^^ Yep .... no argument there ... always happy to point out their "full of sh$tness" :)
I had a bit of rage with them to , hell I owned the product , I was one of those guys that was on the first run got it 2 weeks after launch.
I think there was like 2 or 3 delays 2 verbs , its was very sparse compared to the stuff in there now and the stuff that was promised that disappeared at the 11th hour
But as bad as their marketing talk is , they Shipped My QC Air from Finland in 2 days, charged no extra and actually pre paid all the duties and taxes, so I cannot at all complain about their actual service , the Packaging as well was incredibly done , I know it the little details but it was not a plain cardboard box by any stretch much more like Apple.
The tones I got back then were good, I had it sitting right beside a Fractal FM3 ( this was prior Cygnusx2 or whatever) I compared them and I will go on record saying to my ears and fingers at the time the Freidman HBE in particular , sounded better and felt better to play than the FM3 model, the SLO /Recto /VH4 were subpar but that Freidman HBE still haunts me , The Neural had a bounce in the low end but was still super tight and on the top end leads just sang and if was easy to get it to go into natural harmonic feedback,
in fact that was the very first thing I noticed in the pre release video it was in the Tom Quayle video , he was effortlessly getting it to feedback naturally playing at whisper volumes
Fast fwd to now , the Axe has come a long way in 3 years and I can easily get that harmonic stuff , I also like the effects .
But as much as Neural has said some dumb thing , the Core sounds are actually
- really good
- inspiring fun to play
- and it overall fun and easy to use
So at this point I don't want the big unit but if the rumoured mini comes our this year , I would definitely buy one and give it another chance because although the pre order was a bit of a shitshow my experience with the sounds was pretty good .
Also I don't have to like Doug , he is not coming over for drinks and dinner , we don't have to be friends for me to like his product .
If it works it works and I certainly would not boycott a product I enjoy because some of the company behave like buffoons