More new awesome amps coming, that's why.
Well, there it is.
This is the sad truth that none of us wants to admit, isn't it?
Given both the status of the Axe FX II as an "ultimate" guitar tone icon and the expense involved in assembling a complete Axe rig, I think it's safe to say that no one enters this particular club without having spent years as a hopeless GAS-addict.
We're the guys who bought amp after amp--heedless of the nights in the doghouse and the missed car insurance payments-only to be happy for a short time before starting to search again, because the new one was "almost there." The guys who've ebay'd enough pedals to fill a pedalboard made from a Wal-Mart roof.
If you've ever had a gear purchase sent somewhere other than your house, you're one the people I'm talking about.
And most of us, while we listed and sold gear that no longer satisfied us in order to save up for the Axe FX, and then paid our dues on the waiting lists, were thinking the same thing: "this is the last rig I'll have to buy. I'll tie myself to the mast like Odysseus and weather the storm, and then I'll be home, and the quest can end."
But it didn't.
And it won't.
Because it isn't about getting the proper tools for a job that brings in income, at least, it's not just about that, though we've reassured ourselves and our significant others with that justification nearly enough times to believe it.
It's about hunger.
And that hunger is the thing that makes it so frustrating to actually feel satisfied for a change. If the Axe FX only made one great amp sound, it would be different; we could go back to business as usual, but it doesn't. It makes a boatload of great amp sounds, not to mention great pedals and cabs.
So we internalize the GAS, diverting it into the search for the best ir to go with the best amp sim, the parameter-tweaking quest for the magic combination of tone stack and dynamic presence that makes a great tone into an incredible one.
And it does work--I have no desire to buy another amp, and I doubt I ever will, unless it's an Axe FX III (actually, I'll probably wait for the IV).
But, satisfied or not, (or at least as satisfied as folks like us can ever be), toss a hint of an imminent upgrade our way, or infer that there might be another great amp on the way (despite the embarrassment of riches that's already there), and we're yapping like mutts at the the back door of a steakhouse.
Once an addict, always an addict.
