So far completely unimpressed.

schlagdog

schlagdog

Inspired
So far I'm leaning on selling the unit. It's far too complicated to set up and really doesn't sound much better than POD FARM or Peavey revalver yet cost almost 10 times as much. I'm going to spend the week with it still though and see if I start to enjoy it more. Maybe I will find the magic in it. I still can't figure out how to use my Redwirez IR's with it yet either.
 
schlagdog said:
So far I'm leaning on selling the unit. It's far too complicated to set up and really doesn't sound much better than POD FARM or Peavey revalver yet cost almost 10 times as much. I'm going to spend the week with it still though and see if I start to enjoy it more. Maybe I will find the magic in it. I still can't figure out how to use my Redwirez IR's with it yet either.
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I'll go with you on the more complicated part, but the comparisons are pure hyperbole. As mentioned, try the new firmware with the new Bank A and see if you like it. If not, by all means sell it.

As for the Redwirez IR's, so long as you have the Axe-Fx II-specific IR's, you can basically drag and drop them onto the User slots in the Axe-Fx II via Axe Edit.
 
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Sorry, I don't know Revalver but POD farm and between POD farm and the Axe II fits a whole universe.
Take the time, read the manual, get useful some tips here on the forum and you'll be a lucky man in 2-3 weeks :)
 
Instead of comparing to pod and peavey software listen to some quality tube amps and compare the tone of all to that. Theres far more posible with the Axe and as with any modeler you need a quality amplification system, "build it and they (the tone) will come" then if you don't like the sound you can always use it with your pod
 
Mebee give us some insight as to how you're running the Axe. Monitors, FRFR Speakers, Headphones, Power amp to Cab etc.

Your displeasure might come down to something really simple that can be changed to make a world of difference to your sound.
 
i must say i can relate to the OP. i've had an AXEFX standard for almost three years now, and the only reason i'm keeping it is because it's the most practical all-in-one standalone solution compared to using individual plug-ins on your DAW. I play mostly hi-gain and have way better results in running my VH4's preamp or peavey rockmaster into cab impulses in logic. The effects are great, but nothing you can't do with plugins. The latest version of revalver is definitely shoulder on shoulder with the axe in terms of feel/realism. As well as a lot of other amp sim plugins

For somebody that is mainly looking for one great hi-gain sound, amp-sim plugins like Ignite's, LePou's and TSE's are an equally good -or perhaps even better- recording solution.

The overall limiting factor with digital amp modeling are cab impulses, imo. They are great for creating a similar EQ profile of a mic'ed cab, but they all share a 'static' character compared to a 'real' mic'ed cab, imo. Especially in the lower frequencies.

I bought my AxeFX Std for approx 900€ used back then. Would i play the list price for an AxeFX II today? definitely not.
 
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i know a drummer who can't keep time. i tell him "you're rushing." he says "no i'm not!" then he speeds up again. i know another guy, a keyboard player who plays too loud. i tell him "turn yourself down a bit!" he says "turn yourself up!" these folks have a problem - they don't listen. i don't mean to me, i mean to the overall sound of a group of players. they aren't listening. a guy who thinks "POD sounds just as good as the AxeFx", he's simply not listening.
 
As someone who plays 99.9% through average headphones I'm sure this can sound better than it does but for me personally it sounds absolutely amazing. I've used a lot of line 6 / boss pedals and although good this Axe II sounds significantly better in all areas. Since I'm a distortion monkey I'm in audio heaven. The lower end pedals distortions frankly sound terrible to me now and as for the cleans and everything in between I could only wish the lower end units came close. Am not made of money and wouldnt even have considered getting this if the difference in quality, tonality and behaviour wasnt huge - and it is. I cant speak for your headphones or your guitar / pickups but having played this with bass guitars, a Les Paul and an Ibanez Jem7VWH the range of tones I'm now getting is staggering. And another thing I loved was all the previous units I owned the stock presets often sounded like hammered sh*t - the new Double Verb patch on 3.0 sounds gorgeous ( and dont get me started on the distortions ! ). Wishing you find the tones that do it for you though and good luck !
 
I used ReValver for quite a while; I was on the beta team as a matter of fact and enjoyed the process of hearing the improvements that Michael made week to week and it turned out to be a pretty good program. Even though I don't have an AxeFXII yet I know that my Ultra was in an absolutely different league in terms of just about every measurable thing I could think of. I had a lot of personal pride in ReValver because of all of the time I spent testing it and giving feedback and felt like I was part of it (although I really just got to play around with it).

As a matter of fact when I sold my Ultra I reinstalled ReValver and all of my software sims and it was so bad that I went out and bought an 11R to hold me over till my coupon for the AxeFXII comes in. And trust me I hate AVID and I didn't want to bother with it or spend the money on it.

And I'm a headphone player about 99% of the time as well. And I never bought into the latency arguments and all that stuff, but after having the Ultra for a year I could feel it for the first time using SW sims and it sounded mushy or like I was playing an amp made out of plastic and the dynamics were absolutely lacking.

I do wonder what kind of tones you are using. I tend to lean towards overdriven tones that I can roll the volume back on and get a nice warm clean sound and then dig in and get some crunch. The Ultra was great at that and it was the one thing that every SW plugin I went with came up shortest on. It was almost like there was a threshold where it would be clean and then distorted and that nice fat sound was missing. Or it would just sound like the same thing but quieter.

With all that said though at the end of the day you got to use what works for you and if it isn't your cup of tea there's nothing wrong with that. Part of it may be the learning curve and part of it just may be that the anticipation created some extremely high expectations. Hell it may be that it just doesn't do what you want it to at all; who knows. But I would take a few weeks before I sold it (you aren't going to lose any money on it which is nice). Focus on getting one patch made and tweak it as best you can and spend time with just that one for a while and see if you can get what you want out of that. I mean after everything was said and done for me after a year I had 10 patches of which I used about 6 of them on a regular basis. It wasn't about quantity, it was quality and just like a real room full of equipment it takes a bit of learning and trial and error to dial in 'your' tone, but once you get it you'll know it. If you can't get it then sell it because it isn't going to make you happy.
 
I am no expert, but a high gain freak. I also like however versatility, Im not after one sound but all gain sounds and frankly for fun all the clean ranges. I have had every digitech boss korg v amp a bunch of rack stuff, lots of pedals, peavey vypyr tube, zoom's, and to be to the point there is NO comparison, on ANY LEVEL through real speakers, esp frfr.

HOWEVER, I am willing to bet on a recorded track, super high gain, over compressed, over produced, de tuned, buried in the mix , screamo chugathon metalcore, the OP is correct. So if thats all YOU want, recording high gain in a mix stuff, the axe fx is overboard for your needs. There are tons of guys on this board making very cool sounding metalcore sounds but they all sound the same to me, regardless of fas modern left 6 channels of 6150 right and 10 string one finger power chord stuff.

IMHO (but if you wanna sound like srv one day, g lynch, petrucci, vai, andy timmons, or frickin george harrison on other days fuggeddah bout it, keep the axe.)
 
shasha said:
I used ReValver for quite a while; I was on the beta team as a matter of fact and enjoyed the process of hearing the improvements that Michael made week to week and it turned out to be a pretty good program. Even though I don't have an AxeFXII yet I know that my Ultra was in an absolutely different league in terms of just about every measurable thing I could think of. I had a lot of personal pride in ReValver because of all of the time I spent testing it and giving feedback and felt like I was part of it (although I really just got to play around with it).

As a matter of fact when I sold my Ultra I reinstalled ReValver and all of my software sims and it was so bad that I went out and bought an 11R to hold me over till my coupon for the AxeFXII comes in. And trust me I hate AVID and I didn't want to bother with it or spend the money on it.

And I'm a headphone player about 99% of the time as well. And I never bought into the latency arguments and all that stuff, but after having the Ultra for a year I could feel it for the first time using SW sims and it sounded mushy or like I was playing an amp made out of plastic and the dynamics were absolutely lacking.

I do wonder what kind of tones you are using. I tend to lean towards overdriven tones that I can roll the volume back on and get a nice warm clean sound and then dig in and get some crunch. The Ultra was great at that and it was the one thing that every SW plugin I went with came up shortest on. It was almost like there was a threshold where it would be clean and then distorted and that nice fat sound was missing. Or it would just sound like the same thing but quieter.

With all that said though at the end of the day you got to use what works for you and if it isn't your cup of tea there's nothing wrong with that. Part of it may be the learning curve and part of it just may be that the anticipation created some extremely high expectations. Hell it may be that it just doesn't do what you want it to at all; who knows. But I would take a few weeks before I sold it (you aren't going to lose any money on it which is nice). Focus on getting one patch made and tweak it as best you can and spend time with just that one for a while and see if you can get what you want out of that. I mean after everything was said and done for me after a year I had 10 patches of which I used about 6 of them on a regular basis. It wasn't about quantity, it was quality and just like a real room full of equipment it takes a bit of learning and trial and error to dial in 'your' tone, but once you get it you'll know it. If you can't get it then sell it because it isn't going to make you happy.
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Real interesting story and perspective there shasha. I myself have had the same problem with just about everything except the axe - that boring, compressed plastic sound that doesn't let you hear the pick on the strings and the dynamics of different pick attacks and when you roll down your volume.

That said, the axe is not perfect (very close tho!) - I have to this day struggled to get some good bass tones out of the ultra. But to say I haven't found good bass tones is a lie. I have found good tones, even for bass, but they are difficult....you have to spend some time on it.....a LOT of time. But to say you can't get ANY good results means that you're definitely doing something wrong. For guitar, the axe is totally a dream come true. High gain stuff is easy to model - matter of fact, the higher the gain, is the closer all amps, modellers etc start to sound the same.

Start with only an amp block, and a cab block, and try different model amps and cabs. If you STILL can't find something you like, then none of us can help you.
 
Have to say was in the same boat when I started using Fractal at the beginning of the year, so many settings compared to anything I had ever touched but this is my story on it… Used POD XT Live for years plugging directly into the PC and being lazy basically downloaded the vast majority of the tones I used. Got the Ultra… very noticeable improvement for bedroom playing direct to PC but then started getting more serious and wanting to play out again so hooked up to the gear I had… a non-recommended class D amp and Gemini 15" speakers. Ultra was so/so in this setup, used it anyhow since it was way smaller/lighter than lugging around my Traynor head, pedals, and Marshall 4x12 cabs had used in the distant past plus I didn't have a vehicle large enough for that stuff so didn't have much choice. Picked up the FXII when it came out and went whoa… it doesn't sound much better than the Ultra at volume how can that be? Even tried my Marshall cabs with cab sims on/off… my Traynor head is a '75 so 4C wasn't a setup could try, just wasn't happy. Few days later cleaning out the garage found my old ADA Microtube 100 from back in the day and swapped out the non-recommended class D amp had been using. Ran through the presets and WOW, FX2 had seriously grown instant balls, even with the Gemini speakers… then took a few of my favorites from that to keep it simple (like 284 Recto Lead) and started tweaking based off the FXII manual and the wiki which are a wealth of expertise. Finally was becoming a happy camper and starting to get the feel of the settings however if I could move my old gear around probably would have used it at that point. Few weeks after that was goofing around and tossed the wireless on, the instant I wasn't right on top of the speakers my eyes lit up and holy crap! Wife couldn't figure out why I was jumping around like a kid on Xmas morning but everything finally clicked, at that point I was pursuing a sounds for the most part had already had found and didn't realize it being right on top of the speakers. Haven't looked back since, we use the FXII/Ultra for both guitars these days and finally understand the people dumping their old gear… while the old gear has good memories and years of enjoyment honestly can't image ever using/lugging that stuff around ever again.
 
jon said:
That said, the axe is not perfect (very close tho!) - I have to this day struggled to get some good bass tones out of the ultra. But to say I haven't found good bass tones is a lie. I have found good tones, even for bass, but they are difficult....you have to spend some time on it.....a LOT of time. But to say you can't get ANY good results means that you're definitely doing something wrong.
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I couldn't agree more. Even with the Axe-Fx II, you still have to tweak, unless you're just wanting something that will "do the job" or are fortunate enough that the specific tone you're after is already in one of the stock presets. However, if you spend the time, the rewards are there.
 
I spent all last night and all morning so far with it and it's getting better. I've been sitting here a/bing my Mesa Triple Rec with a 57 in front of it and trying to get close with the axe. i upgraded the firmware last night so I'm all up to date. I'm looking forward to trying to IR my own speaker can later since it seems like every speaker cab IR won't get the basic 57 in front of my v30 cab sound I can get in 2 seconds. I realize this thing takes tons of time and tweaking and it's already annoying me but I'm sure once I have it down I will be ok. I tried using the power section of my mesa to see how it sounds out of my cab and that was a whole other disappointment which seems to require more hours of tweaking(and yes I have the cabs turned off). I think I was just expecting to much from this unit. I'm not giving up though and for the $1700 more than a POD HD PRO this should be WAY better. Once they write into the L6 software the ability to use other IR's then that gap of price will really be silly. I'm not giving up though on it. I realize 2 days of it isn't even scratching the surface of the AXEFX2. Who knows, in 2 weeks I may think its the greatest thing since sliced bread.
 
There u go! ;) making progress already! ;)

I have used, and still use some high end amps and fx units, and the axe can match them all. Still a few things it can't do yet, but the axe is still a pretty young product. I can pretty much guarantee that the axe will surpass by miles anything in the pod. I used to ba a pod owner too, and there is absolutely no comparison. If you have to compare, compare to some real amps. If your're comparing modeler against modeler, the axe is the clear winner, and by a LONG shot.

Keep at it, you've barely scratched the surface yet!
 
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