In praise of the "FX" part of the Axe-FX

GreatGreen

Power User
Over the last year or two I've built up an all-analog setup with the constraint of being a what-you-see-is-what-you-get rig. Tube amp, real cab, and a pedal board. If a parameter was available for adjusting I wanted a dedicated knob for it. No menus allowed. It's been great fun and a great yin to the Axe-Fx's yang, so to speak.

However, I have learned something about effects in that time that I want to share here. I have gone through and tried out just about as many of the industry's best delay pedals, reverbs, compressors, phasers, choruses, flangers, EQ's, etc. as I could get my hands on (and I'm fortunate enough that where I'm located, I truly can try just about everything), and I think I'm pretty comfortable with saying that nothing out there, and I mean nothing, touches the versatility, tweakability, and even quality of the Axe-Fx's effects. Some effects can get as-good-as the Axe's effects but none of them I've found flat out beats it at... well anything, really.

Take almost any effect you can think of, and the Axe-Fx EASILY offers a version of it at least as good as the best versions of that effect on the market. Delays, reverbs, choruses, phasers, flangers, compressors, EQ's, etc. There's almost no single pedal out there that just solidly out-does the Axe-Fx at ANY effect.

Just talking delay pedals alone, I've tried all the Boss stuff from the standard format stomp boxes to the DD-500, all the Strymon delay pedals, MXR, Empress, Eventide, Walrus, etc. Some pedals are better than others, but the Axe-Fx can do everything all of them can do and then some, and it can do those effects EVERY BIT as well.

Same with Reverbs. I've tried Strymon, TC Electronic, Walrus, Boss, Eventide, and several more. None of them touch the Axe-Fx's reverbs. Some of them approach getting as good as the Axe-Fx in one or two types of reverbs but nothing matches it.


On and on it goes. I kind of can't believe it. With every pedal rabbit hole I went down and pedal I tried in pursuit of the perfect pedal X type of effect, I always ended up thinking "I can make the Axe-Fx sound as good or better than this" or "this is almost perfect but I can't adjust this one last thing to make it absolutely perfect like I can do with the Axe-Fx" and while I do think every pedal I ended up with was amazing, I have to acknowledge that none of them can be made to be exactly as close to what I'm going for as I can get with the Axe-Fx.


So basically, it seems like the majority of the conversation around these forums revolves around the amp models, so I just wanted to take a minute to call out the fact that the Ax-Fx doesn't get nearly enough credit for its effects blocks, which in my opinion really are just about without equal. Honestly though, the reason the effects probably don't get talked about all that much here is because there's simply not much to talk about, because there's not much to complain about. Pretty much all of the Axe-Fx's effects can be made to do virtually anything anyone would want. So, yeah, that's about it. :D


Caveat: all of the effects I tried were current-market attainable pedals. I didn't try any original tape echoes or four-figure pricetag insane boutique "made-by-a-single-hermit-wizard-on-a-mountaintop" pedals, so I can't comment on those. And I'm not really in the market for any overdrive pedals as I prefer clean boosts in basically all situations, so I can't comment on the Axe-Fx's drives relative to pedals except to say the Axe-Fx's drives have never left me wanting when I've tried them.
 
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I agree that the Fractal effects are outstanding, and have MOSTLY replaced all of my pedals, but there are still a few areas where pedals win out. And that's fine. For me, it's fuzz, certain delays, and wacky/glitchy/gen loss type pedals. But I can just stick those in a loop on the grid and have the best of both worlds.
 
There's a lot of great sounding fx in the unit for sure. Especially for modulation, delay and reverb. Having the ducking features is very nice as that's what you rarely see on pedals. The routing is also extremely flexible and it would be very hard to replicate that on a pedalboard without multiple parallel mixers, phase issues and more.

Compared to pedals there is a lot of "you need to know to use this and that model to replicate feature X of pedal Y" where Fractal falls behind. The sounds are there, they are just not in one place and quickly adjustable like on a pedal. Good example being modulation with full LFO controls instead of something more straightforward.

I don't love the selection of drives on offer. Too many TS variants and not enough more modern options. Line6 Helix has better variety and a more flexible UI that can replicate different modes etc of pedals rather than needing separate models.
 
The effect blocks are absolutely incredible!
I am curious though.

Some of these types are actually presets really.

Dynamic Disortion for example only has one type, by which I mean model. Rather than 7 different dynamic distortion models.

Reverb also is like this, many of the types are the same model but with different settings.

I’d be really interested in seeing how many different models there are, types seem rather ambiguous these days.
 
The fractal is an amazing piece of gear. That is undeniable and yes it’ll replace a rack full of gear 10x it’s value. That being said, the H9 is still on my board for good reason.
 
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