To be honest, I used to have an Axe Fx Ultra and was not impressed whatsoever with the sounds I got and I sat there for days trying to dial a good tone, with the Pod HD 500 X to me it sounds pretty damn good right off the bat and with a little bit of tweeking it sounds awesome, I recently had a chance of playing with the Kemper and to me it blew away the axe fx. so I would go with Kemper and pod hd500x any day before an axe fx.