My Fractal FM-3 thread.

So I've not had much time to work on things this week but last night I tried a bunch of the preset packs amps and I think I liked one of the Friedman HBE amps the most for a Marshally overdrive and the Deluxe Reverb vibrato channel for a clean. I'm leaning towards each of the presets individually and then I made a third one that has a rhythm and a lead from each. So far I haven't found a Vox style preset that I like more than my Morgan AC20 preset. I'll probably end up trying those four presets and working on adding a few effects to the Fender one for the weekend. I've been watching the Austinbuddy video on preset leveling too, so I'm going to try and get this all worked out over the next few days. I'm playing a private party in a warehouse on Saturday and an outdoor event on a big stage on Sunday so I'd like to have my shit together. It's just really hard when there are literally no rehearsals to tweak things out at.
 
Yeah, even if you can crank it when creating presets, once you get with the band, you’ve gotta do some fine tuning.
 
So last night I played a private party in what appears to be the private event space for an advertising agency tucked away in an industrial park in Costa Mesa.

Most important thing to get out of the way first, there were tacos and they were awesome.

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Here is where we played:

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It was fairly live and a little bright, but not as bad as you would expect because there was furniture and furnishings in the other half of the space. I'm still trying to balance the levels of my main presets but it is getting closer. I have to say that this is the happiest I think I've ever been with my FOH sound. The majority of my onstage sounds are as good if not better than the Suhr and pretty closet to the Deluxe.

Breakdown on the sounds:

Live 1 is a patchwork of sounds that I use the most - My Deluxe/Greenback clean sound, a version of the boosted for lead with the RC Booster (just like I used to IRL), the same thing for a second scene with the BB Preamp (still repping those Xotic pedals long after I sold all of my IRL), the Morgan AC20 lightly crunchy, and the clean Deluxe with chorus or phaser.

The second preset is the Marshall Silver Jubilee. I have an preset that is as clean as you can make it (I remember my original Jubilee having a bit more clean headroom than the model in the FM3), my main rhythm crunch, a version of that with delay, a lead sound, the lead sound with wah and the clean tone with flanger.

Preset 3 is the Morgan AC20. In my tweaking I've kind of lost what was awesome about the preset so I didn't use it too much. Also, I had level issues with it most of the night. It has clean, mid crunch, very crunchy versions of the sound, the clean tone with the dotted 8th delay, a lead sound with a pedal that I can't remember and a tremolo sound that I never use.

Preset 4 is the 59' Bassman preset that I stole from the AustinBuddy preset pack. I actually used it quite a bit more than I expected. Besides they usual "clean, light overdrive, dirty, and lead" sounds from the stock preset I added versions with the Tone Bender and Fuss Face fuzz pedals. Pretty damn cool. Not as universally useful as the Morgan model, but perfect for the rockabilly and country stuff.

Today we're playing on a pretty big outdoor stage with a pro sound company so I'm pretty excited to hear how this works. I'm going to plug the FM3 in this morning and just check that the onstage tweaks that I made last night are creating any kind of clipping anywhere.
 
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That sucks that you lost the Morgan preset goodness. That was by far my favorite sound you had from it. I would have loved if they could have taken it out of the unit and made a combo amp from it. I would have been happy with just that.
 
Chad said:
That sucks that you lost the Morgan preset goodness. That was by far my favorite sound you had from it. I would have loved if they could have taken it out of the unit and made a combo amp from it. I would have been happy with just that.
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Ok...apparently I left a drive block turned on in all of the scenes when I was adjusting the lead sound. I don't think it's exactly where it was but it sounds pretty good again.

Also, my lead sound with the deluxe is actually a Timmy in the mid position.
 
miguel said:
Nice pics and the food looks tasty. Keep the posts coming.
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Thanks! I'll have plenty from tonight, too.

I have a Vibrolux preset that was stock in the box from Fractal that I liked for the surf stuff. Its the only one that has the reverb in front of the amp like an old outboard spring so I'm keeping it that way but for the fuzz face and Timmy lead sounds I'm shutting it off and going with a mono tape delay. There was a "sweet" scene that is a good base clean sound. The "Dark" scene I'm keeping as kind of a mellower jazz clean.

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Yesterday was pretty fun. Quick setup and breakdown on a multi-band bill, the sound guy was very happy with what I gave him and I had what I feel like is the best outdoor tone I can ever remember. I'm very happy. My only issue was that the EV monitor is very directional and I wasn't in the main monitor wedges so when I moved around the stage I couldn't hear myself very well. But that would have been something to address had we actually had a sound check and not a 90 second line check for everything.

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In trying to fix my Morgan patch I discovered the Dr. Z MAZ 38 from my very first attempt ar writing a clean preset and fell in love with it all over again. Now I have a fairly clean amp sound based around that to work with.
 
I had a rehearsal last night with the funky rock band (Slim Freaky). They own a recording studio so they can do multitrack recordings while we rehearse which is awesome. I had built a preset just for this band and played my 60th anniversary tele for the recorded part of the rehearsal and while I love the sound of that guitar on the cover gigs it was too thin for this one so it was back to the Les Paul. My base sounds are my deluxe reverb/greenback sound for cleans, tremolo and phaser guitar and the Jubilee marshal for crunch. For a lead sound, the deluxe with a fuzz face was actually my favorite choice even though I never can make a fuzz work with my IRL amps. I just need to tweak out a slightly overdrive clean sound for a couple of songs...

I didn't feel like bringing my own mic stand to their studio since the last time they had a ton of them but apparently they worked an event over the weekend and didn't bring all of the gear back to the studio. I had a mic, they had a stand but no clip so they broke out the 1968 Shure Unidyne mic that had been bought from the estate of Ricky Nelson.

Random shit.


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A Sennheiser HD 400 Pro was delivered today. So far it makes a ton of difference for me having the open back. A TON! It makes everything feel more organic. I love it so far. I will catch up on videos when I get a chance.
 
ugameus said:
A Sennheiser HD 400 Pro was delivered today. So far it makes a ton of difference for me having the open back. A TON! It makes everything feel more organic. I love it so far. I will catch up on videos when I get a chance.
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I had to look those up. Sometime in the near future I need to upgrade my headphone situation.
 
ugameus said:
A Sennheiser HD 400 Pro was delivered today. So far it makes a ton of difference for me having the open back. A TON! It makes everything feel more organic. I love it so far. I will catch up on videos when I get a chance.
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I had to look those up. Sometime in the near future I need to upgrade my headphone situation.
 
For some reason the '59 Bassman has become my favorite sound this week. It's gradually been replacing my Deluxe but the majority of my gigs have been the batsman for my main clean sound, the Morgan AC20 for the Class A sounds and the Jubilee for heavier crunch. On my Tuesday gig I had a few other musicians amazed that I was not playing out of a "real" amp all night.
 
After doing the 2204 video and talking to someone on Facebook I think I'm starting to get a handle on the older Marshall types. I think the 2204 is getting moved to my "regular" group of presets and I tried the 50 watt plexi preset from the Austin Buddy pack and I might make a Hendrix/70's preset from that and possibly a more 80's preset based around a Marshall or similar amp for later 80's tunes with more gain and processing. I still love the 59' Bassman, the Jubilee is still a great sound and the Morgan AC20 isn't going anywhere, either. I've rediscovered my original Deluxe Reverb sound for my Strat, too.

Just to update the thread with the videos and whatnot:



 
So while I was practicing today I made the incredibly embarrassing realization that I thought I was building a 2204 plexi but I was actually using the 1959SLP Treble model. I like it so it's staying :)

In the OMG9 layout for use with the FC6 foot controller I changed the button to the right that is normally "effects" and changed it to "EJECT!" and it's not a shortcut to the AC20 preset. If you tap it a second time it goes back to the last preset you were using and if you hold it it goes to my '59 Bassman preset. Hopefully that will make preset management easier on the gig where there are no set lists. a couple of hundred songs and no time to tap 3-4 buttons to get the preset and scene that I need in .5 seconds.
 
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