Thanks! That guy could make anything sound good, but this was among the best at showing musical tones from the HX. Some of the videos didn’t sound that great, but that happens when you apply three channel master volume thinking to a single channel non-master amp. Same family, different sister.
Interesting point.
I don't disagree with you, but I'll throw in another consideration:
The HX and HXDA style amps are very revealing of the individual player's tone and guitar, as well as amp setup preferences. You're going to hear more differences between guitars and players. You're going to like some a lot, and others less.
It's easily explained.
Many (if not most) modern amps have multiple gain stages, each one of which drives the preamp tubes into clipping. That's great for high gain stuff, however, the price paid is loss of transparency and clarity. An amp with fewer gain stages, like our HXDAs and the new HX, tends to put more of a "halo" or dirt around the original tone instead of obscuring it. You hear more of the guitar and the player come through.
That's because each gain stage on a 'modern' amp removes high and upper midrange frequency content as the overdriven tube approaches a square wave, adds bass and lower midrange push to the frequency curve, and a little less fidelity. You can see amps' square waves on an oscilloscope as they start to clip, and the sine wave becomes a square wave.
Do that a few times, as with a multiple channel or higher gain amp, and people are going to tend to sound more alike because the tone of the guitar and player become more veiled. A typical two channel, higher gain amp has 5 or 6 preamp tubes, each one adding its own saturation and distortion. This tends to veil the tone.
Practical example:
I like Mesa amps along with PRS amps because it's nice to have different options. Please don't take this as a criticism of Mesa amps - it's not a bug, it's a feature! I have a couple of Mesas in the studio that get used often. I've also recorded a lot of players using both my amps and their own Mesa amps over the past 31 years, so I've heard what I'm going to describe over and over, enough to form what I think is an informed opinion.
Set up a Dual Rectifier, or even something like my Lone Star and Fillmore to medium or higher gain, and you recognize the sound of the amp more than the sound of the guitar or player.
That makes perfect sense, because the Mesa has multiple gain stages, something Randall Smith pioneered along with a few others, like Dumble. It gives you a thick, saturated tone, at the price of hearing more of the nuance shine through. Listen to any of the bands who made records with Dual Recs, and you will hear that sound, upfront. It's harder to distinguish the tone of each player because you're hearing more amp. This isn't to say the players all sound exactly alike, because there are lots of differences in phrasing, touch, and so on, but you're also not hearing much transparency in the tone.
Compare that with, say, a Hendrix recording, where the tone is unmistakably unique to Jimi's ears, hands, and taste. Everything comes through, even when he uses pedals. As an example, you can compare
Little Wing to
You Got Me Floating, and the latter is using more pedals and crunchier medium gain. But you can still hear that it's Jimi just as clearly; his hands and his guitar shine through.
To be able to control every nuance of that tone with the guitar's controls, the controls on the amp, and any pedals you might want, gives the player the opportunity to customize the sound to a greater degree.
So it's natural and expected that every demo of the HX will sound different. It's entirely a good thing that some turn you on, and some don't excite you as a listener. We all have different tastes in how we want our playing to sound!