I tried to keep this brief but it did't work...
I've always been a fan of guitar technology, since the 90's using pre amps by every manufacturer that even glanced outside of the analogue box, Digitech, Line 6 etc. Rocktron were the best by far for me,i tried all of their preamps and had a Prophesy for years and years, my rig consisted of the Prophecy and a Mesa 50/50 into a marshall, nice and simple.
I always recorded the Prophesy direct, i miked it up occasionally but the results were never really better, just unrepeatable
Though, as i know you're all thinking, that couldn't exactly have been the holy grail of tone, and you're right, it wasn't, always had to dial out a lot of nasties after the fact, though i became very handy with a notch filter
When i heard the first Axe FX i was gobsmacked, hearing all the great tones people were getting, then the Ultra came out etc etc... I decided to sell my whole rig and invest in one, that was about 6 or 7 years ago now.
It so transpired that the money i got for my gear just trickled in and trickled out, it wasn't even halfway to being enough money anyway even if it hadn't frittered away, so for the next few years i ended up going through every single software amp modeller ever made, for what it's worth, Amplitube 3 is the best in my opinion, TH2 is a close second, maybe followed by LePou with IR's if you can be even remotely arsed to work that hard to get a pleasing sound, which i guess kinda leads me to my point, but not before i mention Bias = Toy.
I did finally get an Axe FX a few months ago, i got the Axe FX 2 XL with the MFC101 mk3.
I'd arrived! Or so i thought.
I expect, i literally EXPECT, that for this amount of money, and all the good sounds i've heard people get with all of the AXE's, to be able to get through the first 100 presets and say wow that sounds great at least ONCE, just once, but nope, massively bassy, muddy, treble bereft sounds that i struggle to see how they would fit into any mix with out so much tweaking that i might as well have miked up an amp.
Now i'll try to nip some preconceptions in the bud because i know the fan boys will be seething by this point. Firstly, look back up to where i say Rocktron Prophesy lots of times, i'm not a technophobe, you can't even work with, let alone love a Prophesy if you are one, it's quite similar in it's complexity but with no software interface, i can twiddle for England! I have fiddled and twiddled my way to through this unit, and the quest for brightness and tightness in the box ends disappointingly every time, just a quick point here, a Fender Bassman with my PRS Custom 24 going through it IS NOT THAT DARK! End of... Usually if it was too dark you could simply move the mic closer to the centre of the speaker, this should have the potential of being waaaaay too bright but i think the AXE is allergic to treble so you don't have that option.
I am running my PRS, into the XL2, into a Universal Audio Quad, both USB and XLR, obviously i've tried both, there is no discernible difference, out of the Apollo and into a pair of ATC SCM20ASL monitors, pretty much as good as it gets quality wise, and i'm sitting here watching Kemper videos and thinking to myself "but what if i want to turn the gain down?" You can't, a Kemper isn't the answer for me either but why am i even looking at them?
Unless i'm missing something really major, i'm just really disappointed, i waited so long for one of these and i'm less inspired now than ever by my guitar tone, and i'm far from the only person making this exact complaint, but the responses these people get either end up being condescending or just plain stupid shit like "have you checked the tone knob on your guitar?" !!!!
i'm not expecting any help from here, but if you have the miracle answer please tell me, if you just want to flame me, keep it to yourself, as well as any questions that might even remotely fall into the dumb fuck category the above question fits so neatly into.
My final point is an example, i'm trying to remix an old track i recorded with the prophesy some years back, I thought it would be great to use my new AXE FX to bring some new life into the track with a higher fidelity guitar sound, but so far, and i've been at a for couple of weeks now, i cannot find a sound that even comes close to sounding as good as what's already recorded, that just ain't right, i sold the Rocktron for £350, i think i might just give up, i do not want a big old amp rig with loads of pedals and wires and shit, i never have, and there are no current viable hardware alternatives.
I suppose i do already have a whole bunch of modelling software, i've resisted until now but i think i'm going to whack an instance of Amplitube onto my project and give it whirl while i think about putting this thing on eBay.
