hippietim
Axe-Master
First, why this is a quick impression only. UPS arrived in the evening on Friday. Within minutes (before I even unboxed it), an urgent issue dragged me away until late. Saturday I wake up to a scramble because the singer in my drummer's other band was hospitalized and could we fill in for a gig Saturday night - after a few phone calls and a bunch of messages we had a "band" for Saturday night.
So Saturday afternoon I finally unbox the Axe-FX III. The first thing that struck me is that it seemed lighter than the II. But according to the Dimensions and weight thread it is actually a few ounces heavier. Maybe it's because it is not as deep. In any case, it seemed light.
My monitors and stuff were loaded up for the gig. So I plugged the III into my Korg Stageman 80. It's not the ideal speaker setup but I wanted to play through this thing. I turn it on and there's this cool blue logo lit up and a nice color screen. Note that I have not updated the firmware yet (in fact, I'm not sure what firmware it came with).
I plugged in my Gibson Melody Maker with a single Duncan humbucker. It was out of tune so the first order of business was to tune up. The new tuner is great. Really. @FractalAudio I'd buy a tuner pedal like this if you are ever so inclined. So time to demo this thing. I just flipped through some presets. It sounds great. I can't say how it compares to the previous generation because my AX8 was packed already and my XL+ was sold last week.
The main screen has a list of all of the scenes and if you've been following the discussions or read the manual you'd know that scenes can be named - so this is a really useful default view for performing. The ABCDE knobs are clickable and they are part of navigating. I was surprised that turning the knobs didn't do anything by default on the main screen. It seems like turning A should have changed scenes - that is accomplished via the arrow key pad so there are shortcuts available.
So I'm spinning the preset knob and randomly stopping. The Mark IIC+ is a lot of fun - not sure if this model was significantly updated for Ares or not - I just know it sounded and felt great.
The Trichorus is great. Really. I have a Fulltone TERC. It's going up for sale.
Moving around in general was simple and fast. All of the obvious short cuts from prior Fractal products work as expected.
One cool short cut is the main encoder is clickable and it jumps to the grid - so you can spin to your favorite preset and click to jump to the grid view.
@iaresee posted a good demo of using the pitch for a drop tune. I wanted to hear how it worked with a clean tone though. So I just tweaked the Double Verb patch and tested +/- 5th to see how it tracked and to listen for artifacts. This worked really well. No need for a Drop pedal anymore.
The screen is really nice. Very crisp.
The grid has a view that shows I/O meters for each block. This is cool.
At the top of the screen on most pages I was using there are tuner indicators so you basically have a tuner available everywhere.
Then I had to stop. Did the gig. It came off great. Ended up crashing elsewhere last night so I didn't get home until this evening and had to do a bunch of random stuff. Tomorrow night I should have actual time to upgrade the firmware, hook it up to my good speakers, etc. So, more later.
And congratulations to everyone at Fractal, you really have a stunning piece of gear here.
So Saturday afternoon I finally unbox the Axe-FX III. The first thing that struck me is that it seemed lighter than the II. But according to the Dimensions and weight thread it is actually a few ounces heavier. Maybe it's because it is not as deep. In any case, it seemed light.
My monitors and stuff were loaded up for the gig. So I plugged the III into my Korg Stageman 80. It's not the ideal speaker setup but I wanted to play through this thing. I turn it on and there's this cool blue logo lit up and a nice color screen. Note that I have not updated the firmware yet (in fact, I'm not sure what firmware it came with).
I plugged in my Gibson Melody Maker with a single Duncan humbucker. It was out of tune so the first order of business was to tune up. The new tuner is great. Really. @FractalAudio I'd buy a tuner pedal like this if you are ever so inclined. So time to demo this thing. I just flipped through some presets. It sounds great. I can't say how it compares to the previous generation because my AX8 was packed already and my XL+ was sold last week.
The main screen has a list of all of the scenes and if you've been following the discussions or read the manual you'd know that scenes can be named - so this is a really useful default view for performing. The ABCDE knobs are clickable and they are part of navigating. I was surprised that turning the knobs didn't do anything by default on the main screen. It seems like turning A should have changed scenes - that is accomplished via the arrow key pad so there are shortcuts available.
So I'm spinning the preset knob and randomly stopping. The Mark IIC+ is a lot of fun - not sure if this model was significantly updated for Ares or not - I just know it sounded and felt great.
The Trichorus is great. Really. I have a Fulltone TERC. It's going up for sale.
Moving around in general was simple and fast. All of the obvious short cuts from prior Fractal products work as expected.
One cool short cut is the main encoder is clickable and it jumps to the grid - so you can spin to your favorite preset and click to jump to the grid view.
@iaresee posted a good demo of using the pitch for a drop tune. I wanted to hear how it worked with a clean tone though. So I just tweaked the Double Verb patch and tested +/- 5th to see how it tracked and to listen for artifacts. This worked really well. No need for a Drop pedal anymore.
The screen is really nice. Very crisp.
The grid has a view that shows I/O meters for each block. This is cool.
At the top of the screen on most pages I was using there are tuner indicators so you basically have a tuner available everywhere.
Then I had to stop. Did the gig. It came off great. Ended up crashing elsewhere last night so I didn't get home until this evening and had to do a bunch of random stuff. Tomorrow night I should have actual time to upgrade the firmware, hook it up to my good speakers, etc. So, more later.
And congratulations to everyone at Fractal, you really have a stunning piece of gear here.