I think tweakability is the devil, and was my whole problem with the Axe FX II. I couldn't really get a high-gain tone I was super super happy with back in the day. Axe III? Basically since I've had it, none of the tweaks were that essential to me, and it worked just like a real world signal chain.
QC? Quite honestly, just for pure amp tones, I've not really come across any scenario where I wished for any of those deeper tweak parameters. The plugins are also similarly instant gratification.
This isn't true for Helix or Amplitube 5 (non-ToneX models) though. Sometimes I do load up one of their stock amps and think "this needs a high-cut in the input EQ, and it needs the bias dropping" type stuff. Helix gives you the two bias controls, which is good. Amplitube 5 doesn't give you anything really. But generally when I use that, I'm just using my ToneX captures for the amp now.
Fuck me for the delayed reply, but was off work and busy the last few days and hate replying from my phone.
THIS 100000%.
I have a few high gain presets on my FM9 that work really well, but I can't get that last 4 or 5% to perfection. Tried all the tweaks and found that moving the majority from the "default", either does nothing, or makes it worse.
For me it seems a lot of those tweaks just plain don't apply to the high gain tones I'm after. Of course other's mileage may vary, these things are always personal and down to the hearing of the individual.
Have had my QC for a couple days and already have more presets on it - that are probably 98% of perfect, without any tweaks attempted! I'm really happy with some of them, and I already know that when the Fortin Nameless preset is ported in the next update, I'm going to be stoked.
There's been a bit of a learning curve with the QC, but mostly it's been very intuitive. I think the biggest failing (other than how long it's taken them to get things added
that marketing has promised
) is a lack of scribble strips! Having to bend over and "slide up" to see what the footswitches are going to do is a bit of a pain, but no biggee. I'm getting used to it, and when I have two full banks of "flavors" of high gain, I'll memorize what's what, any who.
Touchscreen is awesome, no problems usability wise. Biggest "control" issue is changing modes (preset/scene/stomp) via dual press of two footswitches, you really have to be careful there. Good thing is that no missiles get launched towards Israel if you don't hit them in perfect synchronization.
Figured out the cloud stuff, downloads and creating my own presets. Super simple. Transpose block is working well to bring E Standard down to B Standard - seems to work as well (or nearly as?) the FM9 VC.
Was surprised about the lack of a global volume pedal assignment, have to add a "utility - volume" on each preset. Some of them were tricky to reorganize in that I added both that "utility" and a "transpose" to them.
Still lots to learn, but damn, the QC sounds fucking glorious!
