ELEVEN YEARS AFTER

 
HISTORICAL BEGINNING
Once again, just like every year J: Eleven years ago today the first POD landed in Europe. Exactly on 24th December 1998, on a very cold and snowy Christmas Eve the first four PODs found their way via Fedex to Frankfurt airport and into my eager hands. As the LINE6 distributor for the German-speaking countries between 1996 till 2000 I then had a problem: "HOW DO YOU TURN UP ON THE DOORSTEP OF THE EDITOR IN CHIEF OF EUROPE’S MOST IMPORTANT MUSIC MAGAZINE, GITARRE & BASS, ON CHRISTMAS EVE AND GIVE HIM A NEW PRODUCT TO TEST WITHOUT SEEMING INTRUSIVE?"

AN ANGEL ON TOUR
I had a quick look through the house for some suitable clothes and decided on an angel costume complete with wings and a blond curly wig. The kind of outfit every modern man needs. At exactly 5pm I rang Dieter Roesberg’s doorbell and with a mischievous grin handed him Europe’s first POD. Not wanting to waste a good opportunity I also paid an angelic visit to Michael Sauer, head of the Music Store in Cologne and then Hans Thomann, head of what is now the world’s biggest music equipment store and presented them with PODs two and three. Makeshift advertising, you could say, with a total cost of €28 for petrol plus a slight cold.

Getting snowed in and having to spend Christmas Eve in Bamberg wasn’t part of the plan, but even cost-effective marketing has its price!
                 
GERMANY NUMMER 1 WORLDWIDE
The results are well known. One month later the POD graced the front page of G&B and the test report inside went a long way to making Germany the world’s number-one POD country. Not even the USA could keep up. Musik Thomann and Music Store were constantly competing in the "who can sell more PODs" stakes.

ELEVEN YEARS AFTER
The route that LINE6 took back then has proved to be the right one and what they started has now been taken into a whole new dimension by Cliff Chase of Fractal Audio. And this quantum leap was made by one man alone! It’s now widely accepted that Fractal Audio devices are in a completely different league to the rest of the modelling world.

HISTORICAL WATERSHED
Today we can justifiably say that Cliff Chase has taken the concept of digital modelling and developed it to perfection. With the Axe-Fx and ULTRA we have reached a historical watershed, where a complex computer provides real and authentic tube playing feel and, although it may seem absurd, outperforms the top-class originals that were the inspiration for it.

FULL CIRCLE
And so we have come full circle. One year ago the ULTRA was the subject of a detailed test in the January issue of Gitarre & Bass and the significance of this historical development was not lost on its reviewers. The current issue of 'tools 4 music' also contains an elaborate and highly interesting comparison test of the Axe-Fx versus high-class originals, a test which we can thoroughly recommend reading.

MERRY CHRISTMAS
I wish everyone a wonderful Christmas and would personally like to thank all our visitors and of course the many Axe-Fx and Ultra users out there in G66 Land, whose extremely positive feedback we’ve gladly been receiving all year. 
 
In this spirit, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,
jacques isler