Korg AX10g review

[SuperSwede]

I got a Korg AX10G from my wife this christmas, so I guess a little review would be in order.

Well, here we go:


Korg AX10G Modeling Signal Processor.

In the beginning there was Pod... But the mighty Korg empire decided that it should cleanse the world of such evil and therefore produced its own modeling program: The Resonant structure and Electronic circuit Modeling System (or short : REMS).
Korg Corporation owns Marshall and VOX so you might recognize some of the models from the VOX ADxxVT series (or VOX Tonelab), there is one difference however (maybe even a big one) from those amps/effects and that is that the AX10G does not have any tubes…

The AX10G has 3 types of pre-effect,11 amp models, 11 modulation effects, 11 ambient effects and one noisegate:

- PRE FX(3):COMP, WAH/A.WAH, ACOUSTIC?

- AMP TYPE(11):EQ, BTQ CLN, BLK212, TWD410, AC15, AC30TB, UK'70S, UK'80S, UK MDN, RECTO, FUZZ?

- MODULATION(11):CHORUS, FLANGE, PHASER, TREM, ROTARY, FEEDBK, PITCH1, FILTER, U-VIBE, TALK, PITCH2?- AMBIENCE(11):SLAP, ECHO1, ECHO2, PP DLY, MULTI, AIR, ROOM, HALL, PLATE, SPRING?

- NR (Noise Reduction)


The front panel has a amp-like control set consisting of Gain,Treble,Middle,Bass and Volume knobs, and has a expression pedal (which can be assigned to any effect), up/down program switching and a tuner.
It is very ease to use, and there is no ”hidden” menus or functions.
All of the amps sound a little more bright and ”harsh” than their real life counterparts, but most of them can be tweaked into quite useful sounds, although a bit sterile. The amp models sound in most cases very similar to their real life counterparts but the recto (Well I haven´t tried a real Rectifier…) is useless, it has a nasty digital sound.
The Modulation effects are a mixed bag, the U-Vibe and Leslie are really good but the Chorus, Flanger and Phaser are to weak for my taste.
On the Ambience side I only liked the plate and spring reverbs, the delay section was a bit disappointing (perhaps mostly because I am not used to the tap tempo system, and has a hard time getting the delay times that I want).
The expression pedal works really good for steel guitar like stuff with the whammy, but the wha-wha has a bit too low sweep for my liking. It works great as a volume pedal too.

I included a clip of the Blackface 2x12 with only some plate reverb, everything is recorded on the same amp settings, and I only change the volume, tone and pickups on the guitar.

Equipment used: Squier Tele, Korg AX10G, Apple iMac w/ Garageband2
So enjoy (or be frightened), here is the Korg AX10G superswedish sound demo 1

[Tone2TheBone]

Hey SuperSwede, pretty cool stuff. I dug the jazzy middle part. Gonna steal those riffs when I get home.

I think it sounds great clean. It does have that blackface 2x12 speaker sound. I like the reverb too. Your wife did ya good.

[SuperSwede]

Steal all you want
The Korg grows on me all the time, when I first got it I thought it was rather bad (the presets are really really bad) but once I started to tweak it myself it became better and better.

[Spudman***]

Hey SuperSwede I have a question for you. At the end of the Korg demo that you posted is that your Tele on the neck pickup? It is the final two segments. Do you remember where your selecter switch was for each of the four pieces? I like the sounds and was just curious what pickup selection made the sounds.

[SuperSwede]

Spud, I dont recall exactly where the volume and tone pots were but selector was like this:

1st part: Bridge
2nd part: Middle
3rd part: Neck
4th part: Middle

I could be wrong, it was a while since I recorded it however...

[Tim]

Nice sound. I must learn how to get my AD30VT to sound that good.

[Robert****]

Hey, you play jazz? I heard "So What" in there! Cool stuff my fellow Svensk!

[SuperSwede]

Robert, I was studying "afro" in the Gymnasium (swedish form of school).
We played a lot of jazz in school, mostly metheny/scofield, but also Miles.

[Spudman***]

The Korg grows on me all the time, when I first got it I thought it was rather bad (the presets are really really bad) but once I started to tweak it myself it became better and better.

We haven't heard about this for some time now. Do you still have it and what are your thoughts?

[SuperSwede]

We haven't heard about this for some time now. Do you still have it and what are your thoughts?

Heh.. its long gone.. but its a really cool little unit, and I might go for another in the future. That little unit has the best sounding AC15 emulation that I´ve ever heard. Otherwise it sounds similar to the tonelab, but without the tube driven "valve reactor technology" it sounds a little more sterile and "solid state".