You never know with Fractal, but I am skeptical of an Axe4 anytime soon, or an FM4 for that matter. Their issue right now is chips. To warrant the creation and production of a brand new Axe, there would need to be massive leaps made in terms of the modeling of amps, cabs, effects, and new features. We have seen awesome updates recently, but they have been slightly incremental in nature, and the modeling has gotten so good that most can't distinguish it from mic'd tube amps in a recording. Everything coming out now is just minor improvements and tweaks. An FM4 would require a new hardware to add the extra switch. They already have redundancies with the FM3 & FC6/FM9 & FC12 in terms of the casing, so this doesn't make much sense to me right now. I could definitely see an FM3 turbo, however. The issue is chips and they seem to have a new source of slightly more powerful chips for the FM9. It stands to reason that since both units initially used the same chips, that this issue would extend to the FM3 as inventory runs dry. Or, perhaps demand is such that inventory won't become an issue and they'll be able to get enough of the current chips to fulfill them - the FM3 has been out longer and there isn't a backlog of waitlisted folks. Who knows. At the end of the day, 10% wouldn't be enough for me to drop $1,200 for another FM3. I'd rather spend the $1,800 for an FM9 turbo, but that's just me.
