Axe-FX (A Love Story?) Rd.1

There is a friggin DynaCab of my actual cab. (Friedman 412 v30/gb split) :satan


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Whizzinby said:
Its truly some of the best delays and reverbs I’ve ever used. And I haven’t even started tweaking any of them, beyond setting the mix level.

Tomorrow I’ll try to get past a basic clean patch. :ROFLMAO:
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That was one of the first shocks I got when I started playing again and went Helix (didn't want AX8 and FM3/FM9 didn't exist yet).

The tones are there in Helix but I had to adjust slightly from what I was used to back in the early Fractal Standard and Ultra Days. Delays were good, but the verbs were a bit underwhelming until around 3.2.

The FAS default ducked delay for solos is the sound I always heard in my head for that purpose (Yeah 80's), but there are many others I liked as well.

And the selection of reverbs are deep - but simple defaults are fantastic.

I've almost purchased a FM3 several times, not to replace the Helix - just to have more options to get lost in and provide another excuse for not writing/recording anything. :ROFLMAO:
 
Frodebro said:
Fender is a legacy brand, and that's what their customer base wants from them. The Tonemaster amps were not exactly embraced by the diehard "only Fender tube amps are good enough" crowd, the TMP is reaching beyond their traditional customer base. Anybody that researches the TMP in consideration of making a $1700 purchase is going to find out really quick about what else is out there for the same money.
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True, if they research online before buying then they'll hear about FAS products. How many people will actually do that though?
 
OrganicZed said:
True, if they research online before buying then they'll hear about FAS products. How many people will actually do that though?
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Even if they do, if they end up on Fractal's product pages they might be put off by them.

They don't do a good job at highlighting the things that Fractal does best, but instead start from things like "look how much more powerful this is vs previous gen" or "it has a color display!" or "nine footswitches" or "10% more power than the previous FM3". All these are marketing to people on the Fractal train already, instead of the people you need to convince that it's better than the products that look more modern and advanced at a glance.

On top of that, Fractal largely relies on word of mouth whereas NeuralDSP creeps into your social media ads. I see questions like "Should I buy a Quad Cortex?" occasionally on e.g Reddit where the userbase is younger and often less experienced.

Plus being able to go to a well stocked guitar store and try a Fender Tone Master Pro through a Fender FR cab is going to be big for getting people onboard. I get you can order online, try it out and return if you don't like it but that's still a good bit of work.

Actually my first encounter with the Line6 Helix was exactly this. I was going to buy something from a local guitar store and they had a Line6 Helix Floor + some "FRFR" speaker setup and I got to mess with the user interface a bit and that's actually the thing that made me interested in it.

I had an Axe-Fx 2 at the time and Line6 to my mind was "that company that releases a new modeler every year, abandons the previous one and even the new thing is still shit compared to Fractal."

Availability is generally a big issue for Fractal where the model you want might not be available at the time you want to buy it but multiple stores might have a Helix, QC or TMP. I bought a used Axe-Fx 3 instead of waiting for the FM9 to release in Europe. Even as I type this, G66 is sold out on FM3 Turbo.
 
The FM3 is a killer package
If Cliff is successful with porting the gapless preset , channel and scene switching into that unit it will be a game changer IMO

I would almost consider selling off my FM9 to save the space
Bacially if both FM series end up gapless your biggest differences will be the # of switches
 
GTR37 said:
The FM3 is a killer package
If Cliff is successful with porting the gapless preset , channel and scene switching into that unit it will be a game changer IMO

I would almost consider selling off my FM9 to save the space
Bacially if both FM series end up gapless your biggest differences will be the # of switches
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Well there's still the amount of stuff in a single preset, but I do agree. If it's gapless you can just build your kitchen sink do-it-all into multiple presets.

Support for global blocks on the FM3/9 would be the final nail as it would let you e.g keep your single amp setting across presets. Even if you tweaked it in preset A, those changes would carry over to presets B, C and D.
 
laxu said:
Even if they do, if they end up on Fractal's product pages they might be put off by them.

They don't do a good job at highlighting the things that Fractal does best, but instead start from things like "look how much more powerful this is vs previous gen" or "it has a color display!" or "nine footswitches" or "10% more power than the previous FM3". All these are marketing to people on the Fractal train already, instead of the people you need to convince that it's better than the products that look more modern and advanced at a glance.

On top of that, Fractal largely relies on word of mouth whereas NeuralDSP creeps into your social media ads. I see questions like "Should I buy a Quad Cortex?" occasionally on e.g Reddit where the userbase is younger and often less experienced.

Plus being able to go to a well stocked guitar store and try a Fender Tone Master Pro through a Fender FR cab is going to be big for getting people onboard. I get you can order online, try it out and return if you don't like it but that's still a good bit of work.

Actually my first encounter with the Line6 Helix was exactly this. I was going to buy something from a local guitar store and they had a Line6 Helix Floor + some "FRFR" speaker setup and I got to mess with the user interface a bit and that's actually the thing that made me interested in it.

I had an Axe-Fx 2 at the time and Line6 to my mind was "that company that releases a new modeler every year, abandons the previous one and even the new thing is still shit compared to Fractal."

Availability is generally a big issue for Fractal where the model you want might not be available at the time you want to buy it but multiple stores might have a Helix, QC or TMP. I bought a used Axe-Fx 3 instead of waiting for the FM9 to release in Europe. Even as I type this, G66 is sold out on FM3 Turbo.
Click to expand...
Don't you ever get tired of pointing out everything Fractal could be doing better? Maybe not so much in this post, but still... smh

Maybe, just maybe, Cliff & Co. are quite content with how things are, and want to keep it that way. I know people who don't want extra business. They're able to manage the volume they have, while continuing to do what they love, which to me, looks like Cliff mostly enjoys tweaking his code to constantly improve the sounds.
 
TSJMajesty said:
Don't you ever get tired of pointing out everything Fractal could be doing better? Maybe not so much in this post, but still... smh

Maybe, just maybe, Cliff & Co. are quite content with how things are, and want to keep it that way. I know people who don't want extra business. They're able to manage the volume they have, while continuing to do what they love, which to me, looks like Cliff mostly enjoys tweaking his code to constantly improve the sounds.
Click to expand...
Ask him how he feels about Macs. :rofl
 
TSJMajesty said:
Don't you ever get tired of pointing out everything Fractal could be doing better? Maybe not so much in this post, but still... smh

Maybe, just maybe, Cliff & Co. are quite content with how things are, and want to keep it that way. I know people who don't want extra business. They're able to manage the volume they have, while continuing to do what they love, which to me, looks like Cliff mostly enjoys tweaking his code to constantly improve the sounds.
Click to expand...
It comes from a place of love, really. Fractal does a lot of things great, but they have room for improvement. I wish nothing but more success for them because that means even better devices for me as an end user.

I get that making more hardware devices to fill demand is challenging for a small company. If their scale allows them to pay their staff fair wages and run a business the way they like, then that's great too! There's many companies who have grown and then lost their way when e.g shareholders become more important than their own employees and clients.

The main point was trying to explain why people might gravitate towards QC or TMP even if they become aware of Fractal by reading forums or seeing YT videos. Improving marketing content certainly isn't difficult.
 
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