Interesting review

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Cobrango

Cobrango

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This says it all:
Tony Mckenzie - Fractal Audio Axe-FX II V3+ Inside and Out REVIEW & MFC-101 PART 1 - HARDWARE : tonymckenzie.com - YouTube

What do you guys think of this review? It's honest, that's for sure. But I find it a bit odd/strange/dodgy/funny tasting.
He does make a point about the "made in...." tho. It does not say, or at least he says it does not say where it is made.
He's complaining about the build-quality in terms of "this circuit-board looks like this and that amount of dollars"
and for some reason I don't get the feeling that he is a computer-engineer having designed circuit-boards like these.
I mean he does not convince me of having the knowledge about good circuitry. Anyway i'm really interested in hearing
what you all (yes Cliff :p) have to say about this review. It sure is long enough for someone to have an opinion about it.

In the end I have to say when he goes "[...] no country of orign, not even on the powersupply" and hints about it coming from China
and says it in a way wich to me sounds very "worst case scenario" as if all of China is just one huge cheap factory.
Having that said I know different countries have different rumors in terms of buildquality but he's phrasing and attitude gives me
this taste of an way too young - not supposed to be eaten yet - avocado you know? Ever tried to eaten one of those?
Then you know exactly what I'm talking about! :D
 
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Guy sounds like what I call a "5 knobber". Someone who just wants to plug and play and have five knobs to adjust rather than actually learning the unit and exploring its possibilities. This review is slow as hell and unbelievably boring, and someone who doesn't want to take the time to have an in depth knowledge of the unit shouldn't be making 50+ minute, overly slow video reviews. Just my opinion. He's talking about more power (than the Ultra) only affecting the number of effects you can run, but not the tone, which totally shows his lack of understanding of the unit and the improvements that were made in the II. I have a strong dislike for uninformed reviewers, as they spread bogus information about a product and unfairly color people's opinions of it who don't know any better.
 
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I could not agree more. I just finished it (for real all 50+ minutes) and it was a torture. He had lost me from the beginning and in the end I could not remember what I was looking for.
I mean towards the end he reveals his knowledge. "Would you really have this amp with that cab? No you would not and I will tell you why"-ish
I mean come on! If it sounds good hell yeah! Don't tell me why I won't like what you don't, because there seems to be alot Mckenzie.
Normaly I do not mind a guy having his name on his caps, golden hardware on the guitar, and lastly a guitar not in tune when talking about how shit the presets sounds
going "this is how they want it to sound!" And strums the chord "Gsus4minorsoundsshit/withanondefinablebassnote", but this guys attitude just amplifies everything about him
to the worse. As I said, I do not find anything negative about these things, it's just this guy making it so. I guess these are the kind of toughts I should just forget about and just keep inside me not to offend anyone. If some of you agree and find this offensive I will delete this post, no offense and non taken.
I guess the question is, why did I not just turn it off if I did not like it? Well, because this guys words offended me and I wanted to give him a chance, and I did. And he failed.
 
I skipped around. There's no way I could have made it through a full 50 minutes of that bore-fest. Something else that irritated me is that he said that some sounds were great, while others were shit, yet he didn't clarify that he was talking about the presets, not the amp sims themselves.
 
IIRC this is the same guy who made the controversial "cat hat" review of a certain other manufacturer's product. I think his intentions are true and I'm glad he made it clear that he is expressing his opinions. There are some strange contradictions and knowledge gaps (and that's a fact) and I don't know why he's surprised about cost margins. I have a friend who runs his own business with software and hardware engineers to design, manufacture and distribute unique music gear - his break-even point is around 4 times manufacturing cost.

I'm not sure if he realises the importance of disabling cab and possibly amp modelling when running the way he had it connected - he would have found that under "Axe-Fx II with Power Amp and Guitar Speakers" in the manual he was so adamant about not reading.

Tony, if you're reading, thanks for taking the time to review; I'm always interested to hear others' opinions of gear regardless of my opinions of the gear and reviewer.
 
I'm personally not interested in hearing people's opinions or reviews when they don't even take the time to really inform themselves about what they're reviewing. That's irresponsible to say the least. If he had treated it as a "first impression right out of the box with no previous product knowledge" type of a thing, that would have been fine, because basically that's what he did, while trying to make it sound like a serious review.
 
Just wasted (and I knew it would happen) 50 minutes of my time. He says " I don't want this, I don't use this, why would you want to" about a lot of it

Some things said that are really pointless negative comments.
I won't be watching part 2.
 
Now I realize this is the kind of post who start out as a spark in dry grass, let's keep it down.
Good observations there GM arts, it is nice of Mckenzie to make such a long review about the axe-fx II.
I can't really say it was bad enough not to watch it, I mean it's 50+ minutes of axe-fx II :D
That is so true, a review is always positive because it gives more opinions and the sum of those opinions..
shows what there are most opinions about, nothing more really. It's a pointer sure, but personally
I've found lots in life wich the masses find good, to be bad and vica versa (movies ect. Go terminator! :D)
Look at pop (popular) music for example. What most find good does not mean it's good. But all of those
opinions make the most reflected opinion statisticly possibly fit the normal (what is normal?) go with the flow-type of person.
But then again a group of persons could be meaning the same thing of what is good and have the same meaning regardless of what the others
think, and in that case make something everyone thinks, the same thing as what each and everyone of them think without being mainstream, ehrm..
I mean i'm not thinking somethings bad just because most people find it good. I can find something good to find out that it's the same as what everyone else thinks as well, hooh! But that's just my opinion, what do you guys say? :D
I get too much into things..
(I will be watching part 2 with the sounds and all, maybe he will compare it to what "sounds good, the obvious answer")
 
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DLM said:
I'm personally not interested in hearing people's opinions or reviews when they don't even take the time to really inform themselves about what they're reviewing. That's irresponsible to say the least. If he had treated it as a "first impression right out of the box with no previous product knowledge" type of a thing, that would have been fine, because basically that's what he did, while trying to make it sound like a serious review.
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I'm also not very tolerant of people who don't want to make an effort to learn how to use their gear, or for that matter, how to play music. But they're still out there playing in bands and making equipment review videos. They represent a proportion of any industry and it's the insight into their world that I find intriguing :p
 
@ Hailhalford: I don't see why that would be the favourite part, I don't like that at all, in fact I find it rather dislikable ;)
 
I find this video very humorous. But I forsee a clash of cultures between the UK and the US. These videos are like the english grumpy old man TV series in the UK. Altough it is certainly not the best advertisement for the AFX he has some points that got me thinking.

Have fun and do not feel you are beeing attacked.
 
Ok trying to get trough the second part: This is going to be hard, after the first four seconds of watching (after the intro) he goes: "ok what we're going to do here, oh you're down there" woah! That's pure downward talking right there, But! Only after the first review, otherwise it would be a nice joke like "oh I did not see you there at first, heh. Even I'm the one recording, Who would know", funny really, could be. Second interesting moment, he starts talking about the recto orange and I can actually feel him poking my shoulder trough the screen, I don't mind, he wants my attention it's ok. Then he goes "that's a recto orange" and points at the mesa in wich I get that he's not a fan of modeling like 'that's not an orange it's a mesa and we both know it' (continuing to watch) Ok now I'm having a really hard time, I'm at 16:30. That's big camel to swallow. If you get trough 16:30-17:50 I applaude you
because thats a hard one. Ok now I'm at the 22:40 mark. At this point I somehow get a feeling of feeling better if I punch myself in the face, that can't be good.
23:50 mark, does he have a point here? I have not played the II nor the JCM45 but I can tell the real JCM45 sounds richer and have a pleasent sustain, shimmery in this video that is. Well this was all worth it because from 30:10 he sums it up in a package I can accept because of the way he presents the way he have presented it.
31:18 he goes "and don't quote me as being wrong, because I am wrong probably, I don't care" (it's out of context i know) but this to me makes it all good again. He just justified his way of being and it's all good. From 30:10 and to the end he kind of gives a broader impression of who he is and how he thinks, I think this was key to the reviews. You've got to think about what someone says also by looking at who they are. Or is that just judging people?

All in all I think it was a pretty in depth review. Think I'll just leave it to that.
 
it was a pretty solid review until the last 10 or so minutes. all of it was convincingly opinion based until he started bringing the subjectivity about mixing and matching amps etc. into it. also he was just plain dead wrong about the power affecting tone. the added power in the processor adds lines of code to model with more detail the subtleties of tube amps, not hard to understand. he should just edit the last 8 or so minutes out of the video
 
Jiffzillla said:
What a sad little lonely man. It's almost as if he spent over $3000 for the sole purpose of complaining. I don't get it.
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Watching someone without a firm grasp and experience with something tell me 'indepth' about it - and anything as deep as this box requires that - doesn't deserve any time or attention. That's what he is seeking btw.. Views = money. Controversy = views. Not hard to figure out.
 
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His rather unscientific estimate of our manufacturing costs is hilarious. He makes no attempt to estimate the cost of the components. He just throws out a random number because he gets "similar boards" made for $150? Wow, comical.
 
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Maybe it's me, but that guy seems to have a real negative vibe.

I skimmed through the vid, but overall, it seems like one of the most useless reviews I've ever watched about anything.
 
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