You know, I am in the process of potentially offloading my AX8, I just got the G5n and I am impressed. The gain tones I feel are easy to get for me. Where I may need some help is in getting the clean tones. Any pointers?
The biggest issue for me, was gain staging. Clean tones don't sound great, and aren't very usable, if they're half the volume of the higher-gain models. My fix was to figure out the best balance between turning the output volume down on the amp models, vs turning down the overall patch volume in the top display window. My 100 watt 4x12 stacks are all turned down to between 35 and 50 percent in the master patch level, and the master volume on those amps is also turned down to 50% as well. It's a painstaking process, but once it's done, then your small, clean amps (Deluxe Reverb, for instance) will on par with the big boys, and you can concentrate on finding the right tone settings, cabs, etc. I also find that I don't have a lot of use for the mic models on the cabs.