brothers, I feel better now. Thanks for this.
From all your comments I take it that there is enough educated opinion to go further down the modeler route and get rid of some of my tube amps.
My amps - all combos - include A Portcity12, a Swart AST, an old ampeg jet 12, a Redplate 40 Watt and a small Redplate 12 Watt. I will sell them except my Redplates. From time to time I may feel the urge to have a guitar - a cable - an amp, ant thats it. We will see. I do not have enough space and money to hold on to things I do not use. Also, some days ago one of my really well built Redplates did not react after a short loud crackle - fuse gone, power tube gone. I hope the AX8 is really reliable. So, one or two tube amps + the AX8 and a FRFR monitor in the future.
Then I sat down with the AX8 and my acoustic amp (ACUS, Shertler type, way more flat EQ than an AER and less boxy I would say) and gave it another session - the first was only like one hour, but this time I had a whole day with them. I started with the factory presets, Amp and Cab switched on in the global menu, only used the knobs on the front panel and sometimes a GEQ block in front of the amp, plus the VU level adjustment in GLOBAL. I went through the presets and realised in no time which ones could be tweaked to my desire by fiddling with drive, level, mids and treble. When I found it worth investing more time I fiddled a little more and saved it - at the end I had saved clean, slightly crunchy and low OD presets - 10 each. I will rule out half of them tonight, then choose matching triples or fourths - clean/gritty/crunch/lead. I would like to end up with maybe three amp types with four (clean to OD) settings each, so I can choose between, say, a fendery set or a boutique/Carol Ann set or a Friedman like set. Three main flavours so to speak, and choose only one for a gig to make things easier for the soundman.
While tweaking I found some pretty nice results with my ACUS acoustic amp (6" broadband speaker) that sounded way bettter than on my first try. They were not yet quite up to par with my best tube amps (Yep, got it, FRFR is something different also). But as someone said here I should not judge the AX8 with not so ideal monitors. I expect another big jump from my ACUS to the Matrix FR10 which I hope will arrive in March or April. All this and your helpful comments convinced me I am on the right track with FRFR monitors vs. tube amp.
I realised also, making presets and finding your tone sets with the AX8 is a lot of work, kind of adventurous, discipline is needed not to get lost, a method also to keep your eyes on the goal you want to achieve. Way more than with my former classic stompers approach. But as it stands now I am pretty excited about the options of amp flavours I have at my hands now, something which covers my needs for electric and acoustic guitars - and less maintenance work for my tube combos (tube exchange, biasing, tube rattling, anyone?).
Sorry for this long winding post. I could have kept it shorter by saying that my wife came in the room where I did the tweaking. She said: Damn, that sounds really good! - Who am I to disagree?
