FullThrottle64
Inspired
It's been almost 6 months since my then-new Axe FX III Mk 2 showed up. Since then, I've used it in a whole lot of applications, including live band gigs, theater work, and recording (both for-hire and home demo stuff). Netted out it’s been used in 29 live shows and a lot of rehearsal, practice, and recording time.
Here are some observations for no real reason in particular other than to help me justify the purchase:
The AFX3 is really small and light. I was able to down-size my rack and do away with a large, heavy tube head and cabinet.
The AFX3 sounds great and has absolute top-shelf FX options. 'Nuff said. It would be among the best multi-FX options available for guitar today even without modelling.
The variety of sounds possible from AFX3 are just incredible. I have yet to find a guitar sound that it cannot duplicate well enough for live performance.
The Presets available online seem to trend heavily towards classic rock, metal, and a few top-tier soloists. You can find a thousand Van Halen, Pink Floyd, Alice In Chains, Disturbed, and Steve Vai reference presets, but good luck finding a batch for modern country, basic jazz, or 70s funk.
The good news is that while off-the shelf presets can make life easy, they are absolutely not required to dial in a great sound with AFX3.
The amp models sound fantastic. Full stop.
AFX3 is very responsive to guitar volume control and picking attack. It sometime feels a bit different from tubes, but not really better or worse. I rely on a lot of dynamics in my work, and AFX3 gets this part right.
The grid system for arranging, connecting, and controlling blocks is intuitive and easy to work with. Multiplexer Blocks make the grid configuration tremendously flexible in real-time, as well.
The combination of Presets and Scenes gives a LOT more flexibility in performance use than competing digital rigs have. Add to this the ability to discretely select Block channel, Block Bypass, and Multiplexer input, and you have a really powerful selection system within every single Preset.
The harmonizer blocks are a mixed bag. For adding a basic harmony line to a lead solo, it can quickly and easily be set up to sound very good (solid grin factor). The Virtual Capo, though, is convenient but has a very perceptible latency, and seems to reduce the clarity of the sound (enough that both the singer and sound tech for my band have commented on it).
Tweaking in a live situation mid-gig is all but impossible. The front-panel interface is just not capable of getting to a deep setting quickly enough in comparison to discrete FX units and a tube head, and there's no way to "temporarily save" a change for just the rest of this gig. I’m going to start trying to play with Performance Pages, but even that assumes that you know what you’ll want to be adjusting when you set up the Preset.
I have found the internal IRs to be a very deep, convoluted rabbit hole. There are a lot of good possibilities, but there's not a good way to just grab a basic mic'd 4x12 1960A and tweak it until you're happy. In this area I much prefer the user interface of my dedicated loadbox/IR. There are a lot of options....so many that it takes hours to pick through them to find what you're looking for. That said, you can load or build your own quickly and easily and just bypass the thousands of pre-loaded IRs.
The number and type of I/O options present on the back panel are unmatched. For theater gigs requiring a bunch of different instruments and fast changes along with multiple sends for various FOH, recording and monitoring feeds, this thing is PERFECT! This allowed me to do away with the small rackmount mixer I used to carry, simplifying setup and reducing possible points of failure.
Level-matching is not always as intuitive as it should be. While I get really good comments from techs about the both quality of the sounds I get and the simplicity of a single XLR feed for my whole setup, I also get some comments about it not cutting through a mix as well as my tube amps, particularly for solos. I think that this is fixable with more tweaking, but it's been an on-going challenge, and it seems to be a lot more sensitive to volume levels than I am used to with old school amps.
Overall, AFX3 has made my gigging life easier, in size weight, cable count, etc. One big "coolness" factor is the individual channel output knobs on the front panel. SIMPLE! Want to bump or cut your stage volume slightly without changing FOH? SIMPLE! FOH guy wants more level or an EQ tweak? SIMPLE!
Axe-Edit is a great tool, and I have found it to be indispensible. Only trouble is that I don't want to take a laptop to a gig, so I end up doing nearly all of my programming at home before showing up to rehearsals. That means working at stage volume at home. For me, that's OK (I live on a farm), but it could be problematic for apartment dwellers. This would be true for any of the digital rigs available today, though, and really isn't unique to AFX3.
Fractal’s Support is world-class. I had one minor firmware issue with the AFX3, resulting in the loss of some of my IRs. Fractal Support got it fixed and restored for me in less than an hour.
I have had a few minor glitches where the AFX3 ended up with a combination that I didn't expect to get, and had no idea how it got there. It's rare, but really frustrating, as the only way I know to fix it is to load a completely different Preset and then go back. That is tough to do unobtrusively in the middle of a song. To be fair, this may be a glitch in the MIDI controller I am using, and I haven't been able to pin it down yet.
Fractal is continually releasing new FW versions with minor improvements and bugfixes. This is good support, but I personally don't want to spend more time chasing new FW revisions than playing. YMMV, and I would call this a Fractal advantage that you can use or not use as you see fit.
The quality of your monitor choice makes a huge difference in the sound you'll get from any digital rig (or any audio source, for that matter), and AFX3 is no exception. Don't cut corners here - you have a $2,000 best-in-class modeller, so use a monitor of similar capability (and that's not a $500 big-box entry-level powered wedge).
Bottom line: The AFX3 is staying in my gig rack for the foreseeable future. I can see myself possibly going back to the tube head for some shows and using just the FX portion of the Axe, but right now I'm pretty happy with how this rig sounds and works.
Here's a clip - drums and vocals are a backing track, while all of the guitars are Axe FX 3. It sounds pretty darned good, IMO.
https://www.soundclick.com/music/songInfo.cfm?songID=14222196
Here are some observations for no real reason in particular other than to help me justify the purchase:
The AFX3 is really small and light. I was able to down-size my rack and do away with a large, heavy tube head and cabinet.
The AFX3 sounds great and has absolute top-shelf FX options. 'Nuff said. It would be among the best multi-FX options available for guitar today even without modelling.
The variety of sounds possible from AFX3 are just incredible. I have yet to find a guitar sound that it cannot duplicate well enough for live performance.
The Presets available online seem to trend heavily towards classic rock, metal, and a few top-tier soloists. You can find a thousand Van Halen, Pink Floyd, Alice In Chains, Disturbed, and Steve Vai reference presets, but good luck finding a batch for modern country, basic jazz, or 70s funk.
The good news is that while off-the shelf presets can make life easy, they are absolutely not required to dial in a great sound with AFX3.The amp models sound fantastic. Full stop.
AFX3 is very responsive to guitar volume control and picking attack. It sometime feels a bit different from tubes, but not really better or worse. I rely on a lot of dynamics in my work, and AFX3 gets this part right.
The grid system for arranging, connecting, and controlling blocks is intuitive and easy to work with. Multiplexer Blocks make the grid configuration tremendously flexible in real-time, as well.
The combination of Presets and Scenes gives a LOT more flexibility in performance use than competing digital rigs have. Add to this the ability to discretely select Block channel, Block Bypass, and Multiplexer input, and you have a really powerful selection system within every single Preset.
The harmonizer blocks are a mixed bag. For adding a basic harmony line to a lead solo, it can quickly and easily be set up to sound very good (solid grin factor). The Virtual Capo, though, is convenient but has a very perceptible latency, and seems to reduce the clarity of the sound (enough that both the singer and sound tech for my band have commented on it).
Tweaking in a live situation mid-gig is all but impossible. The front-panel interface is just not capable of getting to a deep setting quickly enough in comparison to discrete FX units and a tube head, and there's no way to "temporarily save" a change for just the rest of this gig. I’m going to start trying to play with Performance Pages, but even that assumes that you know what you’ll want to be adjusting when you set up the Preset.
I have found the internal IRs to be a very deep, convoluted rabbit hole. There are a lot of good possibilities, but there's not a good way to just grab a basic mic'd 4x12 1960A and tweak it until you're happy. In this area I much prefer the user interface of my dedicated loadbox/IR. There are a lot of options....so many that it takes hours to pick through them to find what you're looking for. That said, you can load or build your own quickly and easily and just bypass the thousands of pre-loaded IRs.
The number and type of I/O options present on the back panel are unmatched. For theater gigs requiring a bunch of different instruments and fast changes along with multiple sends for various FOH, recording and monitoring feeds, this thing is PERFECT! This allowed me to do away with the small rackmount mixer I used to carry, simplifying setup and reducing possible points of failure.
Level-matching is not always as intuitive as it should be. While I get really good comments from techs about the both quality of the sounds I get and the simplicity of a single XLR feed for my whole setup, I also get some comments about it not cutting through a mix as well as my tube amps, particularly for solos. I think that this is fixable with more tweaking, but it's been an on-going challenge, and it seems to be a lot more sensitive to volume levels than I am used to with old school amps.
Overall, AFX3 has made my gigging life easier, in size weight, cable count, etc. One big "coolness" factor is the individual channel output knobs on the front panel. SIMPLE! Want to bump or cut your stage volume slightly without changing FOH? SIMPLE! FOH guy wants more level or an EQ tweak? SIMPLE!
Axe-Edit is a great tool, and I have found it to be indispensible. Only trouble is that I don't want to take a laptop to a gig, so I end up doing nearly all of my programming at home before showing up to rehearsals. That means working at stage volume at home. For me, that's OK (I live on a farm), but it could be problematic for apartment dwellers. This would be true for any of the digital rigs available today, though, and really isn't unique to AFX3.
Fractal’s Support is world-class. I had one minor firmware issue with the AFX3, resulting in the loss of some of my IRs. Fractal Support got it fixed and restored for me in less than an hour.
I have had a few minor glitches where the AFX3 ended up with a combination that I didn't expect to get, and had no idea how it got there. It's rare, but really frustrating, as the only way I know to fix it is to load a completely different Preset and then go back. That is tough to do unobtrusively in the middle of a song. To be fair, this may be a glitch in the MIDI controller I am using, and I haven't been able to pin it down yet.
Fractal is continually releasing new FW versions with minor improvements and bugfixes. This is good support, but I personally don't want to spend more time chasing new FW revisions than playing. YMMV, and I would call this a Fractal advantage that you can use or not use as you see fit.
The quality of your monitor choice makes a huge difference in the sound you'll get from any digital rig (or any audio source, for that matter), and AFX3 is no exception. Don't cut corners here - you have a $2,000 best-in-class modeller, so use a monitor of similar capability (and that's not a $500 big-box entry-level powered wedge).
Bottom line: The AFX3 is staying in my gig rack for the foreseeable future. I can see myself possibly going back to the tube head for some shows and using just the FX portion of the Axe, but right now I'm pretty happy with how this rig sounds and works.
Here's a clip - drums and vocals are a backing track, while all of the guitars are Axe FX 3. It sounds pretty darned good, IMO.
https://www.soundclick.com/music/songInfo.cfm?songID=14222196
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