of course articles were popping up in my social media about this maiden guy going digital so i had to read the comments.. totally different than anything you see on forums, 90% of the hundreds of comments were people who did go modeler and are staying there because they just sound too good and are too convenient to go back.
This is such a great point and something everyone on this forum (and the other three letter one that Shall Not Be Named) needs to remember: we are the minority. Us sitting here scrutinizing every minor facet of gear is absolutely
not what 90% of guitar players are doing. Most people buy an amp or a modeler or a cab or a pedal or whatever, they either like it or don't, and keep it or move on. I'd also wager that 90% of people who buy a piece of gear are generally happy with it, especially at first.
One reason modelers, especially the AxeFX, make sense that I haven't heard mentioned here is the ability to recall sounds easily.
When you're on a huge tour, you aren't usually changing the setlist night-to-night. The setlist is already figured out during rehearsals before the tour begins. The backing tracks and tempo tracks get pulled up and sequenced for the show along with the visual effects. The guitarist needs to be able to recall sounds for each song and each section of each song easily, and might have to cover a huge catalog of sounds from a 1-30 year history of gear that was used on various albums. (Imagine something like the Foo Fighters, for example, who might want old Recto Boogie sounds for stuff from The Colour and the Shape but then want Friedman BE's for the newer stuff.)
The AxeFX makes this
super easy. Each song in the setlist can be a patch and then each scene within that patch can be a part of the song. So you could start with a really clean Fender-style sound, move to a Marshall crunch for the chorus, a Boogie Mark for your leads, and a Vox AC-30 for the bridge. You can have different reverbs, delays, cabs, mics, etc on every single different scene -- literally anything you want -- all kick in at once without a huge switching system. It would take five amps, iso cabs, road cases, microphones, cables, amp switchers, pedals, etc. to recreate this in a huge touring rig "refrigerator." But with the AxeFX you can have it all preprogrammed so all you have to do is keep moving through your scenes and patches as the show goes on. Literally just one foot switch button at a time. And every night it sounds
exactly the same with no maintenence or upkeep of any kind. And the best part? If your AxeFX shits the bed, they can just overnight you another one that will sound and operate
exactly the same way and you can just pull your patches down from the cloud. You're literally right back on your feet exactly where you were.
And the kicker? This thing is only $3500.
I love my tube amps and I'll never go fully digital, but I love my Axe FX too. It's seriously the best money you can spend on a rig right now. No other product can give you all that in one package for that price.
this seems to be going on in all aspects in life though these days where facts just dont seem to matter much.
