I wouldn't change my 96 Apex for anything else (except perhaps for some high end British steel like a Roberts), it rides beautifully and is a no-nonsense, relatively lightweight bike. But I always did feel slightly disappointed with it. Something weird happened in 1996. The 94 model that my best friend rode, which inspired my to choose a DB Apex when the time came to get a completely new bike, was specced very well indeed -- almost all Deore LX except for the STX hubs, a Titec Bontrager bar, and of course the premium tubing. But not only did the 96 model have AVR tubing, the groupset was an odd mix of LX (rear hub, cassette, rear mech), STX (front mech), Sugino chainset, Quando front hub, SRT600 gripshift (eurgh!) and no-name Chinese cantis and levers. I love the colour, though, which has to be one my favourites. Despite my initial reservations about some of the parts, I found it did all work and I did a couple of XC races on it to break it in, but before too long I upgraded some of the least appealing parts with V-brakes or other slightly more preferred parts I had lying around after the demise of my 93 M Trax.
Since you've ridden several different DB Apex and Axis tubesets, I'd be interested to know whether the is any appreciable improvement from AVR to the Axis framesets?