Really all I make is skate-punk/melodic hardcore music in my bedroom with my les paul and funky stuff with my strat and tele (also 2 basses). The amp sims I use currently are either Mercuriall's Spark, Neural's SLO-100, or Neural's Corey Wong archetype for the funky cleans (for bass I use the PA Ampeg sims). I've always used plugin sims but the constant posts I come across of "yeah man that Neural DSP/Mercuriall plugin sounds good...but Axe-FX III is like a bajillion times better" makes me wonder if it really is so accurate that the price completely would make it worth it to use as essentially an amp sim/amp replacement to record with. As you can see, what I actually play and make isn't incredibly eclectic or technically detailed, but I would be willing to save up and scrape around a bit if it really is THAT much better and close to the real amps without having them (I might able to afford an Axe FX III, but I definitely can't afford a Marshal JCM800, a Mesa Rec, etc). At most I would use some kind of Marshall sound, some kind of Mesa sound, and some kind of clean Fender amp (probably also an Ampeg amp for my bass, most likely all with my York IRs that I like).
So I wanted to ask actual owners of the hardware who may or may not have been in my position before owning one, am I just overhyping myself from all of the talk, or is it really that much better? If I only need 3 amp sounds (4 if it has an Ampeg model for bass) and maybe some distortion and compression pedals for any music I make. Is sticking with plugin amp sims good enough at the end of the day (especially for what I do)?
Also the FM3 exists so...how about that vs the Axe-FX III for my needs. A lot of the draw towards the FX is that a lot of the really nice presets (should I ever want them) that exist for it take advantage of the dual amp capabilities. Other than that I would just record with a single amp irl anyway so the FM3 is also an option.
Bought an Axe FX III, guess that's that. /thread
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