Axe II passed my blind Brit Floyd challenge

lqdsnddist

Axe-Master
Saw the fantastic Pink Floyd cover band, Brit Floyd perform last night, and I recalled reading on here one of the guitarist had starting using an Axe-FX, Damian Darlington.

Sure enough, saw that familiar green glow from the Axe-Fx sitting stage right. Now, this was closest to where the other guitarist was standing all night. Now mind you, I had no clue which guitarist was which as I never have seen any pictures of them before. So I spent the whole show thinking that the guy on the right, now known to be Bobby, was the one using the Axe-Fx.

I thought the guy stage center, Damian, must of been the one using the traditional Cornford rig.

So with that premise of who used what, I listened to their tones all night, and both were great, as was their playing. Well as impartial as I wanted to be, I thought the guitarist who really was Damian had the better tone. Bobby was great too, but I was kind of like "The Axe sounds greats, but the guy with the analog rig using all the classic pedals sounds just a little bit better". Fair enough conclusion right ?

Wrong!

Imagine my shock when I check out photos after the show and realized that it was actually Damian who was playing the Axe....the guy I thought was using a traditional rig....the guy I thought had the best tone.


So there you have it, basically blind tone test, when I used just my ears, I picked the Axe II as the best tone.

Need not say anything more about the power of this processor
 
I honestly think blind A?B testing could be 50/50 (indistinguishable - i.e., guessing) if people did not know before hand which was real and which was Memorex <- i mean Fractal. This would be fun to do with a bunch of Tube snobs - myself included - We should set up an Blind A/B challenge at the next Axe-Fest.
 
That's cool but was it your eyes that picked what you thought was the analog rig as being best?

LOL, actually in this case "no", because I couldn't see anything else on stage honestly.

Simply knew one guitarist used the Cornford analog rig, and the other used an Axe, and I just figured since I saw the Axe sitting over my who I now know is Bobby, he must of used it. Silly assumption in a way, but typically I'm used to players standing in front of their rig. Ian the bass player, had his behind him and such

I honestly kept wanting to tell myself I preferred Bobby's solo's, such as the Comfortably Numb solo I, since I wanted the Axe to "win" lol, but then Damian would do the second solo and just kill it, and there was no question (in my mind at least) who had the "better" tone.

Now, perhaps as an Axe owner, I'm a bit biased to like the Axe tone, even when I thought it was from a different rig, if that makes sense......
 
I think they both use axe fx. I know bobby does and from the rehearsals videos on Facebook Damien does too.


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It's a wonderful band, the tunes are very close to originals, and they are great musicians. Saw them twice and enjoyed both
 
I'm going to be seeing them down the block in two weeks. Can't wait! Even more excited now that I can hear the Axe doing Floyd.
 
I just saw they are playing the Greek Theatre here in May. I think I would have to pick up some tix for that. Thanks to the OP for posting!
 
This show really answered any question I had about the AxeFx. When the band projected giant waveforms of their two amps on the screen behind them I knew I made the right decision with the AxeFx.
 
I also saw them perform recently and I felt that the guitars sounded as close to the album as I think could be possible in a live setting, just like I would hope Pink Floyd to sound live.

I couldn't pick between the Axe and the real amp which one, if any, sounded "better", I could only tell you that the guitars sounded fantastic. And that's all the analysis I need of the AxeFX, there's really nothing else at all that's important after that. It sounds fantastic.
 
In a way, its kind of funny, because when I was using pedals, (and spending way too much time on TGP effects forum) there was so much made over what muff model could get the right tones, be it various Skreddy models, Stomp Under Foot, Triangle vs Rams Head etc etc

However, then you go and see/hear Roger Water's Wall Tour, with Dave K. using a Suhr Riot as his main drive pedal and just nailing it on Comfortably Numb etc, and then you go see Brit Floyd nailing it using the Axe II, or a Cornford and Nova Drive (last I know of) and again nailing it.

So seemingly a wide range of gear can dead on nail Gilmour's lead tone in a live setting, yet many of us (myself included at one time) went through 10 to 20 different fuzz pedals trying to find the right ones for those Gilmour tones, P19, Pink Flesh, Pig Mine, Tri, Ram, Green Russian, etc etc and always selling/returning because they didn't sound right.

Gear does matter for sure, but really does show you how much tone is in the fingers
 
Heard them for a while on PBS pledge drive the other day. Normally I'm not so into the tribute thing. Heard the Aussie band on tv and they were good, but didn't really grab me. The Brit PF was a different story. Don't know if it was me, my mood, them or what, but I really dug them. Thought the guy who took the last Comfortably Numb solo just killed it. Also the lap steel on Pigs(maybe...something from Animals) sounded awesome. In general I really liked them and would go see them.

I saw the Animal tour when I was 17 and was completely blown away. Some people say that was the best tour of that version of the band. Don't know for sure, but I loved it. There's some live stuff from the tour on Wolfgang's Vault confirming that they were tearing it up in that era.
 
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