The Award-Winning Axe-Fx III Just Got Even Better!

The new Axe-Fx III Mark II is the latest in a line of legends—the world’s most powerful all-in-one processor for guitar, bass, and other instruments. Featuring our latest amp modeling technology, thousands of UltraRes™ speaker cab simulations, and industry-leading effects, the Axe-Fx III has more raw power and features than any guitar processor ever created. In comparison to the original, the Mark II features the following upgrades:

  New Turbo DSP option provides a 25% higher clock speed allowing for more complex presets.
• New IPS Display offers improved contrast and viewing angles, plus more vivid colors.
• Adjustable RGB LEDs let you set the color and brightness of the front panel logo.
• Double the preset memory = space for 1024 presets.
• Increased flash memory for future updates.

Unprecedented Power

The original Axe-Fx upended the industry by being the first device for musicians to put a military/industrial-grade DSP into a consumer product. Leveraging the power of this DSP allowed detail and realism that no other product had previously achieved. The Axe-Fx II expanded on this concept by putting two of those same DSPs to work. Continuing the legacy of this philosophy the Axe-Fx III harnesses the power of no fewer than four separate processors.

Two 1.0 GHz, floating-point “Keystone” Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) comprise the main audio engine. These processors are the most powerful DSPs available delivering over twice the performance of the DSPs used in our previous generation products. To feed these advanced processors we coupled 4Gb of blazing fast PC1600 DDR3 memory, hundreds of Mb of FLASH memory, a proprietary FPGA and a rich set of peripherals.

The stunning color display is controlled by a dedicated graphics processor while USB traffic and user interface tasks are handled by a 500 MHz, 16-core microcontroller providing smooth operation and robust USB performance.

Dynamic Color Display

Controlling all this power requires an interface to match. A large 800×480 color display features 30 times the resolution of our previous model. Custom designed to provide more brightness and contrast than “off-the-shelf” displays, this new display is optimized for readability in the most difficult conditions.

Driving the display is a dedicated graphics accelerator delivering dynamic, animated displays. Unlike the mostly static displays in other products, the displays in the Axe-Fx III feature moving knobs, meters, graphs and other dynamic content giving the user valuable visual feedback at a glance.

Placement of the knobs below the display gives direct access to five on-screen parameters at once, plus five “push” functions at the same time. Dialing in sounds has never been faster or easier.

 

I/O Monitoring

A front panel LED meter bridge provides instant visual status for the inputs and outputs. The effects layout grid also features an intuitive “Meters” display which shows the input and output levels of each effect block at a glance. Additionally a dedicated Meters menu shows all analog and USB I/O levels for quick and easy troubleshooting of connection mistakes.

1+2: Output 13+4: Output 25+6: Input 1 (DI for reamping)7+8: Input 2 (for general use)

USB Out (from computer to Axe-Fx III)

1+2: Routed to physical Output 1 L+R

3+4: Routed to physical Output 2 L+R

5+6: Routed to the Grid via INPUT 1 block when its source is set to USB

7+8: Routed to the Grid via the dedicated INPUT USB block