The Last Rack Unit Modeler I Will Buy

Axe

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I am just scratching the surface. I'm upgrading from a lowly Axe Fx Std. To be perfectly honest. My Axe Fx Std patches still sound better to my ears. I'm hoping that will change. I like simple... I have a sign hanging in my studio,, "Keep it Simple Stupid".. I refer to that sign not only in my approach to the patches I build within my Axe III but also in the basic arrangements written for our project. This unit appears to have everything I could ask for.. I will use it exclusively as a studio tool..

So why did I entitle this "The Last Rack Unit Modeler I Will Buy" ?

Because plug in technology has gotten too good and will only get better in the future.....

As good as these unit's promise to be. Future simple focused plugins will make the next gen of Axe Fx ......

Hence my title..
 
I remember when everyone said that about synthesizers too and now you see tons of guys going totally daw-less, wanting everything as hardware.

plugins are great, but I prefer hardware. I like big racks full of outboard gear.

PC can probably sound equally good, no argument there, but I stare at a monitor for 10 hours a day at work. I don’t want to come home and sit down at another computer
 
I remember when everyone said that about synthesizers too and now you see tons of guys going totally daw-less, wanting everything as hardware.

plugins are great, but I prefer hardware. I like big racks full of outboard gear.

PC can probably sound equally good, no argument there, but I stare at a monitor for 10 hours a day at work. I don’t want to come home and sit down at another computer
This and I don’t want to depend on a PC when playing out.
 
I've got many plugins and do not enjoy playing thru them as with the Axe. I can get nice tones reamping but playing straight like, with an amp, still the Axe is better to anything I have. So for me it is not the platform, but the SW itself.
 
I've owned Kemper.. still own Helix, Headrush, Atomic Amplifire and a few others. I recently got into plugins and thought they were better. I enjoyed Amplitube 4 and TH-U overloud more than the hardware modelers. Then I recently purchased my FM3 and I don't play any of those anymore.

I feel I could now live the rest of my life with the FM3 and be totally happy if I never owned another piece of gear. None of those made me feel this way.
 
I've owned Kemper.. still own Helix, Headrush, Atomic Amplifire and a few others. I recently got into plugins and thought they were better. I enjoyed Amplitube 4 and TH-U overloud more than the hardware modelers. Then I recently purchased my FM3 and I don't play any of those anymore.

I feel I could now live the rest of my life with the FM3 and be totally happy if I never owned another piece of gear. None of those made me feel this way.
Same here.
 
I own 2 of the top plug ins. why? I have no idea anymore. I am very happy with my FM3, and was equally happy with the all the Fractals to come before it.
I have been playing guitar since the year of the flood.
Technology has far surpassed what our meager human brains to comprehend. What does "sounds better" mean anymore?
We are there imho. Yes things will get more compact, but guitar sound is guitar sound.
 
I dearly agree with you that plug in technology has gotten too good and will only get better in the future! This is so mad and I hate it
 
Plugins are subject to the whims of whatever else you run on your computer, including the OS. Specialized, autonomous, bare metal hardware just works when you turn it on. Your plugins probably won’t even run 10 years from now. AxeFX will run the same as it does today.

Though yes, I do understand how one can feel overwhelmed by all the parameters. I spoke of this myself. I don’t know the answer to this either.
 
Which plugins LOL! UAD is a fairly distant second and requires hardware. None of the other contenders are in the same league has the axe. And that doesn't even address the advantages of dedicated DSP and embedded systems. Dismissed. Next!
 
So why did I entitle this "The Last Rack Unit Modeler I Will Buy" ?

Because plug in technology has gotten too good and will only get better in the future.....

As good as these unit's promise to be. Future simple focused plugins will make the next gen of Axe Fx ......

Hence my title..
You say that now, but Cliff and Co. will come up with something even mo better and you're gonna GAS for it just like the rest of us.

It won't be a plug-in, because PC's and Macs share too much in the way of processing power and memory with all the other tasks involved with just being a computer that they won't do what Fractal needs them to do. If they could have they would have years ago.

Will that change in the future? That's up to Intel and AMD and Apple. It is, of course, possible, but right now the CPU's they use aren't DSP's, which is what is required to do the kind of processing that Fractal things do.
 
I don't use plugins, I'm all about having a physical unit in my studio or stage. And I sure as hell am not going to put a laptop on stage
 
Schumacher's dictum "Keep it simple, stupid" comes from a much simpler world in the 70ties. Today we must learn to cope with complexity, because complexity has not only a downside. Higher abilities require more complexity. I believe the Axe III makes it quite easy for us already, to cope with the complexities.
 
I just can't wrap my head around bringing a laptop to a gig. No thank you.
These days, or at least before the pandemic, almost all touring shows, even small and medium-sized artists, use computers for switching presets, in-ear click tracks, controlling lights, etc. Many bands with a keyboard player even have a computer on stage. In 2020, that's old news :).
 
These days, or at least before the pandemic, almost all touring shows, even small and medium-sized artists, use computers for switching presets, in-ear click tracks, controlling lights, etc. Many bands with a keyboard player even have a computer on stage. In 2020, that's old news :).

I don't know any artist, at least the small ones, that use computers for anything guitar related. I've yet even to see another dude with an Axe-FX. It's almost all amps and pedals I see. In ear click tracks, backing tracks yeah I've seen that and done that. But I am not going to run my guitar rig off a laptop in a live setting where shit has to work flawless. Seen too much hickups with computers acting funny when it mattered. Or Windows deciding NOW is the time it MUST update. Yeah, but that's Windows you say, Apple works fine. Fine, with all the shenanigans Big Tech is currently running and the role Apple played in the demise of Parler I'm not going to base my rig on a product where the manufacturer can pull the plug on any app that runs on it and I can't do a damn thing about it. Give me cold hard guitar processors like the Axe FX or Helix, or that new That Shall Not Be Named unit, that will always fire up and which are free from manufacturer shenanigans if I want them too. I MUST update Windows, regardless of if I want too. Apple's control over its hardware frightens me. But if don't want to update my Axe FX because my crazy tinfoil hat tells me the new firmware will summon C'tulhu then I am free to do so.
 
I don't know any artist, at least the small ones, that use computers for anything guitar related. I've yet even to see another dude with an Axe-FX. It's almost all amps and pedals I see.
As I mentioned, almost all touring acts use computers. It's been that way for a while. In 2019, almost every live show I saw, including medium to small acts, with artists like Astronoid, Coheed and Cambria, Plini, etc. used computers. Also, many use an AxeFX.
 
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I don't know any artist, at least the small ones, that use computers for anything guitar related.
Plini wants to tour with his laptop and a guitar only but has said that (as of early 2019 when I heard it) it was not yet stable enough trust.
I MUST update Windows, regardless of if I want too.
If Windows is not on a network it has no way to update. Simple solution ;)
 
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