Had the ultra and now have the axe2-though I will be selling it and going back to the elevenrack. It used to be that I needed the axe for all the extra stuff-violin tones and wierdness, thought I was never really happy with those tones. Long story short-I grabbed a GR55 which kills on all the wierd stuff. Sax, keys, cello, violin, harmonica-and no single note limitation on the synth stuff. B3, geez the list goes on. Well over half our set I play something besides a guitar tone-on at least 3 songs I dont play any guitar. Sax, piano and flute on moondance for instance.

So the axe2 became amps only-I dont use much beyond a wah on a few songs, and a rotary on one or two. Maybe a well effected(chorus delay etc) clean tone here and there. So I press 5 buttons total on the MFC-all freaking night, 3 presets, boost, rotary(seether lead). Kind of a waste or a rockstar unit.

A lot of money sitting there-so I looked into the Blackstar ID series-but I wasn’t sold. Then I noticed that the 11R without protools was everywhere for under 4 bills. Crazy. I've paid more than that for overdrives. Then the lack of need to deal with protools at all-perfect. Two days after arrival, I have my all-access programed, 4 banks of tones ready to roll-and band practice tonight. I had one before, so the learning curve was shorter-though I did pick up some new info-like the FXloop as a boost thing. I gigged the 11R for a while year before last. Got a ton of complements, but I thought I was missing something - and got the Axe2 that November. I was also sick of fighting with protocols and being locked to the home computer to mess with patches.

Axe2 is the bomb. No doubt about it. What's the saying-once the drummer kicks in...but do I need it with the 50-60 tunes we gig? Nope. Heck, I’ve done it with a mini-rec and the GR55. And being able to buy 2 11Rs for the price of the MFC101…

Side by side-through the same power amp and speakers…I like my two day old presets better. Probably some honeymoon going on there. Don’t get me wrong, I have a great Jubilee patch on the Axe but I wouldn’t say the 11R patches suffer in comparison.

And the most important part-it looks cooler on top of my 2x12 orange cab! I seriously get a ton of complements on that stupid little cab, more than all other gear combined. And the all-access and gr55 are both blue, so my foot controller situation almost looks like I planned it. It’s also shorter than the axe and fits in my short rack case-which is a perfect match to that amazing little orange cab.

Had...a lot of modelers. HD500, Kemper(2), 11R, GSP1101, assorted other line6 stuff, tonelab, all the way back to a little zoom box that you stuck on your strap…going back to my Seattle days. Pretty sure if you work at it you can get a workable tone out of any other them. I’ll be working the eleven rack at this point.

Thanks to sangtall and benoni and the rest of the patch masters out there. Really too many to choose from. Reminds me of the tons of Kemper rigs I had-but at least you can just try these patches without a bunch of stick swapping and reboots. Sorry for the rambling.
Rock on!