I know a lot of people will tell me I'm crazy for wanting anything else other than the axe fx, but to me it seems like these two units were made for each other. The triaxis has 8 channels of tube preamp sounds midi switchable with over a hundred memory slots. I use that with the 4 cable method using the axe fx 2 only for effects into a mesa fifty/fifty power amp and a mesa recto 4x12.
What does this accomplish that the axe can't do on its own? Well I will say that I don't really need to use the triaxis, it's mainly just the fact that I can seemlessly integrate it with a couple advantages and a few small drawbacks. I don't want to start a big tone debate, because I will say that I was satisfied for a long time with just the axe fx into a tube power amp for live use. But I found a great deal on a used triaxis, which has always been a dream amp of mine. When I tried it out, the sound of lead 2 yellow for example has a pretty big difference vs. the usa pre lead 2 yellow axe preset I've been using even with the same settings. The lead 2 green (mark IV setting) had an even bigger difference when comparing to a mark IV preset. It's not that the axe sounded bad. Far from it actually. It's hard to explain the tone but to me the biggest difference was in the upper frequency range where the triaxis seemed to have more presence. It sounds more "raw" if that makes sense. The analogy I would use is it's like looking at a mountain range on an 4K HD TV vs actually being there. I'm sure someone could challenge me and dial in a preset to sound even more like the real thing, but why? It's only one rack space, and I'm tired of tone tweaking. I just want to play.
The second advantage is to save cpu usage, which is self explanatory.
The drawbacks are space, weight, and the fact that I must use the mfc-101 with midi cables now instead of an ethernet cable since I need to control both the axe fx and triaxis simultaneously.
What does this accomplish that the axe can't do on its own? Well I will say that I don't really need to use the triaxis, it's mainly just the fact that I can seemlessly integrate it with a couple advantages and a few small drawbacks. I don't want to start a big tone debate, because I will say that I was satisfied for a long time with just the axe fx into a tube power amp for live use. But I found a great deal on a used triaxis, which has always been a dream amp of mine. When I tried it out, the sound of lead 2 yellow for example has a pretty big difference vs. the usa pre lead 2 yellow axe preset I've been using even with the same settings. The lead 2 green (mark IV setting) had an even bigger difference when comparing to a mark IV preset. It's not that the axe sounded bad. Far from it actually. It's hard to explain the tone but to me the biggest difference was in the upper frequency range where the triaxis seemed to have more presence. It sounds more "raw" if that makes sense. The analogy I would use is it's like looking at a mountain range on an 4K HD TV vs actually being there. I'm sure someone could challenge me and dial in a preset to sound even more like the real thing, but why? It's only one rack space, and I'm tired of tone tweaking. I just want to play.
The second advantage is to save cpu usage, which is self explanatory.
The drawbacks are space, weight, and the fact that I must use the mfc-101 with midi cables now instead of an ethernet cable since I need to control both the axe fx and triaxis simultaneously.