The Edge ditched his tube amps for residency

About time. He's a far, far more textual guitarist than a guy with a singular trademark sound and has to reproduce a ton of different sounds to cover their discography. He was using some Line 6 rack units way back and Axe-FX's since then, really surprised he didn't shift to full blown modeling years ago.
 
Huh, you'd think that if it's a residency they'd leave a set of amps there for less fuss but I guess leaving pedals there is a thing, too.
 
Blix said:
The II is long gone, there's 4 Axe-FX III's in his current rack.
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@laxu I was wrong, this appears to be 4 II's, not III's :)

1699591832059.jpeg
 
Blix said:
@laxu I was wrong, this appears to be 4 II's, not III's :)

View attachment 13513
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Yeah I think then going for UA makes more sense. I don't believe UA is better than what current gen Fractal can do, but they most likely do have an Edge (pun intended) over the 2nd gen Axe-Fx.

Axe-Fx 2 fx are certainly no slouch for effects so if they have already invested in four of them, swapping for Axe-Fx 3 would cost a good bit of money over buying a few pedal amp/cab sims. Especially when the UA pedals pretty closely line up to what he was using for real amps - Vox and Fender tweed combos afaik.
 
laxu said:
Yeah I think then going for UA makes more sense. I don't believe UA is better than what current gen Fractal can do, but they most likely do have an Edge (pun intended) over the 2nd gen Axe-Fx.

Axe-Fx 2 fx are certainly no slouch for effects so if they have already invested in four of them, swapping for Axe-Fx 3 would cost a good bit of money over buying a few pedal amp/cab sims. Especially when the UA pedals pretty closely line up to what he was using for real amps - Vox and Fender tweed combos afaik.
Click to expand...

I'd be really interested to hear a current gen Fractal AC30 vs Ruby comparison. There are plenty of Helix vs Ruby and Iridium vs Ruby comparisons, but I haven't seen that one.

I've actually been playing around a lot with the AC30 (and AC15) in the Helix, and while I like a lot of the sounds I'm getting, I can never quite nail the classic driven-yet-chime-y Vox sound without getting into way-too-bright territory or going the other way and losing definition... but this might just be me still getting a handle on getting a good Vox tone in general (this is literally my first direct experience with anything Vox-y!). Anyway, back when it was new (and before I had the HX Stomp), I had thought about getting a Ruby and had watched a lot of demo videos, and they all made it look so easy, so part of me is still sort of interested.
 
synthpenguin said:
I'd be really interested to hear a current gen Fractal AC30 vs Ruby comparison. There are plenty of Helix vs Ruby and Iridium vs Ruby comparisons, but I haven't seen that one.
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Yeah I haven't seen one either. I'm almost tempted to buy the UA Lion just to debunk some of the "so much better than Fractal" notions that are flying around on The Other Place. Fractal themselves have already said in charts&graphs the UA pedals have much higher aliasing. UA also have a bit higher latency than a fullblown Axe-Fx 3 and then there's of course all the feature stupidity on UA.

synthpenguin said:
I've actually been playing around a lot with the AC30 (and AC15) in the Helix, and while I like a lot of the sounds I'm getting, I can never quite nail the classic driven-yet-chime-y Vox sound without getting into way-too-bright territory or going the other way and losing definition... but this might just be me still getting a handle on getting a good Vox tone in general (this is literally my first direct experience with anything Vox-y!). Anyway, back when it was new (and before I had the HX Stomp), I had thought about getting a Ruby and had watched a lot of demo videos, and they all made it look so easy, so part of me is still sort of interested.
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While UA's amp modeling is good, to me the thing they truly did well is their cab sims. They sound very nice.

Now, I am still confident they are just IRs + speaker drive etc processing under the hood and not some new paradigm or UA would have patented the shit out of it. Their marketing is mysterious for this, with some videos with UA reps claiming they are not IRs but those might be marketing people misunderstanding the product. So far no evidence has been presented that they are anything but close mic + room mic IRs + speaker drive processing.

I expect the main things people like are that the close mic + room mic combos sound good. While e.g the Strymon Iridium also offers a room reverb mixing convolution and algorithmic reverb, it's not necessarily the same thing as room mic IRs from a prestigious studio.
 
I am happy to be corrected ... but ever since he has had an Axe FX ... and on all major U2 Tours of the last 10+ Years, he has never used the Axe FX "amps" .... only efx running into his Vox's + Fenders and other stuff.

He is now using the UAD stuff and even though they are not Midi .... his Tech could easily have put together a looper board and midi-control what's in line at any given moment.

Interestingly .... the article carefully states " ... some Fractal Axe-Fx units handling additional amp emulation and FX. " ..... " amp emulation is very vague and could mean almost anything .... some drive pedals .... some pre-amp boosts .... some power amp modeling .... IR Loading etc.......

His tech could very easily have set up just 1 x Axe FX for everything [with 1 x Axe FX for redundancy ] but has clearly decided not to ... and rather use the UAD stuff for [probably] all the "amp" stuff ..... he is at least as happy sonically with the UAD Pedals as he is with his real Amps ..... the fact that he has chosen the UAD stuff instead of the Axe to "duplicate his real amps" is very interesting.

Ben
 
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JiveTurkey said:
I remember that time I liked U2 when they were actually good 40 years ago :unsure:
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I really like U2 and admire their comradery greatly .... but they arent a band anymore ... they are a multi-national conglomerate ..... with a lot of people making a very good living off ensuring they keep touring and releasing music ...... good or bad.

The upshot is that they are inevitably surrounded by "always yes" people.

What they need is a couple of really good friends "outside the bubble" to tell them ..... hey lads, most [ a few good songs here and there ] of your recorded output of the last 15 - 20 year's has been shitful ... and would never have seen the light of day if it didnt have the "brand" U2 on it.

No-one in the bubble will ever say this to them ...... for self-evident reasons.

Just my 2c.

Ben
 
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