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Convince Me Not to Sell My Axefx

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I was a kemper owner for many years, and hit a wall with it. I realized I wanted it to act like a more traditional modeler, and found i spent more time trying to tweak it than playing anything. I sold it and bought an Axe FX III and it works great for me!

No knock on the Kemper, I think it's a great pice of kit, but it was causing a creative barrier to me, and I realized I was trying to make it work for me instead of playing guitar. If this is the boat you're in, jump ship. If the Neural stuff ends up not working out, you can pick up another Fractal product.
 
Craft your own patches! If you want it all pre-wrapped then you'll have to use whatever appeals to your sensibilities straight out of the box. It takes time to figure out how to get specific tones. But once you know, you know. And then you can apply that hard earned knowledge to any sort of amp/vst/modeler/pedal combination you come across.
 
Nick Barba said:
You could start with taking one of the plugin presets from the Neural plugs you like and then recreate it in your AxeFX.
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This might be a cool series / thread for somebody more knowledgeable than me to dive into. These days, anytime I hear a tone I like, I start wondering how I'd go about recreating it in the Axe Fx.
 
TylerM93 said:
I’ve had my Axefx for about two years now. At one point it was my live rig and now its my at home demoing rig. I find myself using like 10 of the 700+ presets and for the most part I’ve felt very uninspired by it. It’s so dry & for the purpose of demoing and writing it just isn’t inspiring.

Recently I downloaded a few of the Neural plug-in demos & was pleasantly surprised by how much life they had. Especially for the djentier tones on my seven string. It’s also nice to be able to record and then alter the tone after the fact & to be able to edit within the daw. I rarely find myself editing in axe edit because there’s just so much to tweak.

My main question is that I have to believe the axefx is able to get these neural tones. I don’t necessarily want to learn how to create them though. Should I just sell the axe & snag a couple plug ins for a forth of the price or should I put more money into the axefx and find preset packs that can get me those tones?
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What do you mean by “of the 700 presets?”
 
Are you really gonna play through a laptop and plugin next time you get to go live? Don't do anything this week - think it over for a week or two.
I think you just need to dig in and fire up axe-edit and add some reverb and or other effects too if its too "dry".
 
There comes a time when a player has to say this is my rig. This is what I show up with. Whether its a Marshall amp or another modeler or a bunch of pedals. And then commit to it; with any problems or things you are not satisfied with. But this is still the rig you use. Just like the old guys and those pedals and brutally heavy tube amps with all their issues. I show up with an AXE 3 in one rack and a furman power conditioner, a Line 6 G90 wireless, and a Matrix 800fx power amp driving two Matrix FRFR cabs in stereo. I then put a feed to the FOH. And I will demolish any rig that challenges me. They have tried. And the reason is simple: I committed to this rig and it sounds the best I can make it. The playing is up to me. I don't look at other rigs and I don't wait for the next supposedly better modeler. You know why? Because this is the rig I chose. And that takes all this pressure off. What is this? What is that? Oh, is Neural better? Who cares? Commit. And then deal with it. Enjoy playing. A great sage was finally free when he told his followers, I searched the earth to end my suffering. Until the search itself BECAME the suffering.

Commit. And move forward.
 
Pack up the Axe FX and use the Neural plugins for a month only. Then get the Axe FX back out and see if it does anything for you that the Neural plugins don't. If it doesn't, pack it up and put it away again for a few months. If you have no desire to play the Axe FX after several months then you can safely sell and not worry about it. Axe FX 3 isn't a rare vintage instrument...if you miss it you can buy another one. Although you'll take a hit on selling it and another hit on shipping and tax buying a new one.
 
I suggest rereading the Fractal manuals; there’s virtually nothing the AxeFX can’t do. Of you can’t get the sound you need, it might just be that you’re missing the right IR to hit the sweet spot for you. Maybe try the Mikko plug-in. But the most rewarding thing about tone is crafting it yourself by really teaching yourself the character of pieces of gear.
 
This is a weird thread. How the heck can I or anyone else tell someone what is best for them with the info given? Oh, right, the internet.
KInd of like going on a Fender Stratocaster forum and saying should I buy a Les Paul, I mean it does what I want and the Strat just doesn't?
 
I only have the FX II XL+...and it sounds amazing, has 266 AMPs with every preset under the sun, vrs 10 total plug-ins which are great amps. I own a few of them. But at the end of the day, its all they are, is more amps. I find myself using both for various reasons, using the Axe FX more (I reamp a lot in recording, and the flexibility is crazy). But, lets even look at price points, The AXE FXIII has 259 Amps, which if you break it down is $8.10 an Amp for the current price, and NeuralDSP at their current pricing stage is about 99$ (on sale days) and $150 on off days. At a total of 10 current amps available (though they sound and are great), is more expensive if they keep going.

Also, as I am in the process of Recording a new project, I must say...some of NeuralDSP's plug-in's need to be optimized. Plini amp for example is massive CPU utilization compared to others. When I am mixing a project with lots of tracks and effects, I am finding myself (if I use Plini's amp or others) that I need to bounce them and disable the plug-in before attempting to mix which makes fine adjustments in the middle of a mix a mess. All of that to save CPU. AXE-FX is not a problem, it is doing all of my processing out of box. Zero Latency, no CPU overhead in my mixes and I can run as many channels as I want or reamp whatever I want with no issues.

So...there is my list for you to consider just off the top of my head and from current experience. Also...is there a reason you can not use both? I do, its great to have options. No reason to limit yourself, unless....selling your Axe-FXIII is just to make some case, in which case....if you do hit me up, I might be in the market to upgrade my XL+

Take care man
 
Its sounds like you are talking about the Axe II given the location of the thread.
I had a II also and had the same feelings you do after a while. Sold it and got an Fm3. The difference is huge! You won't be disappointed.
 
Every answer after the 1st one is mostly superfluous.

The only factoid opinion-nugget that's missing about plugins is that a computer can be an attention hog, and shifts your brain into a weird mode that can be quite dissonant with the art of creating music. Also try to be sure that you are simply experiencing the halo effect that comes with all new gear.

And yes, you could easily just tone match the plugins.
 
Well if you want me to 'convince you' to not sell your AxeFX I could threaten to come and nail dead things to your door or something .... but I'm trying to give that life up, so just do what you want to do mate.

Admin M@ said:
Every answer after the 1st one is superfluous.
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Well - sticking to the 'convince me' part I think @Haiden13 makes some valid points about the possible drawbacks of Software versus Hardware which was my thinking too. I like hardware not dependent on a computer's CPU and having no need for an external USB sound interface is a big bonus.

Other than that you're right and I'm being superfluous ..... as usual
 
I just have to comment on the language used by the OP. "Convince me" is such an entitled term to throw around, like you are sitting on a thrown waiting for the plebs toil and gain knowledge on your behalf. We're talking about, essentially, musical instruments, things that some people sacrifice their whole lives to master. This reduces that sacred and beautiful endeavor to the level of shopping for pants.

It's fine to elicit advise, but this kind of language demeans everyone involved.
 
State of Epicicity said:
I just have to comment on the language used by the OP. "Convince me" is such an entitled term to throw around, like you are sitting on a thrown waiting for the plebs toil and gain knowledge on your behalf. We're talking about, essentially, musical instruments, things that some people sacrifice their whole lives to master. This reduces that sacred and beautiful endeavor to the level of shopping for pants.

It's fine to elicit advise, but this kind of language demeans everyone involved.
Click to expand...

OP may just be a troll. Usually when someone posts something like this and then isn’t active in the thread, that’s the case.
 
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