would really round this out as a great rig.
So it's really a win all around. Great sounds at home with low volumes and a fantastic live solution. I'm a bit of an amp gasser... hopefully this will finally sate my thirst and I can buy some new axes!
If I could change anything about the rig, it would be to improve the quality of axe edit (too buggy) and it run as a vst (optionally). I would love some kind of an oscilloscope to visualize sounds as I often wish I could more easily see the freq content of patches. Getting the axefx and mfc to sync when recalling presets from the axefx would be huge.
I attached a couple pics of my rig for the curious.
First, a bit about me. I've been playing guitar for 25 years - most recently for The Bitteroots in Atlanta GA. I've been fortunate enough to be able to afford some pretty sweet gear of late. My current rig is a badcat lynx head and a badcat 4x12 closed back cab with v30's. The head is all handwired with matchless components & a custom brown/tan ostrich skin covering. I have a pedaltrain pro board with a cusack loop switcher and the following pedals: ernie ball wah > moog phaser > boss chorus > OCD2 > suhr clean boost > strymon el cap > strymon blue sky. This rig is a F'ing BEAST - chimey clean (very DC-30 sounding) with a high gain modded marshall overdrive. I typically play some combination of aggressive rock and blues and am constantly riding my volume control to move between edge of breakup and medium gain tones.
Yet even at half power, which kinda sucks away all the meat in the low end, I find I can rarely get it above 3 or 4 in most clubs around here - even the big ones. It's also huge, and breaks my back every time I move it. I think the head weighs 65 pounds alone. For reasons of portability alone, I've been wanting to try a modeling rig. And I have tried out a few. I've had an ultra, 11rack & HD500 - which all went packing after a week or so. I hate fizzy sounding distortion and clean tones with no tube sag or harmonic vibe. I tried very hard to keep an open mind when the axefxII arrived, and I'm glad I did.
The first thing I did after sampling the presets was to back them up using Axe Manage and delete the first bank from the AxeFX. I set out to create 5 really good, usable presets that can replace my current rig. I spent about a week futzing with Axe Edit. Great visuals for laying out the presets, but I kept having issues with presets getting corrupted on the AxeFX. Patch names were haywire, random blocks were getting inserted... I was ready to pull my hair out. Ditching the software was a smart move. The AxeFX is very easy to program via the front panel. I found that I could move almost as fast using the front panel - and with no issues whatsoever.
The MFC was a piece of cake. I think it took me about 5 minutes to unbox, hook up, and program the instant access buttons to my liking. The thing is built like a tank. The display is easy to read at any angle. The lights are bright - and I like the way they autoconfigure used / on / off status based on the AxeFX patches. I would have spent years programming another midi footswitch to get that much. The cat5 connectivity worked great. I set up a volume and wah expression pedal, and they both worked out of the box (an ernie ball 250k with the easy expression converter and a mission engineering pedal). The only issue I had was the #4 preset getting stuck. I finally figured out that if I pressed the #4 button a second time, it would 'unlock' it and allow me to select another one. Hopefully FAS will sort that one out via a firmware update in the future.
After not a lot of time, I got my 5 patches. Clean (based on USA Clean 1), Edge (based on AC30 TB), Crunch (based on CA3), Lead (based on CA3) and Blister (based on ODS100). I set up a script 90 phaser, rotary and analog chorus. Then I added a studio compressor after the cabs feeding parallel tape delay and plate reverbs. All channels also had a +3db boost just after the compressor. I used the x/y controls to provide two variations of th delay and reverb - this was surprisingly easy to do and worked well in practice. The raw amps and cabs sound great. So do the effects. I did not find a lot of mediocre or unusable stuff in there.
After I built the presets on my KRK studio monitors, I re-eq'd them over my PA. A little less bass, more low mid, less presence, and I was good to go. My PA speakers are not great... behringer powered 12" wedges. Since my plan is to only use these for stage monitoring, I found that they are passable but I will replace with something better when I save the ching. I copied the output 1 (mains) to output 2 (monitor) and set up the ernie ball pedal to control output 2. Thus, I could adjust the stage mix on the fly without impacting the FOH levels.
I made a bold move an decided to use it for a gig this past saturday night. And I couldn't have been more pleased! My stage levels were great - so easy to hear. I was getting plenty of punch and nice chimey tone out of that crappy behringer! The FOH sound was great as expected, though maybe a little thin next to my fellow guitarists 100 watt 2x12. All of my stage volume was pointing back at me... I think aiming my stage monitors at the audience might have thickened it up a bit. The MFC performed great. It was rock solid, and so easy to use mid-performance. All I can say is that I really enjoyed my sound and had a huge grin on my face all evening. The axefx is just so playable... I never felt like I didn't have the kind of tube vibe behind me that I've grown accustomed to.
I was very hesitant to ditch a real guitar cab, but embracing FRFR worked out well in the end. I can see how a great full range monitor would really round this out as a great rig.
So it's really a win all around. Great sounds at home with low volumes and a fantastic live solution. I'm a bit of an amp gasser... hopefully this will finally sate my thirst and I can buy some new axes!
If I could change anything about the rig, it would be to improve the quality of axe edit (too buggy) and it run as a vst (optionally). I would love some kind of an oscilloscope to visualize sounds as I often wish I could more easily see the freq content of patches. Getting the axefx and mfc to sync when recalling presets from the axefx would be huge.
I attached a couple pics of my rig for the curious.
Hope you get it sorted out. And thanks for your review 
