2018 - Real amps vs Axe-Fx III vs Kemper Profiler

ML, you are a great contributor to this forum who has added a lot since you were Clark Kent. You are an excellent writer, too. Love the line, "...as pavement is to the sculpture of David."
Ha, cheers buddy. Guitar tone seems to be my life's work right now so it matters to me what matters to guitar players in general. :) About the pavement comment, I'm all up for improvements for guitar tone modeling but things need to be solved at the root of the problem to get the best results. I'm not a fan of IR smoothing to compensate for badly placed microphones. That's just a bad idea IMO. :)
 
The Fractal Axe FX II is brilliant and it is so flexible if you can’t get a great tone out you haven’t spent enough
time with it. The flexibility is staggering and every detail in the sound can be customized . Cliff has spent
so much time in making his product so good...and it’s American!.
The Kemper is not bad but the depth and width of the Axe is head an shoulders above the Kemper-Helix crowd.
Yeah they’re expensive but they would be a lot more if Cliff didn’t sell direct. He understands that the product
needs to be reachable to all that want the greatest tone. I think we need to embrace this new tool
that allows us to get such a variety of top professional sounds in a small footprint.
Take a look at all the artists using his processor...these aren’t unknowns ..these are musicians
who are known for their great sound.
And he continues to dedicate himself to improving the product even further....which to me the Axe FX II is
perfect.....but he keeps setting the bar.
I think that most of the editing power of the fractal is easy if you just spend a few hours with it the reward
is there.
Keep up the genius work Cliff
 
Owning all 3, Kemper, Axe FX 3, and Helix, I find that when I grow bored with one, I switch to one of the other two for awhile. Kemper Stage and Helix are both pedals, so I tend to prefer them for church or small venue gigs. Axe 3 almost always gets the big boy gigs!!!

I love all 3! If you can afford it, you'll never feel stagnant or in a rut... And you won't have to run out and buy gear anymore to fix it!

Rarely get any joy out of my tube amps and pedals I kept anymore...
 
I've always tried to go the modeling or pedal route, just due to noise and ease of recording set up. I had some success with my RP1000, but it took a decent amount of post processing to get a good tone in a recording, and that was just lead. I never got good, heavy rhythm tones.

Once I got the XL+, I've never had a "bad" tone. And it has always "felt" like the real thing other than the obvious mic'd amp sound vs. amp in the room. The only thing that keeps me tweaking is obsession with making it better, and I tend to stay out of the advanced parameters.

At this point, the only reason I am considering something other than my current rig, is to get the FM3 + FC for the form factor. I have already achieved better sound than I ever had with real amps, so any upgrade isn't really going to be tone or feel related.
 
I brew my own beer and have a modified chest freezer stuffed with kegs in my man cave. Open the lid, pour a cold one right out of the keg. Heaven. And the process of brewing it is quite therapeutic as well, especially if you have a couple of pints from the previous batch while brewing a new one.
 
One of the best tones I ever dialed in was with Axe I, firmware 7.0 IIRC. I regret upgrading from that one. Back then things would change quite drastically release to release. So yeah, I don't remember it ever being "bad". I bought mine not long after it first became available. Straight from the start it was easily comparable to a great amp, far easier to dial in, and unlike any other modeler it "felt" right, too, so it didn't just sound good when recorded, it also sounded good as I was playing it. To me, that was huge.
 
I like the tweaking... I can find tune any amp model to what I am plugging into or and amplifying it with. Extreme versatility that one can choose to use, or Keep It Simple Stupid KISS mode!

Every user is satisfied! Pick your poison!

My custom built tube amps are still collecting dust. Never thought I'd say that!!!
 
I've been on a guitar gear journey for a couple of years and essentially I've been collecting a bunch of rare and cool stuff to make sounds with and maybe even packs at some point. I was thinking about this stuff a lot today and thought I'd post a 2018 update on where I think we're at. I think this will be interesting for you guys as you probably know I'm as Fractal as it gets. :)

I love real tube amps. I always have and there's no way around it. There's never been a point in my life where I didn't have a couple of tube amps around and right now I think I have found some of the best tube amps ever created. 1) Mesa Mark V and 2) Marshall DSL. The Mark V can nail all of my favorite Mesa sounds while the DSL is kind of like "the original Friedman HBE" or something like that. It can do the JCM800 thing but also the higher gain Recto type stuff if you want it to but obviously it's not as tight or pointy as the Mark V.

Axe-Fx III vs real tube amps:

I'm pretty convinced that you can get every tone out there with the Axe-Fx III. You don't "need" a tube amp but they're fun to play with. With tube amps you only have a couple of knobs you can fiddle with and this obviously leads to you playing more and not diving into deeper parameters where you question "does this make the Axe-Fx sound more real or not". My advice for Axe-Fx users: stop tweaking so much. Treat the amp sim like a real amp and you will be equally happy. Use your ears and don't search google for amp settings. But damn I love driving real cabs with real tube amps. That Mesa Mark V lead channel palm mute oomph.. I'm sure everyone who's ever played one will agree. Also the Marshall is the darn loudest thing I've ever witnessed. Just puts a smile on your face. Tube smell!

The friggin Kemper Toaster Profiler:

So yes. I've got one of these around these days. How do I even write about this subject without offending someone in this overly politically correct world. I'll just say what I think at the moment. It's all just gear. No need to get mad. I think I've been around and worked with enough people in the industry to have a good balance of a subjective/objective opinion so here it comes: The Kemper is a good piece of gear that can sound like real tube amps... but some of the philosophy behind the unit makes me feel like it was not designed by a guitar gear nerd like me and I don't just mean the looks.

The EQ section is the furthest thing from a tube amp EQ section. For example lowering the bass leaves you with a clanky whimpy sound. Also the gain knob doesn't in my opinion capture the gain structure of real amps nor does it do a good job of capturing the type of palm mutes/pick transients these real amps have. But my main complaint is the "Pure Cabinet". What the Flula Borg is that?! So for those who don't know what it is, it's essentially what the Axe-Fx Cab Block has called "smoothing" (yes that function that was added on the same day it was added on the Kemper but us Fractal users never fell in love with it) and the Kemper comes stock with this setting way up high so even if you have a bad IR it will not sting your ears but it will also make your Kemper sound like a Boss GT-6 with those overly smoothed IR's with zero definition.

As an IR producer I felt like "Pure Cabinet" is to IR's, what pavement is to the sculpture of David. I spend hours and hours fine tuning every little character aspect of multiple mic positions and something like Pure Cabinet will make every IR in an IR pack sound exacty the same. Let me repeat, the unit comes default with a global setting of having it on so I'm thinking most Kempers out there have it on. It's exactly the same thing as taking a bad photograph and then using a blur effect to cover up the bad photo. All the details are lost in this process.

But there's a happy ending, it's not all bad. I do like the concept of having profiles even if they're not 100% accurate I'm sure they're close enough to trick the majority of people. If you disable Pure Cabinet and really do a good job profiling you should profile all your friend's amps and you can have a personal unique amp collection all to yourself.

Why did I post this? ... is what I'm thinking now. I suppose it was because I know we guitar players tend to question ourselves and our gear a lot and try different things is pursuit of tonal happiness. Having all the gear possible is godmode I must admit but if I would have to have just one of these it would definitely be the Axe-Fx III. Nothing else compares to the versatility and realism. When I say versatility, I mean that when I turn down the bass knob the amp model reacts just like the real amp does. It's not just lowering the bass in post and obviously this applies to all of the knobs: gain, bass, middle, treble, presence and master. Us Fractal people are spoiled but if there's one piece of criticism I'm not afraid to mention is the amount of tweakable possibilities sometimes takes over and I end up tweaking more than I would need. It's a psychological problem I'm aware of. So, keep it up guys! Try to tweak less and play more. :)
Thanks for the encouragement and clarity - I needed this.
 
I own more than a dozen low watt tube amps - 64 blackface, Princeton brown face, Deluxe tweeds, AC15’s, Marshall SV & SC, etc., along with a Katana Artist, Boss Nextone, Roland Blues Cube and even a new Tone Master Twin Reverb.

iMHO, tube amps always sound better when compared head to head against digital. It is what it is. The place where digital amps and modelers shine, besides portability, is when playing with others. I don’t miss the amp-in-the-room feel when I hear the tone I want at the volume I need for a band setting - which isn’t always possible with a tube amp.

The endless discussion on “this model doesn’t sound good” might be missing the point. Try the model you like in the mix and you might be pleasantly surprised.
 
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