Are there any Axe FX owners here who have never owned a conventional amp?

I was just curious about this, since I think it would be a pretty unusual perspective. Are there any Axe FX owners here who have never in their lives owned a conventional amp? If so, have you ever had any lust for a "real" amp or "real" effects? Let's hear your stories.
 
IIRC, I had something like this in 1984 in my early 20s ... I don't think it qualified as a "proper amp" being SS; LOL (it beamed like a mother ... any poor SOB in front of that thing - yikes!)

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At some point I picked up a silver-faced 4x10 Fender Super Reverb and the Sunn sat on top. Pretty sure it wasn't "proper" ;)

Had that rig for about a year or two ... pedal board was most of my focus and the amps were to get loud - with MXR distortion (orange box), Boss Flanger (purple), some chorus (blue), a compressor, noise gate, 9v power distro and acquiring a Boss Digital Delay (the white one) when it first came out - cost a small fortune. GAS started early. Wow - memory lane ...

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Then I sold it all and had to get a "real job" ...

I missed all the boutique/vintage amp stuff and went all digital when I joined here buying the AXEFX II XL+ @ Q1. Such a great purchase! I love my AXEFX.

I've learned more about guitar amps and tubes being here than I ever did IRL.
 
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I'm assuming by conventional amp you mean a tube amp?

I've been playing guitar since approx. 1997/1998. I've since owned:
- a shitty no-name brand solid state practice amp
- Fender 15watt solid state practice amp
- Line 6 Spyder 2x12 (the first model, also solid state)
- Peavey XXL 2x12 combo (solid state)
- Boss GT-8 Multi FX processor + PA system (all solid state)

I eventually wanted to do more professional gigs and wanted to try a tube amp to get "that warm tube sound". I bought a Blackstar HT-100 head and a Marshall 4x12 cab. It sounded great and I owned it for maybe 2 or 3 years, but then got rid of it. After owning nothing but SS stuff my whole guitar life, the hassle of waiting for the tubes to warm up before playing, replacing tubes, troubleshooting weird popping noises and squealing, worrying about impedence matching, and all that other shit was just aggravating.

My next purchase was an Axe FX 2 MKII, which was 2 years ago. It's been absolute heaven ever since and hands down the best guitar-related purchase I've ever made. I truly believe this fancy black box is the gold pot at the end of the rainbow for me. I fuckin loooooooovve iiiittt!
 
I would venture to say I'm probably in this boat to a degree. I purchased an Axe II for my son when he was 12 (he's 17 now). We had a line 6 Spider that wasn't quite working out for us. I had asked a friend at work who built amps, etc what I should get and he told me about the AXE II. So, that's where I stand today. Although, we mainly use the AX8 now.

Part of the decision making process for me was that I wanted my son to learn about amplification, etc from a 'digital' perspective since that is the direction this world is heading. I can probably say that I know more about how tube amplifiers work because of the Axe FX than most guys do who actually own the real thing. It's also opened my eyes to how various drives and effects work since it's typically more than just turning a simple knob.

Now, my son has been gigging every week for quite a few years now. It's always direct to FOH with in-ear monitors. Over the course of time, we purchased a little Mesa Express 5:25 and we built an amplifier as a science project (guytronix).

Since having the Axe FX, there's really only been a handful of times where we "lusted" over our analog counterparts. In those cases, we typically just do some forum searches to replicate some effect, or possibly find a cab to match an amp, etc. The forum here is outstanding and it really helps unlock the unit's full potential.
 
I was just curious about this, since I think it would be a pretty unusual perspective. Are there any Axe FX owners here who have never in their lives owned a conventional amp? If so, have you ever had any lust for a "real" amp or "real" effects? Let's hear your stories.

When I started playing electric, I bought a Fender Hotrod 40W amp and started collecting a very basic set of pedals... tuner, delay, overdrive, distortion, compressor. All was on recommendation from a friend that is a pro player.

Soon after, I started dabbling in Guitar Rig 5 and soon found my interest in the real amp faded a bit... I bought a used AxeFxII a few months later and have never looked back. All the original gear has been sold. Bottom line is that, while I had some "real" gear, I never fully dug into it before turning to the digital world and consider myself pretty much a direct to digital player.

Side note: the pro player friend mentioned above now has an AX8 / FRFR setup and, if pressed, likely wouldn't part with it if forced to choose between a real amp/cab and the FAS setup. :) That Larry Mitchell video was pretty amazing!
 
Like others have hinted at, maybe it depends on your definition of conventional amp. When I was growing up there was a Yamaha combo amp of some sort but I don't remember what model it was. (I just spent entirely too much time searching through pictures of "vintage yamaha guitar amps" and it might've been G50-112). Other than that, I only have solid-state combos (a 15w practice amp and a 150w bass amp). I've probably never played through an actual stack.
 
I think my journey though amps/modeling/etc. is a pretty common one among younger players these days. I started out on a 1x12 Marshall Valvestate combo - a hissy, cheap, piece of garbage but I didn't know any better as a kid. When I was a teenager I got a Line 6 POD and used that for YEARS. The pod led me down the rabbit hole of modeling, and over the years I tried pretty much every VST amp sim I could get my hands on (kazrog, guitar rig, amplitube, waves, you name it). So I didn't own or play any kind of "real" amp for years, tube or solid state, I just did everything in the box.

Eventually when I started working and actually had some money I managed to snag an AxeII on Reverb for wayyyy cheap, and pretty much felt like I'd reached the apex. As the OP alluded to though, I actually got some really bad GAS as A RESULT of having the Axe Fx, and a few months later ended up buying a block letter 5150 via craigslist. TBH I hardly ever play it, but I think I felt like I ought to own a proper tube amp if I was going to call myself a guitar player lol. So yeah, the tube amp was the very last thing to come, I've pretty much been on modelers all the way through.
 
That's quite a quantum leap in gear quality!
I bet you're really enjoying the Axe compared to the Spider.
Absolutely. This was 6 years ago or something, though, so sometimes I forget how bad it used to be. I gave the Spider to my dad, so I get to play it every now and then. Very stark difference for sure.
 
I've owned many regular amps. I have owned a Bray Modded 1987x, '67 Fender blackface bassman, Rivera Knucklehead Reverb 55w (still own), Peavy Rockmaster Preamp, Fender stage 112, Some old Crate SS combo etc...

They all sounded great at home but when the rubber meets the road, I felt I couldnt rely on them. A power tube would blow and would require re-biasing on more than one occasion. Some had to be too loud just to sound good. Couldn't get the mic'd sound to be any good too bright or too boxy. Had to try and cover up speakers as to not blast the stage volume.

I'm happy now with my digital solution. I still dig amps but for gigging, you just can't beat the Axe fx
 
I took a long hiatus from guitar for about 10 years. By the time I came back, I knew little in regards to the nuances of tube amps. I had owned solid state and tube amps before my self-imposed exile, but it's not like I knew a whole lot about what constitutes good tone.

I picked up an AxeFX Ultra shortly after restarting guitar in 2009. I was using Guitar Rig 4 before that. Even to my untrained ears, Guitar Rig paled into comparison to my teacher's vintage Fender Princeton Reverb.

To be honest, for a long time there were certain vintage tones that I didn't feel the AxeFX quite captured. This improved a lot with the II, and now the barrier is much more thin. I'd say the AxeFX is as *there* as it's ever been, and I could probably be quite happy with it alone (along with my Friedman ASM-12s for that in the room feel).

I currently own Fender and Tone King amplifiers and would love a good Marshall one of these days. I have a big traditional pedalboard, too. If the AxeFX took a dive, I'd still have good gear to play. If my Tone King took a dive, same story.
 
My problem was going through way too many OLD SCHOOL amps, tone seeking for home and studio use. I could have saved a lot of money if I had gone straight to modelers/profilers. NOW, modeling tech hasn't been as good, in the feel, response and even tone until not that long ago. It's relatively recently that we have had modelers and profilers that are indistinguishable for the player from OLD SCHOOL amps.
 
there are many who own an axe, but have never used, gigged, or recorded a tube amp. many are surprised and think there are errors or mistakes in the Axe's modeling, mostly because things don't sound how they think it should, or certain controls don't react like they think it should. but of course, the things they hear and adjust are present in the real amp counterparts.

without that experience, it's tough to understand just how much tube amps are actually post-processed and modded to do what we actually want!
 
I guess I kinda qualify. While I have experience with tube amps (THD UniValve, Marshall DSL40 combo, Marshall JVM, a couple of other random ones), there was a period of time where I had to sell a lot of stuff because of debt and nobody wants to pay a twentysomething a living wage. So I was stuck with a Behringer USB interface and Guitar Rig 4/5. I couldn't stand it.

First of all, it sounded terrible. I could never get a good tone and all the user presets I would download would be garbage. But even worse was the latency. I couldn't take it. I got it down to 12ms and that still wasn't good enough. Anyone who tells you latency like that shouldn't be noticeable is a liar. Try to play something simple like the open string chug from Metallica's Disposable Heroes and good luck not going insane.

So as a consequence of that, there was a period of about 3 or 4 years where I was mostly just playing acoustic guitar.

The Axe-FX had been on my radar for a long time and thankfully I found a good job that paid well enough and I paid off a ton of debt and got an XL+ for myself over a year ago and I've been happy ever since... until the Axe-FX III comes out! :p
 
Makes me feel a bit dinosaury for a "millenial" but I feel like every guitar player should have at least one real tube amp. I love my Fractal stuff and all, but there is something about the interaction with a real amp that is valuable imo... even if it's all in your head. Hell, in some ways my real amps sound worse (noise etc) and that's part of the charm too.

Doesn't have to be an expensive amp, though. I'm using a Jet City.
 
If "conventional" means tube amp, then I've never had one.

All my amps have been SS, including power amps.

My only tube thing is my ADA MP-1, but that doesn't count as conventional because it's a standalone tube preamp. :D
 
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