It's not being marketed as the next step in digital gear though.
Most Axe-FX users, and to some degree, the Fractal website itself claims that the Axe-FX purportedly comes extremely close to replicating the tones from the actual analog gear.
It doesn't matter how it is being marketed. What matters is what is actually true, and what it is actually capable of. I make a point of not putting too much stock in anything that isn't in the manual. The user-base is slightly different though, as that is real world usage. If the users say it does X and X, it must do X and X to some degree.
There has to be a limit to how far this can go. If we can get a piece of gear that gives us the exact tone a variety of amps and cabs gives us, why would we ever get the real deal?
There will always be a limit to anything. You cant easily change tonestacks in a real amp. You can't easily convert it to use different types of tubes, etc...
These are two things that the Axe-FX does well.
What I'm saying is, people are taking the Axe-FX to be the holy grail of simulation (ie. cannot be beaten) and you have artists and users chiming in on this 'It simply can't get any better than this!' - and this is a major sales point for the Axe-FX, but the thing is the same thing was said about the POD and Boss' COSM technology only a few years ago which are now lost in the sands of time and locked out of memory.
I don't know if those things were ever said about COSM, but even if they were.. so what? You're not making any sort of point there. People say things that later on prove to be no longer true if enough time passes.
I'm just wondering whether the inevitable will happen eventually, and people will realize the Axe-FX was overpriced and opportunistic. I'm guessing this will happen when Line 6 releases a similar product, which I can sense coming very very soon - with higher and easier functionality and a vastly lower price tag (I'd estimate it at being $700-800).
See now you're trying to apply objectivity to a subjective field. It is YOUR opinion that the Axe-FX is over-priced. But in MY opinion it isn't. The Recto Red channel and the Bogner Uberschall were the two models that blew my mind. Those two models are certainly worth the price alone.
But that's ignoring the rest of the models, all the effects, the modulation possibilities.
If you're the kind of guitarist who is plug and play... the Axe-FX wont be for you. But if you really love being a tone geek... then it will change how you think about guitar sounds.
To say the Axe-FX is a fad is to do guitar processing in general a great dis-service.
That's just my opinion.
