Personally, I love that the firmware is constantly improved and the sounds keep getting better and better.
I've got a day job, and only a limited amount of time spend playing guitar and pretty much all of that time goes to futzing with presets now. It's like trying to drink from the fire hose of upgrades that Cliff has turned on us.
I don't know how typical I am, but I have about 15 presets based on different amps that I've set up to match with different guitars, moods, genres or whatever. One of the things that I love about the Axe is that I have all of these cool amps available to me. But seriously, for the past 6 months or so, there hasn't been any time when all of them have been in a "done" state at once. That's basically because, as soon as I get close, Cliff says something like, "You guys are gonna pee yourselves over the next release", and I'm in, and my presets are all in a mess again.
A few examples:
The Wrecker Rocket was a "go to" model for me for classic rock tones. Somewhere around Q7 it changed from awesome, chimey overdrive to awful, grindy yuk. I don't know why. I haven't had a chance to go back to and try to see if it sounds better with Q8 yet.
At some point way back the Silver Face Twin had amazing dynamic response and "bounce" when clean. At some point later it stopped being like that. I haven't checked it lately to see if it came back. With Q8 I noticed that it has moved over to the Shiva clean. It's awesome now, try it on some of those Doobie Bros hammer-on chord rhythms. At the same time, the Shiva lead tone has moved in the other direction, it seems way more compressed to me and closer to the real thing to me. I have a friend who has a 1x12 Shiva combo, and it has the smoothest, creamiest overdrive I've ever heard - almost too much, to the point where it becomes really distinctive. The Axe model has just about captured that now, it's very cool.
For a while the Fender Concert lost it's warmth and rounded tone, it sounded very much like the Keith Urban Twin to me. Not that that's a bad tone, but it was a big change and not what I was looking for in that model. With Q8, it's back to that warm tone and sounds better than ever.
Also, the way these models change so much with the firmware, I never know if an amp model I couldn't bond with in the past was just because it suffered in the release that I tried it in. So I have to put aside some time to go try those models out again to see if I like them now.
So, I'm not complaining. These are good problems to have. But I can understand that there's a big potential for change fatigue, and those of us with limited time to spend with a guitar in their hands have to evolve some strategy to cope with the pace that the updates come out. Maybe update only once a quarter? Maybe have less presets?
