Cygnus Beta - first impressions

If you listen closely to the parts where it's just amp you can hear the thump and punch on the attack.

At "Fractal HQ North" I have a pair of Focal Trio11 Be and the thump rattles the windows.
This is what has been missing from modelers, IMO. My Triaxis and other tube units have a pronounced "thump" on the attack. I've learned tricks to emulate it, and I generally decided that I could live without it in light of everything else that digital brings. The Axe as is does a decent job, while some other products lack it entirely. If this firmware has unlocked the secret, it is truly a major event.
 
Note that Axe-Edit is not updated yet and the 5E3 model is now "jumped" by default so it has both Normal and Bright drives. The Normal defaults to 5.0 so in the video the model is actually in jumped mode with the Normal drive at noon. That's why there's still plenty of gain with the drive at 9 o'clock.

You can get all sorts of different distortion textures by playing with the two drives in conjunction with the tone control. As with the real amp everything now interacts.

One of the beta testers was remarking that his 5E3 clone sounded more "choked" in comparison to the model. I said "I bet your clone has the wrong type of tube in V1. It's supposed to be a 12AY7 but many clones have a 12AX7A in V1." He checked and, sure enough, 12AX7A in V1.
this is why the DC30 jumped is so magical....hint hint
 
It would almost be sad, if it was actually added. Ever since I got my AX8 four-five years ago I've seen you wish this regularly. It feels warm and cozy everytime that wish pops up in a thread. But I also feel patience and politeness should be rewarded, so I am hoping for "soon".
the DC/30 was a oft requested amp for a few years before it was added right before Christmas, iirc... let's keep hoping for the jumped model!

And to keep this on topic, I can't wait to try out the jumped 5E3! The little tweed Deluxe is such a landmark tone.
 
I’ve only been around for just over a year, but this is the only FW that’s been teased AFAIK. Which means Cliff is excited about it. Which means we should all be excited about it.

Every other FW over the past year has been a surprise, or a public beta, with very little if any ‘heads up’ that it was coming. That’s why “FW Friday” started... for a while there were FW surprise releases on what felt like every Friday.

In the last year those have just been minor firmware updates. Sometimes they were teases but the most you waited was a week so the anticipation didn't have time to grown and if you weren't on here every day you'd probably miss the teases.

But this is a full modelling re-write. This was maybe/probably done for the Axe FX II release, then again for Quantum, then again for Ares (which released on the II, but continued on the III). I'm sure most of those were teased ahead of time since they would be similarly large undertakings
 
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