Cornfordcrunch":btce6o8i said:
The Axe Fx has its place...and lots of guys who bash it in favor of tube amps use so much damn gain on their tube amp that it sounds like a solid state square wave anyway....so they might as well be playing a modeler.
For the gigging guitarist it doesnt get much better...my rig went down to a third of the size it was when I bought the axe...I still use my head and a 2x12 cab in conjunction with it as it clearly isnt the answer to everything, but Ive heard lots more guys with shitty live tones coming out of flavor of the month tube amps than
with an Axe Fx...simply because in my opinion the people that use the Axe Fx live know that it takes a lot of tweaking to make it work and most people that read on an internet forum that they should buy a tube amp dont know how to dial it in anyway....bottom line..if you can dial in a great sound on an amp and you understand the properties of what makes a great guitar sound, you can make it happen with the Axe Fx...you just have to spend the time.
The next part of the equation is the fact that nobody but possibly a handful of guitar players in a room you're gigging in knows the difference. Most of them wouldn't know either if it werent for the lack of "insert tube head here" sitting on a cabinet.
Does it feel like a tube amp, to a degree yes....does it sound like one...if you spend the time, yes...especially in the context of a band....and its two spaces and weighs under 20 pounds...seems pretty worthy to me.
I can see how that would be taken offensively. I shouldnt have generalized so much. Ive had my Axe for about 4 months and am just starting to get to a point where I can make it do what I want to. I think lots of people do jump ship too quickly with it though. I used to use a Boogie Mark IV and that took almost as much tweking to make sound right as this thing did and I had it for 10 years. Sorry for being a prick!
Well for me I have dialed in tube amps since the 80s and for some applications I use gain and others I do not. I think your overall assessment above states that anybody that does not like the Axe FX is some internet noob and does not know anything if they do not bow to the Axe FX. I tend to state personal facts and figure each of us is different and experienced in different ways, thus success and failure rates are there. Take Killertone he is a great player and knows good tone, one of the best on this forum IMHO, he said the Axe was not for him, but you make it out that he must be a internet noob that cant get good tone, that is just bad taste.
As far as crowds go watching live music, you would be surprised how the non musician knows when something sounds good or not. Well if you are playing the bar scene and everybody is sloshed that may not be the case, but outside of that scene there are some pretty observant people, if you give them a bit of credit anyway. LOL
So many Axe FX users take things way to personal IMHO, if it works for you great, just take a breath and try not to bash everyone else's ability just because they do not agree with you.