FRACTAL AUDIO Teases……Something. Maybe a Floor Axe-Fx?

Probably a floor AxeFx. If this photo is any indication (and it’s all we’re going on) then it’s something like that.

Fractal’s founder Cliff Chase left the picture on the Fractal forum with the cryptic message “I will not be answering any questions at this time. I’ll let you all speculate wildly and occasionally I’ll come in here for a chuckle.”

Well, get ready to chuckle, Cliff, because here’s my wild speculation –

Back in June of last year, Fractal was teasing something that looked awfully similar to the above photo – the FX8. Then in October, they opened the waitlist for the FX8, and since then we’ve all be holding our breath (actually I kind of forgot about it tbh).

And now this. A picture of something called the AX8, that looks like the FX8 but that clearly says on it Amp Modeler and Multi FX. So here’s my speculation: Fractal got close to finishing the development of the FX8, realized that for what they would have to charge for it, most people would just wait and get the full monty, and also that it wouldn’t cost them much more to load their amp modeling software onto it and tweak the I/O a bit. And thus was born the AX8?

The Fractal dudes are geniuses, and stuffing the Axe into a floorboard is not beyond their skills I’m sure, and actually, I’m a bit surprised they haven’t done it already. I imagine they were losing sales to touring artists who would rather get a Line 6 Pod HD 500X, which doesn’t sound quite as good, but has everything you need in a floorboard.

So here’s hoping that I’m right, and this is what I think it is, and that it rules as hard as I imagine.