What Prompted You To Buy A Fractal?

Went with Helix first in my downsizing quest. Still had to have a BigSky and a Drop, plus it didn't sound as good as my analog rig. A buddy had just gotten a FX3, sold me on it, bought one with a FC12. No looking back.
 
My name is mud said:
People where always talking about this band in the periphery 2 era around me, the generation after mine . So I end up knowing their songs pretty well, and yeah they have good ones . The tone was good too. For all these djent guys, owning a 2 was « the thing » to have
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I knew Bulb as a fellow forumite posting A1 instrumentals before they had the first vocalist. Probably why I preferred P1 instrumentally for a while. Whole band are great musicians, no doubt. He also had four seconds ago (?) which was a cool side project.

Great tones are in the older units but I always try to steer people to an FM3 to hear the current goodness.

Im very happy with my purchase.
 
I first heard of Axe-FX thanks to my guitar teacher I had back then. I started doing some research and found out that a few of my favourite musicians used it (Robert Fripp being one of them) and I’ve become intrigued about it. All those Djent band (AAL, David Maxim Cicic, Periphery, Protest The Hero…) and VGM guys (RichaadEB, SixteenInMono…) convinced me that it was the right tool that would allow me to express the ideas I had in my head and record them without compromise. I wanted it so bad, but as a broke teenager, there wasn’t much I could do. This year I finally bought an Axe-FX 3 (Yay) and I've been learning a lot about how an amp works, effects, etc. Now it’s up to me to make some weird noises. Thank you FAS and all the helpful forum members here.
 
The Kemper never did it for me. I saw the need for profiles as a money pit. I don’t have a stable of amps to snapshot, I’m just a guy playing guitar in his bedroom.

Sold the Kemper at a loss but bought an FM3 with it. Much better fit, and the tones are there!

The FM3 was the genesis of really digging into guitar for me. Loved it so much I started lessons again, and am playing live for an audience (P&W) in Dec. Would love an FM9 but am super happy with the 3.
 
Steve Vai gushed about what Cliff developed effect-wise with the II. I had been aware of the Axe FX since 2011, but preferred my Marshall half stack over my POD HD 500.

I jumped at buying the FX-8 as soon as it was released. Love it except for the drive pedals. The. Came the AX8. Bought it immediately. Bought the 3 in January 2020. I am so happy. Haven’t played the Marshall in over 4 years.

I still use the AX8 for Sunday worship services from time to time. And sometimes I use the III
 
In 2010, I didn't have the cash for a Standard or Ultra. Instead, based on horribly misleading online videos and sound samples, I bought an Eleven Rack. I thought I was getting a developed and quality sounding unit....

After a few weeks banging my head against the wall with that orange POS, I bit the bullet and scraped up the cash for a Standard.... then the II, now the III, soon the IV (hopefully).
 
My tinnitus was giving me more and more trouble, my Mesa MkV90 could be turned down to low volume but still too loud to play a couple of hours without having to pay the price by increased ringing in my ears.

So I decided a modeler with studio monitors would be a great idea. After doing my research I concluded that I wanted the FM9…only to find out that they were not on the market yet in Europe (this was more than a year ago). Leon Todd’s videos were a large contributor in the decision making process.

Shortly after I bought a used Helix floor, and a few weeks later an FM3 to be able to compare. The idea was that if the Helix was good for me I could keep that one till the FM9 was available.

With the Helix I was struggling to get the tones I like, when I received the FM3 I was blown away and the Helix was out the door shortly after. With the Fractal I could easily find the sounds I was after, and after watching all those videos on the G66 YouTube channel it was super easy to use the editor.

In the meantime I sold the FM3 after purchasing the FM9, after the latest update things only got better!!! Keep up the great work Fractal!!!!
 
I guess I could credit an unnamed competing company's device I was using at the time for making me ultimately choose a Fractal, but in reality the props go to Leon Todd, Cooper Carter, Frank Steffen Müller, Brett Kingman and all the others who tirelessly demonstrated one video after another how good the Fractals sound. In terms of usability, tone, inspiration and whatnot, it does seem like I've found my musical happy place.

It's been the best musical purchase I've ever made, or at least the best in a very long time. Or maybe it's more of a threeway split for first place; The Les Paul, my first good Cello back in the day, and the FM3. Doesn't really matter, all that matters is all that this little black box can do for me.
 
Continual disappointment from most amp sim plugins and the uninspiring results coming out of my 11 rack.

I’ve known of the Axe-Fx for many, many years thanks to all the talk on sevestring dot org, and after comparing many times against kemper, and helix. Fractal won every time in my book. Bought a III turbo and will never look back. I’ve not been happier plugging in a guitar, or doing re-amping for clients.
 
mattgreenrocks said:
The Kemper never did it for me. I saw the need for profiles as a money pit. I don’t have a stable of amps to snapshot, I’m just a guy playing guitar in his bedroom.

Sold the Kemper at a loss but bought an FM3 with it. Much better fit, and the tones are there!

The FM3 was the genesis of really digging into guitar for me. Loved it so much I started lessons again, and am playing live for an audience (P&W) in Dec. Would love an FM9 but am super happy with the 3.
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I've been a long-time Kemper user since 2013. But the unit never did it for me. Bought first in 2013, sold it in 2015 for a couple of tube amps, bought a powered Kemper about a year-and-a-half later, then sold that one, then finally traded a Diezel VH4 for my original unit plus a whole stash of cash.

Around the same time, I bought an Axe FXIII and... it just sat there as I stared at this daunting piece of machinery, which I couldn't figure out.

It wasn't until sometime this year that I started to really scratch the surface of the device and I was sold.

Some things that stood out to me about the device:
1) Unlike the Kemper, you can actually craft your own tones, for your guitars. I used to hate diving through a tonne of profiles on the Kemper, only to find that after a few sessions, I was back to searching for a better tone.

2) The Kemper definitely has a sonic signature. Whether that is the bass frequencies being dialled back or the mids being scooped, there was always this sound to it, which I now equate to hearing an amp in a "wind tunnel" of sorts"

3) The Axe FXIII has so many more routing possibilities. With the Kemper, you were stuck with just 8 FX slots. But when I moved to the Axe FXIII, it was so much more pleasing to have multiple FX slots to have FX stomps or EQs or tone match or whatever.

4) The Kemper is OLD. The device hasn't seen an update since 2011-12, and it sonically shows. While it might have been new and cutting edge tech in 2011, it's now 2022, and the sounds I get out of the Axe FX are much more pleasing, to me at least.

5) I can use the Axe FX with my tube amps. Works great as just an FX processor, something that was harder to do with the Kemper.

6) It really sounds that good. Swear to God, it really does.
 
Budda said:
I knew Bulb as a fellow forumite posting A1 instrumentals before they had the first vocalist. Probably why I preferred P1 instrumentally for a while. Whole band are great musicians, no doubt. He also had four seconds ago (?) which was a cool side project.

Great tones are in the older units but I always try to steer people to an FM3 to hear the current goodness.

Im very happy with my purchase.
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The olden times. Defending ourselves against the anti-digital hordes. Before USB. Before official software editors. Before the official forum. Before big name artists. It was glorious.

Back on topic. I can't remember why I bought my Standard. I must have gotten old since the olden times.
 
My name is mud said:
People where always talking about this band in the periphery 2 era around me, the generation after mine . So I end up knowing their songs pretty well, and yeah they have good ones . The tone was good too. For all these djent guys, owning a 2 was « the thing » to have
Click to expand...
"The bad thing" from the Omega record dragged me into the Periphery hype and got me hooked for a very long time to try and play their songs. Didnt get any further than learning to play "The bad thing" though 🤣, but the AxeFXII at least made it sound like Periphery.
 
To me, the Fractal modelers are similar to Neumann microphones. The best at what they do, regardless of any marketing wank.

I continue to be very impressed and it’s been many years now.

Thanks
Pauly


TSJMajesty said:
Idea came from @Chewie5150 over in the Gift of Tone thread where he said Mark Day's videos inspired him to enter into the Fractal world.

What was yours? Was it one of the main artists using the gear, or a video, or..., something else?

For me it was seeing @Cooper Carter demo'ing all 263 amps (at the time) with a song clip using each one. And then when I saw that John Petrucci used one as a replacement for his big 3 rack unit effects (Eventide, TC Electronic, & Lexicon), that sealed the deal and I just had to have one!
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Mine was quite similar, but also different.

I built up a killer pedal board, based around Strymon and a Gigrig G2.

Sounded great into the front-end of any amp.

Then one day I had to take it on public transport, and man! That pedalboard was so heavy, I'm a big guy and my grip could only just manage the board - with lots of breaks.

So, having seen lots of adverts for modelling (specifically the Helix) - I decided to try again a Helix (I'd owned and sold every previous Line 6 product).

I found it better, much better, than the earlier versions - but initially found it two dimensional and kind of 'flat'. Then I stopped setting it like amp/pedals and started actually using my ears a lot more, and that along with some of the common Helix 'tricks' - I got something workable.

So then I thought, if I'm going to make a go of modelling - why not try one of these Fractal things I see advertised? There's a two week returns policy in the UK, so give it a go.

Got an AX8, and the rest is history - I found I could set the knobs like my amp/pedals, and it sounded amazing - I still have some recordings from back then, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with the sound even from 2016-17.
 
-400+ lb rack
-Recurring ground loop problems from 2 amp heads and 1 preamp as the front end, while the Axe is dead quiet everywhere it goes
-My tech got too old to fix things
-My friend was an early adopter of the Axe 2, toured a lot with it and raved about it
-I can bring the Axe home from the rehearsal space and work on sounds while watching TV
-Never considered other modelers because of the Axe’s vastly superior effects
 
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