Hi. Never been involved in a Forum. Not sure of all the questions to ask or whom to ask. So I am shooting in the dark here, sort of.
I am on the verge of purchasing an Axe8. I am a purist, always a tube amp - Mesa and Fender. My rig is big and heavy with Strymon pedals and others - I love my tone. I have had, recently, an issue with my Fender SuperSonic 20 and my Mesa F-30. I run both parallel live. So a Pastor friend of mine purchased an Axe8 last year. Waited 5 or 6 mos to get it. Loves it. So I have been reading up on it and its a lot of money to jump in, when I have had decades of denial in modeling. I am just trying to gain some comfort from other players who are happy that they made the switch. I am also trying to figure out what I will play through. I don't want to run through the system - I want a speaker cab. QSC-K10? Friedman Asm-12, Yamaha DSR 112? Atomic Amps? Thank you for any assist. Jim.
Dear James,
First of all: what Blackmore said. ^
This does deserve it's own thread.
But, since you are new here...
Best way to get a feel for it is spend some time with your friend who owns the unit.
And I love my Fractals too, but you are probably best served by being honest.
The AX8 is not an instant gratification machine beaming you up into guitar heaven. It takes some getting used to and requires some time, experimentation and knowledge to get the best out of it.
Especially if you are very invested in the "amp-in-the-room" feel and are used to having the amp behind you on the floor, going to a modeller and monitor takes some getting used to. Suddenly you are not hearing the actual paper-edge, small excursion guitar speaker blasting at your shins, your ears quite a distance away from the "beam of sound" being ricocheted off the walls. Now you are hearing a "guitar amp picked up by a microphone in a studio room far, far away", amplified by a hifi rubber-edged large excursion speaker and a tweeter aimed right at your face. It's a paradigm shift. That is the getting used to part and we have seen some that couldn't.
It took me a while to get the best out of the AxeFx, I recently bought an AX8. Most of the work was finding cabinet simulations that agreed with me. Cabsims (also called IR's) are hugely important and make or break your experience with Fractal or any other modeller. They are 75% of your tone. There are quite a few of them already in the AX8 and there are millions of them available on the net from third party sellers and for free. That would be the experimental part. Then again, after going with third party IR's for a while, recently I've come back to stock cabs in the AX8. The ones I had been using became incorporated into the AxeFx as stock cabs. If you have a clear idea of what you are looking for you can narrow the search down quite a bit. That's where the knowledge comes in.
But you will be rewarded with great tone at most volume levels, consistent through most circumstances (give our take a little Fletcher-Munson effect, Google it, it's an ear-physiology thing), you will know exactly what the audience gets through the PA and a light and easy to set up system. I can carry all my stuff in one trip and am set up in under three minutes. Dual guitar bag on my back, AX8 in one hand, powered monitor in the other. Usually I play out with two, though. Stereo. I could carry my AX8 over my shoulder to the side and a monitor in both hands. I'm using dB Technologies FM8 8" monitors. Really small. They sound pretty good, but, as to be expected, not as "big" and "wide" as the bigger 10 and 12" monitors and they may not be able to hang with a loud drummer. They don't cheat physics. Our drummer is very well-behaved so I haven't needed to test the limits of my FM8s. Yet.
All of the monitors on your list are well regarded. From all accounts the Atomic CLR is the flattest response, most true-to-the-source-studio-monitor-like and the Friedman is most guitarcab-like. It's mostly a matter of preference, budget and back strength. You pay for quality. Thing to note is that since you are feeding the monitors a full range signal, you are not limited to the usual guitar speaker limitations. You don't HAVE to have a 12" for it to sound guitar-like. That said, 15" have been reported to have the crossover frequency inconveniently placed for guitar.