Has your AX8 made you a better guitarist?

Rick Mayo

New Member
Only had this marvelous unit for a week and already I can see that I have some 'woodshedding' to do. The incredibly accurate and sensitive technology has revealed to me how sloppy I was on certain passages. The amp that I had been playing through didn't reveal everything from finger noise to right hand (picking) mistakes.

That's ok...I enjoy practicing and having this unit to practice with will be a joy.
 
Try also record and listen cycle and you uncover even more impurities in your playing - it is quite complex process to play and assess yourself while playing, so separate it.
For me AX8 added a lot of inspiration - if I can create great sound it driving me to play more. From other side complexity to tone dealing is driving me crazy - I belive it is diamonds in the ground for Fractal - to make easy to use application.
 
Before the ax8 I was used to playing through a Mesa Mark V or Mark IV pretty loud, and every model on the Ax8 through frfr feels considerably slower and more forgiving than that. Which can be nice.
Makes me wonder what amp you used to use though....
 
Yes, I simply practice more, since I have access to stellar tones right at home. I never had that luxury with my tube amps.
exactly. i can practice all night through headphones without compromising my tone. previous practice rigs using tube amps and speaker loads always sounded off to me, which led to playing less.
 
Yes. I'm practicing much more now thanks to the better amps in my headphones.
I think it has also made me realize I'm a little better than I thought and given me more confidence. For example, by making me realize that my palm muting technique is really okay and the prior practice amp or modeler just wasn't faithfully representing what I was doing as I simply couldn't get the proper feel before (that is one of the biggest differences between this and my prior HD500). It has also given me more confidence to do my own thing with effects I didn't use much of before. I've never really bonded with delay effects before this, but now I'm really starting to get into them. Maybe this doesn't matter as much if you can practice loud with a good amp, but most of my free time is late evening when kids have gone to sleep so a good headphone/in-ear feel is important.
 
I'm not sure, I've spent too much time tweaking since grabbing the axe-fx. Though my tone knowledge and knowledge of different amps, cabs, eq...etc. has gotten much better too. These days I picked up a friedman runt and am making myself use only that to practice with. I have a delay pedal in the loop and thats it. It helps me stick to practicing songs and not mess with any tones. It's not the Axe or AX8's fault you just have to discipline yourself to leave your tones be with any rig really. It's funny how you can start with a tone, tweak and tweak until your basically back to where you started sometimes lol.
 
This device separates you from all the other Loud bad sounding Guitar players out there. You will have a better tone, your sound engineer will love you because he has complete control of your volume, and you will be consistent from Gig to Gig. When you have a great tone, you will be called more you will play more and you will definitely practice more. The only problem then is how much do you want to play!
 
First off, I"m not a very good player. But, I've definitely received more compliments on my playing at shows, which I attribute to three things: Tone, Tone, and Tone. Most importantly, when I put on my in ear monitors and hear what's coming out of the AX8, it makes me happy, if not down right giddy, and I do want to play more, which probably means i'm also getting a bit better as well.
 
No not Better but happier cuz since I purchased my AX8 I've had my work dominate my spare time however I'm more inspired when I finally get time to practice or play, like others here the sound quality is amazing even with headphones so that makes me more involved I'm am a better tweaker that's for sure!
 
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