Here is my 2c from the persective of a pretty average Fractal user demographic, I suspect (ie: mainly a bedroom/home studio player)....
Firstly, for context, I have owned AxeFx itterations for a long time and absolutely love them. They output to Atomic CLRs and sound great. I then wondered what all the noise was about "real" amps being "better" than modellers, so I was fortunate enough to be able buy a Two Rock CRS (and shortly complemented it with a Marshall SV20).
The Two Rock and Marshall are also wonderful and, as has been debated endlessly with no need to conflate here, a tube amp into a cab does feel different than a modeller into a FRFR. I acknowledge and appreciate the reasons why.
I have improved as a player, in terms of technique, by the inspiration afforded by
both the AxeFX and the traditional amps in their different ways.
But.....
Purely as a result of my own inability to effectively use the plethora of paramaters provided in my AxeFX by the genius of Cliff, I had noticed that I reached mostly to the real amps more and more. This because I just couldn't seem to find "the right cab" in the Axe, or tweak the controls to voice
any IR - including dynacabs - to something I liked more. I stress this wasn't an apples and oranges unfair comparison between a "miked FRFR" sound and an "cab in the room sound", because I
know they will always be different in that respect to a certain degree. Again, like most people in my user demographic, I play my amps attenuated and not pushing much air......but still I began to prefer the sound of them over the sound
that I could achieve myself from my AxeFX.
This, I have no doubt, is a failing on my part to be able to leverage the paramaters, and not because the Axe can't achieve it.
I confess frustration at the feeling I was wasting all these potential fantasic modelled amps because of what I felt was the missing piece of the sound (due to my own inability to dial it in) lying somewhere in the cab block.
Enter the UA Ox Stomp!
My gosh, I haven't turned my AxeFx off all week!!
It has literally transformed what I already knew was a masterpiece product into something that an
AVERAGE USER LIKE ME could get to sound like the masterpiece product I knew it always was!
And there, I believe, is the point : the
combination of the two technologies, irrespective of their independent approaches, simply sounds great and that great sound is very
easy and intuitive to achieve by someone like me!
@FractalAudio, if I had to give reasons, I could probably settle on just one major player :
- Room mics - primarily one simple mix knob on the UA unit being easy and a powerfully transformative blend control to the post-amp sound.
....if I turn this dial to zero, I'm back to feeling "something is missing - I don't like it". I've had so much fun this week trying every type of amp in the Axe with suitable cab pairings in the Ox Stomp. Within minimal time, in every case, I had a smile on my face at the new sounds coming out of my Atomic CLRs as I blended in the room mike parameter!
Conclusion :
I'm selling the real amps.
For me, the UA £380 pedal has transformed
my ability to use Cliffs masterpiece and extract out the goodness that lurks inside it.