GreatGreen
Power User
I think that a real tube amp still has a functional advantage over the Axe-Fx when used live in that you can make super-quick adjustments to the tone controls on a tube amp, whereas with the Axe-Fx, making an adjustment like this requires menu navigation and other button pressing before actually being able to adjust, and you might not have time for something like that in the middle of a song.
However, if the Axe-Fx suddenly allowed every amp sim parameter to be controlled externally, you could setup a system where you have an external device with nothing but knobs that control MIDI parameters, and you could set it up so that you could control the Axe-Fx just as easily and intuitively as any tube amp.
For example, you could use something like the Behringer BCR2000, which has multiple rows of 8 knobs, and assign the knobs of one row to an amp's:
1 Gain
2 Bass
3 Middle
4 Treble
5 Presence
6 Depth
7 Master
8 Level
And now you can control your amp sim just as easily and intuitively as you could with a real amp. No more menu navigation!
However, if the Axe-Fx suddenly allowed every amp sim parameter to be controlled externally, you could setup a system where you have an external device with nothing but knobs that control MIDI parameters, and you could set it up so that you could control the Axe-Fx just as easily and intuitively as any tube amp.
For example, you could use something like the Behringer BCR2000, which has multiple rows of 8 knobs, and assign the knobs of one row to an amp's:
1 Gain
2 Bass
3 Middle
4 Treble
5 Presence
6 Depth
7 Master
8 Level
And now you can control your amp sim just as easily and intuitively as you could with a real amp. No more menu navigation!