hippietim
Axe-Master
I've been gigging with an Ultra for over 3 years now so I was pretty stoked to get the II. I paid the jump the line price. It came. It sounded very good but it didn't smoke the Ultra. Not by a long shot. The interface is a little nicer and the defaults are more sensible in most cases. The biggest improvement for me in terms of getting good tones quickly was the addition of a lot more cab IRs preloaded that I liked. I spent a fair amount of time dialing in tones and playing a variety of stuff. The sonic improvements are there but they weren't the kinds of things that are going stand out in a mix or make me "connect" with it any better. As we've seen already, future firmware can improve things substantially over time so the prospects are good. In the end, I just didn't have a compelling reason to switch to the II at this time so it's gone.
In the end, it's still a modeler (for better or for worse). It's still just *almost* as good as the real thing. I hadn't played a gig with a traditional tube rig in several years until this past Saturday. It was awesome. So much so that I think the Ultra is going to get sidelined for a while.
In the end, it's still a modeler (for better or for worse). It's still just *almost* as good as the real thing. I hadn't played a gig with a traditional tube rig in several years until this past Saturday. It was awesome. So much so that I think the Ultra is going to get sidelined for a while.