Well, thatâs always speculated and I reallyyyyy try not going down that rabbit hole because itâll make you crazy. I try to tell myself a great sounding amp/ modeler today will be a great sounding modeler/amp in 10 years. But I also think itâll take some decent amount of time for people to stop thinking like this, because I think many people like myself who are hyper critical with tone etc ( much like many people here of course) are just now starting to see in the last half a decade or so that modeling is truly âthereâ now. For what itâs worth I was never into the axe until the 3 came out personally. I always felt the high end on the older models was just totally off from the real thing and were just too dark compared to the amps they were modeling. I donât feel that way with the axe 3 in the least. Itâs truly there in my personal opinion and Iâm not sure how it could sound any better at this point. Cliff tweaks things here and there with the algorithms, sure. But nothing heâs doing now is worlds different than the previous firmware by any means. The older models the firmware upgrades were often drastic changes. Cliff recently changed the algorithms with how certain phase inverters on certain amps behave, and did a few tweaks on all the models prior to that. Are they better sounding? Sure I think so, everything is more raw sounding and alittle more âout of controlâ like a real amp is ( a plexi on 10 for instance). is it worlds different than before? Absolutely not, but itâs nice to know Cliff is continuously obsessive about making the best amp modeler on the planet, which is how he started in the first place.
Prior to that, I used a kemper live every week all over the east coast of the country, and it was great for the gigs I was doing and what the artist required for his show/sound. Playing at âthatâ level ( whatever you wanna call it, where someone is basically the âbossâ and you are hired to play ), things like âin the roomâ tones or other catch phrases that describe nothing but guitar player masterbation and selfishness, requires you to think outside of your own box and head, and realize what is important and why people are there to watch in the first place: the band, the songs, and the sound as a whole. A modeler will always win in that category for me, especially with the axe 3 and how good it is to me. The consistency factor for a rehearsed show with an FOH guy that is being paid a lot of money to make you sound good, is infinitely more important at that stage, it just is. If I was Keith urban or slash would I use real amps? Of course I would! Who wouldnât with resources like that. Anything less than that level? Iâm going for consistency and reliability everytime. My goal was always to make my tone as good as possible before it hits the FOH, so if something is off, I can safely say I did everything I could do to make the FOHâs job as easy as possible.
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