Okay, here's the deal: I've been running the FM9 with an analog amp/cab sim pedal. To be accurate, I'm running in 4cm, guitar into the FM9, output 3 into the pedal, cab sim output of the pedal to FM9 input 3, then out the XLRs through output 1 on the FM9. Set up a preset with one parallel that bypasses the FM9 amp and cab after the pre-effects and goes through the pedal, then through the post-effects.
Nice and easy back and forth testing.
They're both great. I can get them both to sound and feel almost exactly alike running this way (no big surprise there). The ADA conversation is likely a small factor in the difference in feel. We know tube amps are still their own thing when it comes to amp-in-the-room, and that's largely due to the output power, along with some other factors. But, the difference is definitely shrinking. Tube amps aren't going to die off, of course, and that's obviously part of what led to the development of this product.
Analog effects, vs. digital effects. There's so much more control and flexibility with digital. The Strymon Volante is a great example, but only one out of many. And, Leon showed us just how close the Axe FX can get (albeit without the cool 8 buttons). Both analog and digital can sound great. I don't get extra noise with the digital. Then there's digital vs analog drives. I definitely notice running in the way I noted above, that if the drive is being converted to digital, something seems to happen. It's not the same as going direct out of the pedal, even into other effect pedals (so I can run in stereo). Now, although I get great sound and feel with the FAS drives, there's still a difference running this same pedal with no conversion, using all analog drives. I can't qualify that very well. And of course, all-analog effects have their own thing going too. It's not always good, particularly when noise gets added in. Sometimes it's a lot of fun though.
I think there's a real market for a smaller format effects-only pedal, if that's what this winds up being (which it certainly seems to be). I'm hoping this has all the super-secret sauce that makes things work well on the FX8, and also the Axe FX III (pretty happy with the FM9 too!).
If there was some chance that this pedal was designed with analog dry-through signal path as mentioned, I would be curious to see what difference that makes. I'm saying that because I have one digital pedal in particular that is not dry-through, and some people say it sounds too digital, but the effects are really good (um, we've definitely "caught up" with the 3rd gen FAS effects) and they interact very well with the same pedal as mentioned above.
Late night rambling over... for today.
