Kicked the family out of the house today and spent several hours going through the various amp type at gig volume levels. What can I say? Everything just sounds and
feels more alive and immediate to the touch. It'll take weeks or months to go through all the amp types and get familiar with 'em. It really does remind me of the days when I was at Tone Merchants and spending hours going through all the different amps. Sometimes, I'd just bond with a certain setting of one amp and play it without any regard to the time passing by. I find myself doing the same with a certain preset or an amp type.
One of the presets that I thought really came alive is that of the SLO100. It was really one of my favorite amps at Tone Merchants. The only thing was that it needed to be turned up to painfully loud volume levels (the master at minimum 3 or, ideally, at 4) to get the amp to really breathe and sing. With FW10, I thought, "Yeah, it's in the ballpark but..." When I cranked the preset up today to a fairly loud but reasonable volume level, I couldn't help but grin and reminisce about what I liked so much about the SLO100 - cutting yet beefy with plenty of low-end thump and full warm mids.
All of the old Marshall types seem to have benefitted the most with FW11B but all the Fender types sound markedly improved as well. I did notice a big difference with the ODS-100. It's much closer to what I've heard of it in person although I never had an opportunity to plug into one myself. But I've played plenty of Two-Rock and Fuchs amps when I was at TM so I do have a good idea of what the ODS is supposed to be like. Personally, I'm much more into the Brit EL34 kind of sound than anything else so I found myself spending much more time on those presets and amp types than anything else.
I have a great deal of interest in ultra high-gain amps as well although I can only play through 'em for a limited amount of time before wanting to move onto something else. Well, my metal riffs repertoire is rather limited! I do think the enhanced bass response can be a little too much at times and I found myself cutting the bass with some of 'em. But then, I remember some of those amps really
did sound and feel like that - having an obscene amount of bottom. I am a big Meshuggah and Fredrik Thordendal fan (and also Tosin Abasi) and I do plan to dial in those types of sounds when I get a Strandberg 8-string in the not-too-distant future. For now, I'm focusing more on the "classic" sounds.
My head is spinning at the thought of going through all of the amp types and then programming my own presets with the effects all dialed in. Seriously, it may take a year or longer for me to program twenty of my own after learning all the in's and out's of what the Axe-Fx II is capable of. For now, I'm just a wide-eyed player who has walked into a 10,000 square foot boutique shop with hundreds of different boutique and vintage amps, cabinets, pedals, and processors all strewn about on the display floor. And I intend to try every one of 'em...
This is just too much fun.
