The day it all changed for me.

[la szum]

Yeah man!

Speaking of which, that reminds me..., I seem to recall @la szum getting one of those, but I haven't heard back from him on how it compares to stereo delays in the Fractal.

I would imagine, pretty much have no doubt, you can do, and sound, the same with all the various types of delays and routing options in one of the FAS units, but, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if setting it up is much easier/quicker in the Boss EVH unit.

But I'd still be curious to hear from someone who has both, and has a good enough understanding of how to get the same type of delays going in the Fractal, that I'd imagine are factory presets in the EVH, how they compare.

(Or maybe after hearing the EVH running in true W/D/W into 3 amps/cabs, you wouldn't even bother wasting your time...? )

I don't have an Axe-FX, so I don't have the routing options and dual amp capability
to do an honest comparison, Tom.

The SDE-3000 is on a dedicated pedalboard, and then feeding a Bogner on one side
and a Mesa on the other. Haven't even tried W/D/W with it yet.

 

[TSJMajesty]

I don't have an Axe-FX, so I don't have the routing options and dual amp capability
to do an honest comparison, Tom.

The SDE-3000 is on a dedicated pedalboard, and then feeding a Bogner on one side
and a Mesa on the other. Haven't even tried W/D/W with it yet.

Oh, that's right. My bad.

 

[ragingplatypi]

I mean, if I'm honest...the first time I visited the not-GC-store (what was that other big box music store than and a boom-bust of a couple years in the early 00s?) and plugged into a Flextone and Yamaha DG whatever? They both sounded great, even at low volumes.

Mars Music?

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Mars Music?

Yes!

 

[Cactusprick]

First two AXE FX2 units didn't do it for me, bought & sold Kemper and others number of times and finally, FM3 has broken the endless cycle for me. suppose your ear and preference changes over time too.

 

[KingsXJJ]

Mars Music -Austin off I-35

Bought a purple Yamaha Ty Tabor signature guitar there on clearance. What a great guitar… I should have bought several.

Neat store.

 

[Frodebro]

It was the Scholz Rockman for me. 1987, senior in high school, and here was a box that let me play though headphones and sounded pretty decent (actually, at that time it sounded fucking great). The result was that I could play for hours a day without pissing off my parents, so that was also a period of serious growth as a player.

Turning point #2 would have been getting my GSP-21 Legend in 1994 (still have it, and it still worked the last time I fired it up). That pretty much sent me down the digital path.

 

[KingsXJJ]

It was the Scholz Rockman for me. 1987, senior in high school, and here was a box that let me play though headphones and sounded pretty decent (actually, at that time it sounded fucking great). The result was that I could play for hours a day without pissing off my parents, so that was also a period of serious growth as a player.

Turning point #2 would have been getting my GSP-21 Legend in 1994 (still have it, and it still worked the last time I fired it up). That pretty much sent me down the digital path.

 

[la szum]

It was the Scholz Rockman for me. 1987, senior in high school, and here was a box that let me play though headphones and sounded pretty decent (actually, at that time it sounded fucking great). The result was that I could play for hours a day without pissing off my parents, so that was also a period of serious growth as a player.

Turning point #2 would have been getting my GSP-21 Legend in 1994 (still have it, and it still worked the last time I fired it up). That pretty much sent me down the digital path.

Wow. Very similar. I think it was an X-100.

The downside was that little shit ate batteries like a Mutha!

 

[EOengineer]

It was the Scholz Rockman for me. 1987, senior in high school, and here was a box that let me play though headphones and sounded pretty decent (actually, at that time it sounded fucking great). The result was that I could play for hours a day without pissing off my parents, so that was also a period of serious growth as a player.

I was also using a Rockman, but this was the mid 90s. A friend let me borrow it and the ability to play through headphones was exactly what I needed at the time - being a teenager who was…well…still learning. I’d actually worked out a way to run my crate head directly into the Rockman, which sounded pretty cool with their chorus slathered on. Still amazed I didn’t blow anything up.

Anyway - I bought the OG red bean in 1998, read the manual a trillion times, turned knobs, listened, learned. Speaking for myself only, the POD wasn’t just a sound device…it was a museum I could step into and explore, learn, and grow my understanding of gear and the role it has played in shaping the music I love.

I’m very thankful for the role modeling played in my growth as an eventual audio production enthusiast. Even though I have my own little tiny museum of amps and pedals, I still look forward to stepping into higher fidelity renderings of that old tone museum each time a new generation of modeling hits the masses.

 

[molul]

My turning point was pretty recent. I had a Boss GT8+Fender hot rod deluxe amp+EHX Big Muff op-amp, then I switched the GT-8 to a Helix LT, still keeping the fender amp, then I bought Helix Native and started messing with the amp simulation.

In some update, there were a couple of presets by Jeff Schroeder with the Revv Gen Red amp, and I loved its sound. Sold the amp, got a Headrush fr108, and I didn't miss a thing since then.

So far I've only used three amps from the Helix for rehearsals, but at home I like overdubbing with some other amps like the litigator or the elektrik.

To me, it's been more an optimization than "a sound I was chasing for". I could get rid of the last pedal I was using and had my amp weight from 20 to 8kg. I also won so many amp options, although I'm not actually using them for now.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Didn't happen on a single day for me, more sort of gradually, but ending up with 100% fullrange setups is still kind of a revelation for me.
I can use the same sound at home, during rehearsals and on gigs, regardless whether it's IEM or wedges. I can as well take my core sound with me in a backpack, the larger pedalboard still fits onto a trolley and I can go by train if I want. No need to ask for rental amps either, there's fullrange monitoring available everywhere by now (I usually still ask for a dedicated active wedge outside of the stock house monitoring as I like some physical separation for my guitar stuff). Add to this I haven't even once been told to turn my amp down ever since I switched - more to the opposite. People hiring me always seem to be happy because of my sound fitting well and never getting in the way. Not that it had been an issue in the old days, but I'm defenitely getting more compliments today.
For me, all this is as fantastic as it gets and I will defenitely never return to oldfashioned amplification ever again, at least not as a regular thing.

 

[FuzzyAce]

I'm kinda new to accepting the whole 'modeler as a rig' thing. On stage I always used a tube amp and pedals, but there was a time when I used a Roland BC60/310 Blues Cube too. That was a solid state amp though meant to model a tube amp. It sounded pretty darn good. That was as close as I came to playing a modeler. Years later a bandmate/2nd guitarist used some old Boss digital multi-effects/modeler floor unit. It had some good tones but overall I never really accepted it as a great device and thought it sounded too thin and shrill for the most part. Other than some plugin sims like Sansamp and the occasional studio session with my buddy's POD, I pretty much just ignored any hardware modelers that were coming out over the years.
Fast forward to last year -- I finally bought a Helix Stomp XL, and HX Native. I guess the timing was right for me because it changed everything. I'm playing (not gigging currently), writing and recording more frequently. The tone and feel is great and could see using a modeler setup for gigging. When that day comes that'll more than likely happen or at the very least it'll be some sort of tube amp + modeler hybrid setup.

 

[2dor]

I recall it very vividly. I had my new AxeFx III, some years ago, likely on FW 17 or so. I was scrolling through the presets and happened upon JCM 800 #34. I was stunned and thought Jesus Christ! That sound was something I had searched for over years. And here it was… being delivered over studio monitors no less.

My whole opinion on of modelers changed in that moment! Any similar moments for you guys? Fractal or not…

Well maybe not modelers but really digital modeling as a whole: the moment I played the Neural DSP Fortin Nameless suite.
I then went and got a Fractal FM3, Quad Cortex, sold them and exploring other digital stuff atm.
Playing through the Nameless was something I was having a blast with & couldn't believe something inside my PC could sound & feel like a real amp.

 

[kartikg3]

Well for me it's quite different than a lot of folks here, I am guessing. Where I lived and played when I started playing the guitar (India, early 2000s), digital modellers were actually more common and widespread than traditional tube amps. I actually began my electric guitar journey with a solid state amp + distortion pedals, moved on shortly to "processors" and that completely blew my mind. Pedals and tube amps and cabs were quite expensive for a lot of folks. Distortion (via pedal effects and/or amp models) , chorus, reverb and delay (and wierd pitch effects and wah) from the same little box at the fraction of the price?! Wow count me in!

Eventually jumped onto the analog gear bandwagon for quite a while, saw how much of a difference it made, swore never to use digital. Also at the same time, I noticed how much lesser recording and writing I actually did. I produced way less music than I did when I was using cheap digital gear. Tasted new age digital again with POD Go, and it blew my mind how far digital had gotten during my digital hiatus. Sold all my analog gear over a period of 2 years, all the while A/B-ing. All my gear has now been compacted to a little HX-Stomp centered-pedalboard, all digital, and I have never looked back since.

 

[TubeStack]

I'd say when I bought an FM3, back in 2021? I played the first Bassman preset through a PA cabinet and was blown away at the sound and feel. Have since had a blast experimenting with Fractal, Line 6, Kemper, and NDSP in both "FRFR" and power amp + cab setups.

The missing piece, for me, is getting it to sound as good (and be as much fun) in a live rock band where the amp/monitor system needs to provide most of the guitar sound. Still prefer a big tube head and cab + digital for effects-only, in that situation.

Closest I've gotten has been with a Matrix GT1000FX in 1000W mode + a Quad Cortex with a capture of my amp + a real Mesa 4x12 or 2x12. Sounded pretty damn good. I may still gig with that setup, although it would now be with a Helix Floor and its Mark IV or Bogner Shiva model.

 

[dk_ace]

Hard to say where it started for me, but one of the things that really stands out is when I was struggling to get a FOH tone that I felt really captured what my amp sounded like. I had access to a venue where I could isolate the cab in another room, tried various mic positions and EQ things. Wasn’t really happy with anything I had done all afternoon, plugged in a sans amp just as an experiment to see if the FOH PA was the issue, immediately had a sound that was better than anything I had accomplished with the real mic and cab all day.

Follow that experience years later with more venues and bands wanting quieter stages or silent stages, and the hassle of lugging cabs, load boxes, speaker sims, etc with long cable runs to get everything off stage, and how relatively easy it could be to get a great sound off a modeling unit once the axe-fx came out, and I was done with lugging amps around.

D

 

[Jarick]

For me it's a two parter.

First part is realizing digital was going to have to be a path for me. In college living in an apartment I had a Pod XT because of course I couldn't have my big tube amp turned up. I didn't love the Pod but it was workable and was cool to be able to get different sounds out of a little device with just headphones.

Second part is when digital sounded good. I think that's Scuffham S-Gear around 2012 or so...when impulse responses were getting more popular and amp modeling started to really sound and feel good. A few years later I got a used Eleven Rack and it was awesome. Then a Fractal AX8 and went from there.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Fwiw, I had it kinda "easy" to switch from amps/cabs to modeling. Or rather: As I was pretty much forced to, I had no choice.

I was asked to play a theatre musical as the guy doing it previously moved towns. Great opportunity. So I showed up at the first rehearsal with my Fender Super 112 (the red knob monsters became quite decent pedal platforms once you flipped the speakers) and pedalboard. 5 minutes later the sound guy was staring at me.
"What's that?"
"A guitar amp!"
"No amps, silent stage!"
I was really WTF-ing quite a bit because back in the days the best thing to own was a POD XT (which the previous guitarist had) or a GT-5 (which I owned). Still sorta decent devices for certain things but really no fun for live playing through IEMs.

Anyhow, it's what I had to use, so that's how it started. And it's also why I said it was "easy", because, well, it only could get better. And it fortunately did.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Have folks gone back and tried or listened to older gen modeling now that they've been "converted"?

The odd thing for me is that the better the really good stuff gets, the more acceptable I find the stuff that has obvious short-comings. Still hear the short-comings, but also recognize how small they are in the grand scheme of things. Fractal stuff is still my favorite, but I'd be more than happy to play live with a POD XT or Zoom MS-50 as long as I had an hour or so to get a patch sorted; and more than happy to use them for recording with cab disabled running into IRs.