Dear all, I'm new to the forum and the Fractal world in general. I recently purchased a used but just few weeks old FM9 unit and I have a very similar issue as the OP. I've searched the manual and the forum but really did not clear my doubts.
Have two guitars, a Strat and a Les Paul, both with vintage spec'd and low output pickups (les paul is just under 8k).
All presets and amps seem way too hot, and especially with the les paul I can barely get any clean sound from any amp. Even a JC120 is already clipping with the amp gain between 2 and 3. A JTM45 or Plexi is already very overdriven with the gain at 1...
As said I am new to Fractal but I find it quite unexpected and very different from my experience with real amps and sw plugins. With my amps (a Brunetti Singleman and Boogie Express) I have a hard time to overdrive clean channels at all and I have to really push the gain.
Some details:
- The A/D conversion seems very healthy: at the default 50% the meter never hits the red even strumming hard, which confirms the guitar is not too hot. Even the DI signal from USB channels 5/6 has tons of headroom.
- The global input gain is set at unity
- I have made a firmware update (6.0) and reset all global parameters and factory presets after purchase
So it seems that a lot of gain is added by the system AFTER the A/D conversion. I understood that the FM9 has a circuit that auto-compensate any change in the A/D input to hit the grid with the correct level, so that the amps would receive the same level as the corresponding modelled gear. Is it possible that this circuit is not working correctly and applying too much gain?
Now, my problem has a simple fix, which is reduce the global input gain to around 0.5. This way I get results more in line with my expectations (and sounds amazing!!!). But one of my goals when buying the unit was to learn how to use amps I cannot access, and Fractal claims absolute accuracy in amp modelling that however can be obtained only hitting the grid with the "right" level.
Sorry for the very long post but I am trying to learn how to use the modeller in-depth and at the moment I am quite puzzled...any help appreciated!!