The history of Axe Fx so far.

Well surely there was a market for modelers and Cliff managed to approach it from a players side and so far i think he took the "rightest" way ;). My ultra changed the disgust i was feeling to all digital music creation world and now II and V7! WOW!
 
First: Peavey Bandit, JCM800, Peavey Classic, Marshall 6101(blue jub combo), Various rackgear, Carvin Legacy, Vox Ac30, Fender Combo(?)....

Starting with digital: (Behringer V-Amp I)... After playing L6 Flextone 2 i bought me a Rivera M-100. Then Flextone III came out. I had to try it. Changed it for a Vetta. Sold it after 4-5 months. Got myself a Peavey JSX with a Rivera 4x12 and a JCM800+Marshall 2x12. Had that for 3 years. Sold it to get a Mesa RKII with 3 2x12 cabs(1 Greenback+2 w V30). Did not miss the digital stuff at all. I also used the L6 M13 with the Roadking.

Suddenly i stumbled over some reveiw/test between M13 and Axe-Fx. Axe-Fx???? What the h--- is that??!!

I read a lot about it. Checked reveiws. Harmony Central(when it was useble). Checked this forum. Talked to some guys in Norway that used it, and sold CAE, Mesa etc after getting the Axe. So i sold my Mesa, ordered the Ultra, got a old Mesa 50/50 poweramp. The Ultra came V8.03 something, i think.

I tried it direct to PA. Did not like it that much. Recorded the same patch. It was sounding good in a mix, so i ran it direct to PA. But i used poweramp and cabs as my monitor. That was a sound i was very happy with.

AXII and V7 is what i always wanted. It feels great with little tweaking, other than the usual amp tweaking stuff. Both trough the Mesa rig and the HK monitors...
 
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I am curious as to how much better the sound became from V1 to V11. The evolution of the II has been pretty amazing. Was it the same way back in the day?
 
Enzo Sutera said:
First was the Standard, some months later the Ultra and so on.. I had the luck to get one of the very first Standard back in 2007. It used to sound like this:

http://www.enzosutera.com/axefx clips/session1.mp3

http://www.enzosutera.com/axefx clips/session2.mp3

http://www.enzosutera.com/axefx clips/session3.mp3

http://www.enzosutera.com/axefx clips/session4.mp3

http://www.enzosutera.com/axefx clips/session5.mp3

http://www.enzosutera.com/axefx clips/session6.mp3

http://www.enzosutera.com/axefx clips/session7.mp3
Click to expand...

These clips are the reason why I bought my first Standard! I remember exactly I ordered it right after hearing them. Thanks for bringing it back!!
 
electronpirate said:
One person (not remembered...someone help here), did a few 'real world' clips as well as reviews, which sold pretty much all of us. There was about 3 reviews on HC, and I'm sure we all read them 400 times. Popularity grew pretty fast after that, and since most sites were sick and tired of us talking Axe-FX for days, so the setbb forum was born.
Click to expand...

I think I have found that thread! Those were the days ; )

Axe-FX :: View topic - Axe in the real world - clips from a studio session

HRI
 
MGoBlue said:
I am curious as to how much better the sound became from V1 to V11. The evolution of the II has been pretty amazing. Was it the same way back in the day?
Click to expand...

Keep in mind that this was initially designed for FX only (hence the name.) The amp models were a bonus...but I think he discovered pretty quickly he had something there.

There were a number of improvement milestones. Cab resolution doubling was one, power amp modeling improvements (FW 6.0 I think), and the final one 11.0 was excellent.
 
I started with an Ultra in early 09 (v6 or 7). V10/11 on the Utra were a crossroads to me and seemed to transform the Ultra to a new level. I was amazed it took 10 version to suddenly get this level of improvement but there it was - it's weird but it seems to be the way the evolution works for AxeFx - we see it in the II as each release seems to draw out more improvements. I guess this will continue. The future will be exciting as processor power continues to grow and provide a faster and wider palette to program into. My only reservation is that all this seems really wrapped into one guy - but isn't that often the case - there's just not that many real proactive experts / visionaries in the world - we're lucky to be connected to one here with our purchase of this unit.
 
Evolution of the Axe is written down in history :)
However, I think that while the product more than stands on it's own, the videos' from Ketil Strand (rednebb) have probably convinced more folks to go with the Axe than any other source.. I had a major impact on my initial decision..
If you haven't seen/heard what can REALLY be done with the Axe, check out Rednebb's "(R)evolution of Rock Guitar" series..
rednebb - YouTube
 
This thread needs firmware numbers. Firmware # or it didn't happen! - LOL
I started on a standard, firmware 3.17, June 2007. There's some dudes who had extremely early firmware several months before that.

electronpirate said:
I was there very early on. Late 2006.

The 'buzz' was just beginning. A bit of havoc really. At that time, my wait time was roughly 1-2 months (I think I waited 3). By the time I received mine, it was up to 6 months +. Out of the box it was like none of the other modelers I'd heard. Way over what the competitors were offering. Yes, it was a huge pain to figure out how to tweak (much of it was my learning curve on advanced digital devices as well.) But I was satisfied tweaking existing presets while I learned.

It went from 0 to 'fooking nuts' in a very short time (Cliff may chime in...it was probably the last time he slept). There were a pile of us trying to find information on it, as well as clips, etc. One person (not remembered...someone help here), did a few 'real world' clips as well as reviews, which sold pretty much all of us. There was about 3 reviews on HC, and I'm sure we all read them 400 times. Popularity grew pretty fast after that, and since most sites were sick and tired of us talking Axe-FX for days, so the setbb forum was born. In time the first incarnations of preset sites and WIKI, and finally Fractal took over the forum.

Helped from my standpoint that there were a few people here in Denver who were REALLY early adopters (cue Sean and Pete.) Eric was not long after me (solo-act), and a few amp fest's later, Denver was peppered with Fractal.

Really, we all just heard the potential of the technology early on, and jumped on board. And I can say I have not been disappointed.

Ron
Click to expand...
 
A long time ago in a galaxy far away...

There was an engineer that used to design sonar equipment (IIRC). He also played the guitar. The equipment he used for his musical endeavours were quite cumbersome in many ways. With his experience in mathematics and processing he figured there was more to be had from the digital domain than was available at the time. So he sat down on the porch, petted his cat and went at it.

Some time later, a buzz went through the likeminded community at the institute of noise forum dealing with line6 equipment. There was a new dog in town and it barked like we never heard before. I myself heard the buzz and it sounded marvelous, also being slightly frustrated at the Vetta, which used to be the best, but didn't quite deliver. Soon valued members started defecting and other members that had gone back to tubes (cue Sean again) started appearing in the Fractal forum.

Cliff created the Axe-fx for himself, like the IBM president he was rumored to have thought he would only sell like a couple of dozen.
Boy, was he wrong.

At that time he was still assembling axes in his garage. Seeing he probably was on a budget or thought it was good enough, he used the best DSP available. Bar one. There was one with more horsepower. As you all know his creativity has no bounds and seeing that demand was comfortable to say the least, why not adapt the Axe-fx for the best DSP, bar none. And thus the Ultra came into being. Thereby designating the earlier Axe-fx as Standard. This adaptation allowed for more effects and blocks and possibly even more guitarists wished to part with even more of their money for this model.

And so it progressed. Fractal moved on into outsourced production, development of their current product line and growth, encountering many obstacles along the way, including discontinued or simply late parts, rohs certification, etc. As it stands a remarkable performance and a true American dream. For as far as we know. :)

No insider knowledge so this is all if my nutty memory serves me well, some conjecture, assumption and interpolation included. Feel free to correct, add or comment.

Btw, I wrote this this morning, but Turkish internet wouldn't let me post it...
 
My story begins with a call to "Tedge", a fellow TGP member, because he had a very, very early unit. I was used to dialing digital units (deep diving on a Kurzweil K2000, E-MU, Roland, Gforce, etc) so dialing the Standard was a piece of cake. I went from never having seen/heard one, to 15 minutes later I knew it had potential to replace everything I was using. An hour later I was convinced.

June 6, 2007, a day into having my own, it blew my mind what I was doing with it. A few days later, my girlfriend (Wife-to-be Sept 23) upon hearing all my cover songs dialed across 6 or more amps said, "It doesn't matter what you spent, that thing is worth every penny. That's the best the guitar has ever sounded on all those songs."

Every major firmware update reels me back to those same first-Axe feelings. Some updates have been challenging, some extremely easy. Tone is all about the journey, and 37 updates later (counting one preset backup per FW version) I'm forever thankful to Cliff for making it possible.

What a ride!!
 
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I really enjoy these early "How I got started on Axe Fx" stories! Lets get more!
Mine isn't very exiting. I just heard from a friend of mine that something called a Axe Fx was supposed to be the best. I didnt think much about it until a Std came up for sale local. I had been using Amplitube for a while but my computer back then couldnt handle more than 4 gtr tracks together with the drum plugin, so I borrowed the money and started this great journey and never looked back. That was about two years ago and haven't looked back.
Now I'm really happy with FW7 on the II. :)
 
One of the big drawbacks to the first few firmware revisions was that it was only possible to record the Axe-FX for online posting if it was playing metal or U2 covers....

:)

-Phil
 
I was one of the first to receive an Ultra in Europe, after something like 10-11 months on the waitlist. the Ultra had just been announced when I got on the list, so it didn't even really exist when I ordered. I believe it was on FW 4 or 5 at the time and sounded way better than anything on the market.

my memory may play tricks on me, but I think I even remember when Cliff announced to maybe have a few slots for user Cab IRs. most people completely freaked and others had never even heard that term :)

updates were as frequent as now and tone-wise similar to what's happening now. some FWs make some drastic tonal changes and some more of a feel type thing. I guess it's a bit like with game consoles, the longer they exist, the better the games get, because the programmers really get a hang of how to get the best out of it. if you take the PS2 for example. anyone remember the first GTA released on it ? crap compared to GTA San Andreas which was one of the last big games for the PS2 and it was just incredible in terms of size and features compared to anything else.

oh and yeah, I even remember when we were on an entirely different forum, not run by FAS (not that it's a bad thing though) and there were like a hundred or less registered users. happy days :)
 
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