mortega76
Fractal Fanatic
I've been without my Ultra for several weeks... so my buddy Paul was gracious enough to let me borrow his POD XT Live... Wow... I almost didn't want to practice at all after hearing those "tones" (and I'm using "tones" lightly)... after being used to the Ultra's goodness (especially with 11.00) it was clear that the Line 6 stuff isn't even in the same leagues as the Axe-fx. In one word: Painful.
Anyhow, I had the opportunity to work from home and wait for the UPS guy to deliver my package... it didn't arrive until close to 6:30pm right when we were about to eat. So I inhaled my food and proceeded to open the brown box... only to find another brown box... then the prize! A little black box.
It's a beautiful metallic black... definitely a bit shiner that the Ultra... I like how the screen is recessed a bit to avoid "scratches" (now I have to find a screen protector that will fit!). The Value knob is (from what I can tell) the same size as the Ultra... the ABCD knobs feel a bit too small but I'm sure I'll get used to it. The buttons feel great... not too hard and not to soft... just right!
I then downloaded the Axe-fx II sound driver and the newest Axe-edit as instructed. I rebooted the Axe-fx and opened Axe-edit, changed some settings and I was up and running... there were a couple of quirks where for whatever reason I can't get the volume block to "swell" on my presets and the Send/Return blocks are not keeping their values on my two row grid patch (which in the Ultra, the Send didn't have any adjustable parameters)... one other strange this was that I had created my patches from scratch and manually copied all the values from my Ultra patches (only 5 at the time) and I noticed that in the Output section all the "knobs" were turned all the way to the left (-20dB and -100) along with the Main set to -20dB.
I plugged in my Beyerdynamics DT 770 (80 ohm) headphones and my guitar and started off on the first couple of patches... I only made it to the 4th or 5th patch and was not overly impressed... so I went ahead and popped in my 5 patches (as mentioned earlier, I had to adjust the Output section to get any volume) and was again... not overly impressed (this time it was expected because I was sure that I had to adjust the values)... On my clean tone I adjusted the delay from Mono Delay to Stereo Delay and kicked up the Shiver CLN and turned up the Master Vol to 5 and I was floored at how goooooooooood it sounded. Very pristine, very detailed... MUCH better than my Ultra cleans...
Next came my Distortion tone... I decided to dial up the Cameron CCV since I've actually had the pleasure to hear one in person (it is one great sounding amp). Well, I was less than impressed... no matter how it was dialed in it was a bit muddy with very little bite and/or sizzle... I kicked up Presence to give it more clarity, I kicked up depth to give it girth... I had the MV at about 4 o'clock and drive about the 3-4... but it wasn't until I used the EQ section and turned up 4k & 8k to at least 6 that it started to clear up... but I'm still not over impressed with it (at least not through my headphones)... I tried it with the OH SLM's and the RW and OH V30's and it wasn't too good... I will definitely need to dig deeper here... the true test for me will be tonight during practice, I'm sure it will definitely shine here! Another thing I noticed is (just as with the Ultra) the cleans can get much louder (without clipping) than the distorted tones can (at least with the CCV model I briefly played with).
The GUI definitely feels more polished and the larger LCD is a welcomed addition... definitely better on the eyes. Cliff showcases his genius on the behavior of the Value & ABCD knobs and how they are dynamic (when you move the "selected value" to the next one the ABCD knobs move as well, which is great for editing the Advanced Parameters)... love that feature so far Cliff! I was hoping to see the "sound levels" as the first page in the Utilities menu, since I remember Cliff mentioning that he agreed that having it be the first page to quickly view the levels would be a great idea... no biggie but I was hoping!
All in all I'm excited to hear this thing tonight at practice... can't wait! Big thanks to Cliff and the FAS team for putting out another ground breaking product! The other guys can't even catch up to the quality of the Std/Ultra yet... I doubt they'll ever catch up to the sounds of the Axe-fx II!
P.S. Is it normal to have my global input set to about 12% (down from 50%) to not have it clip?
Anyhow, I had the opportunity to work from home and wait for the UPS guy to deliver my package... it didn't arrive until close to 6:30pm right when we were about to eat. So I inhaled my food and proceeded to open the brown box... only to find another brown box... then the prize! A little black box.
It's a beautiful metallic black... definitely a bit shiner that the Ultra... I like how the screen is recessed a bit to avoid "scratches" (now I have to find a screen protector that will fit!). The Value knob is (from what I can tell) the same size as the Ultra... the ABCD knobs feel a bit too small but I'm sure I'll get used to it. The buttons feel great... not too hard and not to soft... just right!
I then downloaded the Axe-fx II sound driver and the newest Axe-edit as instructed. I rebooted the Axe-fx and opened Axe-edit, changed some settings and I was up and running... there were a couple of quirks where for whatever reason I can't get the volume block to "swell" on my presets and the Send/Return blocks are not keeping their values on my two row grid patch (which in the Ultra, the Send didn't have any adjustable parameters)... one other strange this was that I had created my patches from scratch and manually copied all the values from my Ultra patches (only 5 at the time) and I noticed that in the Output section all the "knobs" were turned all the way to the left (-20dB and -100) along with the Main set to -20dB.
I plugged in my Beyerdynamics DT 770 (80 ohm) headphones and my guitar and started off on the first couple of patches... I only made it to the 4th or 5th patch and was not overly impressed... so I went ahead and popped in my 5 patches (as mentioned earlier, I had to adjust the Output section to get any volume) and was again... not overly impressed (this time it was expected because I was sure that I had to adjust the values)... On my clean tone I adjusted the delay from Mono Delay to Stereo Delay and kicked up the Shiver CLN and turned up the Master Vol to 5 and I was floored at how goooooooooood it sounded. Very pristine, very detailed... MUCH better than my Ultra cleans...
Next came my Distortion tone... I decided to dial up the Cameron CCV since I've actually had the pleasure to hear one in person (it is one great sounding amp). Well, I was less than impressed... no matter how it was dialed in it was a bit muddy with very little bite and/or sizzle... I kicked up Presence to give it more clarity, I kicked up depth to give it girth... I had the MV at about 4 o'clock and drive about the 3-4... but it wasn't until I used the EQ section and turned up 4k & 8k to at least 6 that it started to clear up... but I'm still not over impressed with it (at least not through my headphones)... I tried it with the OH SLM's and the RW and OH V30's and it wasn't too good... I will definitely need to dig deeper here... the true test for me will be tonight during practice, I'm sure it will definitely shine here! Another thing I noticed is (just as with the Ultra) the cleans can get much louder (without clipping) than the distorted tones can (at least with the CCV model I briefly played with).
The GUI definitely feels more polished and the larger LCD is a welcomed addition... definitely better on the eyes. Cliff showcases his genius on the behavior of the Value & ABCD knobs and how they are dynamic (when you move the "selected value" to the next one the ABCD knobs move as well, which is great for editing the Advanced Parameters)... love that feature so far Cliff! I was hoping to see the "sound levels" as the first page in the Utilities menu, since I remember Cliff mentioning that he agreed that having it be the first page to quickly view the levels would be a great idea... no biggie but I was hoping!
All in all I'm excited to hear this thing tonight at practice... can't wait! Big thanks to Cliff and the FAS team for putting out another ground breaking product! The other guys can't even catch up to the quality of the Std/Ultra yet... I doubt they'll ever catch up to the sounds of the Axe-fx II!
P.S. Is it normal to have my global input set to about 12% (down from 50%) to not have it clip?
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