I didn't lurk for too long. I heard the word-of-mouth, from reputable people, I had a need, a strong need, for a solution to recording in a small noisy apartment. I'd tried other solutions that wasted years of my time, but this sounded like the real deal.
After a week or two of lurking, I also took the plunge for the Ultra, and got it this week. After one night, two hours in the wee hours, I was ready to give up on it. It sounded horrible. It sounded as bad or worse than a pod. It actually sounded about equal to a $30 effect I just sold on craig's list. It was astonishingly bad.
Today, I made the crossroads. I spent all day in, home from work, and built rigs from scratch. One amp, to a pair of cabs, a little resonance after, a little delay before, and tweaked those amps and cabs until they approached the kinds of sounds I want to hear. And I found them.
I couldn't help but notice though that there was still a threatening lack of dynamics. I'm used to being able to get nuance out of my playing. It's all well and good to have good modellers, but what's the use if I can't actually play them for anything more than macho power chords and such? But then I fiddled with the amp settings until finally I addressed that too. So now, all is well and good. I am going to be a friend to ebay now, as I gradually unload my amp and many boutique effects. Goodbye analog! Can't believe it, but there it is. Keeping a few things, from Moog, and Analogman, and maybe my Clydes, but that's about it.
In my newbie opinion, the AxeFather needs to seriously reconsider the presets he ships with this thing. He's got alternating styles: Van Halen drenched in wet reverb, alternating with some really annoying pitch effects, on and on, over and over. It's great all this synth stuff is onboard but really, people are coming to the Axe more often than not for true amp/cab simulations, so they can record direct. and not own/lug a lot of amps. They're not trying to make alien sounds from Planet 9. I came *this* close to shipping the Ultra back because the sample presets were so discouraging.
