Recently purchased an Ultra or Standard?

I've owned my Ultra for five months and feel somewhat frustrated that I missed the Ultra II as, like many others, I would have waited for the latest gear. That said, the Ultra is more than capable of delivering the sounds that I need it to and I know that it took a while for the technology to settle so in some ways I came in at a time when this forum was well established, the software upgrades had made the unit much improved and I could benefit from the wise words & patches of those users who were there years before me. So, there were benefits to purchasing at the time that I did too.

I doubt very much that Fractal will introduce some kind of 'part exchange / upgrade deal' for existing users of either the Standard or the Ultra so one option that I have is to enjoy the Ultra for the next few years and wait for the Ultra III....as it will come one day I'm sure. The other option is to meet Lucifer at the crossroads tonight and arrange a financial loan...
 
its funny, when i bought mine a few months ago, spending hours on research..... then taking the jump, spending thousands an giving up my tube gear... sending and receiving emails about the unit from both fractal and g66..... no one ever told me it was near capacity! in fact i was told that it would be totally updatable through firmware. if they now turn around and say that all new updates will only run on the new units...... that is incredibly bad business!!!!!!!! if they think for one minute that guitarists are gonna play the technology game they can whistle! it was a massive jump to give up my tube amps.... if i would have kept them they would have never needed updating! i knew the axe would, but was led to believe that this product would accommodate that, so if the new unit means my tube sounds wont keep getting better as promised!!! that will be the end of this digital thing for me. not very happy... an id just like to point out..... my axe ultra is not five years old.... it is three months old!
 
its funny, when i bought mine a few months ago, spending hours on research..... then taking the jump, spending thousands an giving up my tube gear... sending and receiving emails about the unit from both fractal and g66..... no one ever told me it was near capacity! in fact i was told that it would be totally updatable through firmware. if they now turn around and say that all new updates will only run on the new units...... that is incredibly bad business!!!!!!!! if they think for one minute that guitarists are gonna play the technology game they can whistle! it was a massive jump to give up my tube amps.... if i would have kept them they would have never needed updating! i knew the axe would, but was led to believe that this product would accommodate that, so if the new unit means my tube sounds wont keep getting better as promised!!! that will be the end of this digital thing for me. not very happy... an id just like to point out..... my axe ultra is not five years old.... it is three months old!

QFT
 
its funny, when i bought mine a few months ago, spending hours on research..... then taking the jump, spending thousands an giving up my tube gear... sending and receiving emails about the unit from both fractal and g66..... no one ever told me it was near capacity! in fact i was told that it would be totally updatable through firmware. if they now turn around and say that all new updates will only run on the new units...... that is incredibly bad business!!!!!!!! if they think for one minute that guitarists are gonna play the technology game they can whistle! it was a massive jump to give up my tube amps.... if i would have kept them they would have never needed updating! i knew the axe would, but was led to believe that this product would accommodate that, so if the new unit means my tube sounds wont keep getting better as promised!!! that will be the end of this digital thing for me. not very happy... an id just like to point out..... my axe ultra is not five years old.... it is three months old!
This makes me sick, too. No patch compatbility with the Axe II as well.
 
strange to announce something that is not yet for sale? I would say they might have at least suggested a moratorium on the last 15-30 days of sales; literally they will have to return all of these but it costs shipping 3 ways, old back and forth and new again, that is really not cool. but anyone within 15 days still has the right to return it now.
 
I've just got an Ultra as well...!

But hey, the Ultra does not suddenly sound bad because there is a new model out. Lots of people will still want the Ultra and the Standard over the next few years so there should be a good market for them. Its a bit like the iPhone. Besides I bet the new ones won't be available for ages so I think I'd rather have an Ultra for a while than have to use lots of amps again!
 
its funny, when i bought mine a few months ago, spending hours on research..... then taking the jump, spending thousands an giving up my tube gear... sending and receiving emails about the unit from both fractal and g66..... no one ever told me it was near capacity! in fact i was told that it would be totally updatable through firmware. if they now turn around and say that all new updates will only run on the new units...... that is incredibly bad business!!!!!!!! if they think for one minute that guitarists are gonna play the technology game they can whistle! it was a massive jump to give up my tube amps.... if i would have kept them they would have never needed updating! i knew the axe would, but was led to believe that this product would accommodate that, so if the new unit means my tube sounds wont keep getting better as promised!!! that will be the end of this digital thing for me. not very happy... an id just like to point out..... my axe ultra is not five years old.... it is three months old!

Agreed! I think it sucks that old users got the tip off & sold their old units for basically RRP due to unavailability & yet us new users who have as-new units that we've purchased in recent months have just watched our new hard earned investments sink in value like a stone.

Personally, I'm not bothered about headphone jacks & USB, but the 'whole new modelling' thing has narked me off if I'm honest. As with a lot of people, for me it took quite a lot of convincing & quite a lot of sacrifice to raise £2,500 for an an Ultra & one of the reasons I bit the bullet in the end was because both G66 & Fractal themselves ensured users of a constant free upgrade cycle to firmware & that the unit would have a life cycle of many years to come. Not to mention the standpoint that has been pedalled of 'yes, it's a lot of money, but buy this unit & never have to buy another guitar amp again'. ....now it seems that we can't get the improved poweramps, speaker sims & effects settings without ditching our Ultras & spending another 2.5k ...not impressed. Apple would never do that to their customers, my first gen white intel iMac is running exactly the same software as the brand new shiny aluminium ones, I don't see why the Ultra can't run the same modelling technology as the Axe-II!? New hardware is new hardware, but content should not be exclusive to specific generations of hardware, this is an underhanded way of trying to twist people's arms into buying new hardware unnecessarily.

It's only since upgrading to the last version of firmware 10 that I'd started to feel that the Axe was beginning to get close to being able to 'replace' real amps. I'd actually started to think about selling the rest of my gear to fund an MFC, poweramp & some Atomic cabs once a few more Firmware updates had come along & improved things a bit more ....well, I guess I won't be doing that now then, back to my Marshall!? :-(

...& thumbing your nose at your customers the way G66 did during countdown 1 was really insensitive & disrespectful to the current client base given what the release turned out to be. I guess we've all learnt the hard way that real tube amps really are a better investment after all huh!? ...in reality we don't approach music gear from a sensible point of view anyway, so maybe this was bound to happen & will most probably continue to do so. Us Fractal users can certainly put aside that naive 'we've bought our way out of GAS syndrome' point of view that we've been carrying around though ...joke's on us now! haha

I will say this though, regardless of all this, Cliff does deserve all the success he gets & I do genuinely hope he does really well out of the Axe II. I just think that the way the release has been handled has been piss-poor that's all & I feel like a lot of new users were mislead (which understandably stings when I was spending money that I didn't really have after having been lead to believe that it was a sensible 'long-term' purchase). Oh well, c'est la vie, the cycle continues!
 
I'm not happy at all....

INTRODUCTION:
Please stop compare Apple's products to Fractal's, we are in a different business model and no one could imagine when a new version would come out because it never happened before and there was no rumors at all.
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Ok, the Axe-fx II looks to be another big step, we should be happy for this new product available to us, and yes, my Ultra still sound amazing, but sincerly i don't liked the FA's strategy.

1) The price: just 200$ more than an Ultra...our Axe-fx Standard/Ultra instantly dropped in value. It would be more correct if the Axe-fx's price has slowly decreased during the last year.

2) The slap in face of the G66's announcement: "The Axe-fx made history - and now it is history". There are nicer ways to publicize your new product without throwing shit on your old one.

3) The firmware 11...is it really 11, a major update? Or is it just a biscuit to hold off us old users?

4) I'm starting to think that we will never see an Axe-edit 1.0.

I'm a student and I took one year to save money to buy my used Ultra 5 months ago. I really feel the pain of guys that have buyed their Axe-fx the last weeks.
 
What were all the guys whining now thinking? Standard and Ultra would reign until 2020 - with free updates?
My Ultra is great and I most certainly will check out the Axe-Fx II and then probably sell my Ultra, or not..
I will lose money - OK. But if the Ultra fulfilled your needs yesterday, it will still do that in years to come.
Back to some guitar playing...
 
the value of a unit to me is not determined by it's price tag but by how much easier/better/faster/more fun it makes my job.

I've been programming 300+ sound for the Ultra to cover most of the likely scenarios I will run into over next coiuple of months, live and (most importantly) in the studio.
In other words: I got my Ultra to a point where it is ready to work for me. I've done this with pretty much all my gear - erase all presets and fill 'er up with new stuff.

All that just got even better, thanks to v11.

I'm absolutely thrilled about AxeII, about how many of the requested features made it in there - try any other company, you won't get a response anywhere near this.
Like I said before: User suggested ideas can have a bigger impact here, then Beta testers usually have.
 
What were all the guys whining now thinking? Standard and Ultra would reign until 2020 - with free updates?
My Ultra is great and I most certainly will check out the Axe-Fx II and then probably sell my Ultra, or not..
I will lose money - OK. But if the Ultra fulfilled your needs yesterday, it will still do that in years to come.
Back to some guitar playing...
In my case I fully expect new hardware to be released & I have no problem with it at all, I just don't think it's right that the soft content (i.e. modelling algorithms) should be exclusive to the new top of the line hardware given how expensive these pieces of kit are in the first place. I personally don't expect anything for free either, I'd be completely happy to purchase an upgrade for my Ultra that allows me to use the new G2 modelling content, it's inevitable that technology will depreciate & you expect to have to purchase upgrades every now & then in order to keep it current. It does sadly look as though the Ultra will probably be freezed at it currently stands now though. If Firmware 11 only contains a much needed poweramp tweak, then that suggests to me that no further content for it will follow. ....who knows though, Cliff may surprise us yet with that! Also, there's no cost effective option like there used to be with the Standard anymore, so maybe there'll be some sort of trade-in scheme so that they can sell used Ultras from the factory as their new cost-effective option.

Again, I'm really happy for Fractal with the release of the Axe II & I'm glad they've done it, I'm just worried (with sayings like 'now it's history' showing on official marketing) that our perfectly good shiny new Ultras that should have plenty of years of life in them are simply going to be dropped & left to stagnate.
 
What were all the guys whining now thinking? Standard and Ultra would reign until 2020 - with free updates?
My Ultra is great and I most certainly will check out the Axe-Fx II and then probably sell my Ultra, or not..
I will lose money - OK. But if the Ultra fulfilled your needs yesterday, it will still do that in years to come.
Back to some guitar playing...

Ok here's the thing. I couldn't care if the II was 20 times faster than the Ultra IF they ran the same firmware. That's my only gripe really. I bought this product in the hopes that, yes one day, mine will be so outdated I will need to upgrade the Hardware to keep up with the software (sure I am not always going to be able to keep up with the most complex patches) but I didn't expect that to be one Gen on. I mean come on, anyone pretending that it's perfectly cool that the first Gens are now a sealed box is kidding themselves on. They should have been able to support the same patches/firmware for at least one generation gone.
 
In my case I fully expect new hardware to be released & I have no problem with it at all, I just don't think it's right that the soft content (i.e. modelling algorithms) should be exclusive to the new top of the line hardware given how expensive these pieces of kit are in the first place. I personally don't expect anything for free either, I'd be completely happy to purchase an upgrade for my Ultra that allows me to use the new G2 modelling content, it's inevitable that technology will depreciate & you expect to have to purchase upgrades every now & then in order to keep it current. It does sadly look as though the Ultra will probably be freezed at it currently stands now though. If Firmware 11 only contains a much needed poweramp tweak, then that suggests to me that no further content for it will follow. ....who knows though, Cliff may surprise us yet with that! Also, there's no cost effective option like there used to be with the Standard anymore, so maybe there'll be some sort of trade-in scheme so that they can sell used Ultras from the factory as their new cost-effective option.

Again, I'm really happy for Fractal with the release of the Axe II & I'm glad they've done it, I'm just worried (with sayings like 'now it's history' showing on official marketing) that our perfectly good shiny new Ultras that should have plenty of years of life in them are simply going to be dropped & left to stagnate.

Yeah, pretty much this.
 
So who bought the couple of units that the power users sold for full retail price in the last few weeks? They are the ones with a right to complain because they were taken advantage of by preferred users who knew their Axes would be depreciating immediately after sale.
 
So who bought the couple of units that the power users sold for full retail price in the last few weeks? They are the ones with a right to complain because they were taken advantage of by preferred users who knew their Axes would be depreciating immediately after sale.

Considering there were very few users who new about it and that the people that bought would have bought at that price anyway, that argument has little merit. If it is any consolation, I pulled my auction and sold to a friend for $500 to help a guy out (after I convert all my patches).
 
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