benvigil
Experienced
TL;DR
I've come to the conclusion that the conventional wisdom claiming the hardware UI (AF3, FM9, FM3) is overly complicated and terrible, is entirely overblown. It's not. It's actually pretty good. With the exception of programming buttons, I could get on just fine with the hardware alone.
Is it as simple as the Kemper, Helix, or Quad Cortex? No.
But none of those have the width, depth, or breadth as the FAS ecosystem, and I think FAS has done an incredible job of cramming all that into a tiny form factor considering the power you have at your fingertips.
My brief history...
I've owned scores of amps and pedals, 3 Kempers, a couple AmpliFires, Helix Native/Stomp, Quilter Blocks, AX8, FM3 Gen1, and various plug-ins. But I've been off the FAS bandwagon for about 3 years until fairly recently when I picked up an FM3 (again). When I had my first Kemper (which is awesome, with a few caveats) I felt the pull to dive into FAS-land and got the AX8. I thought it was pretty good but I preferred the Kemper. I definitely had some of that "grass is greener" thing going on. I spent a lot of time tweaking some presets trying to replicate what came super easy on the Kemper, and eventually I got pretty close.
Or so I thought.
When I eventually decided to punt and switch back to the Kemper, it came as a huge revelation that I had been romanticizing the Kemper, and I actually preferred most of the presets I created on the AX8. Just to punish myself, I took a long and windy road through the Helix, AmpliFire, Quilter & analog pedalboards, and various plugins, etc.. They were all really good, don't get me wrong, but I could never get along with what I was hearing compared to the Kemper profiling and FAS modeling. I still think Kemper has the Marshall thing down a little better, but literally everything else is better in FAS land.
I've been hard on FAS at time (publicly or otherwise), but I thought I'd send some love their way for an awesome product line.
This thing (still) sounds simply amazing!
I've come to the conclusion that the conventional wisdom claiming the hardware UI (AF3, FM9, FM3) is overly complicated and terrible, is entirely overblown. It's not. It's actually pretty good. With the exception of programming buttons, I could get on just fine with the hardware alone.
Is it as simple as the Kemper, Helix, or Quad Cortex? No.
But none of those have the width, depth, or breadth as the FAS ecosystem, and I think FAS has done an incredible job of cramming all that into a tiny form factor considering the power you have at your fingertips.
My brief history...
I've owned scores of amps and pedals, 3 Kempers, a couple AmpliFires, Helix Native/Stomp, Quilter Blocks, AX8, FM3 Gen1, and various plug-ins. But I've been off the FAS bandwagon for about 3 years until fairly recently when I picked up an FM3 (again). When I had my first Kemper (which is awesome, with a few caveats) I felt the pull to dive into FAS-land and got the AX8. I thought it was pretty good but I preferred the Kemper. I definitely had some of that "grass is greener" thing going on. I spent a lot of time tweaking some presets trying to replicate what came super easy on the Kemper, and eventually I got pretty close.
Or so I thought.
When I eventually decided to punt and switch back to the Kemper, it came as a huge revelation that I had been romanticizing the Kemper, and I actually preferred most of the presets I created on the AX8. Just to punish myself, I took a long and windy road through the Helix, AmpliFire, Quilter & analog pedalboards, and various plugins, etc.. They were all really good, don't get me wrong, but I could never get along with what I was hearing compared to the Kemper profiling and FAS modeling. I still think Kemper has the Marshall thing down a little better, but literally everything else is better in FAS land.
I've been hard on FAS at time (publicly or otherwise), but I thought I'd send some love their way for an awesome product line.
This thing (still) sounds simply amazing!
