You folks ever spend time trying to dial in different models just to realize...

Just like in the “real world”, many tube amps can be dialed in to sound more or less alike.

So maybe go in the opposite direction and make a couple of presets with the same amp but just change the tone-stack and don’t change anything else. It’s gonna surprise and in some instances even baffle you, trust me.
 
I'm actually fine with doing this, for a few reasons.

My ears may be a bit "over-taxed" when making a preset, and when I come back to what I thought sounded good, with fresh ears it's maybe not so good.

Having several presets ready to go, all in the same general tone category, could be useful in a band setting. My thinking is, when I dial in something alone, it may or may not translate well to sitting right, in the mix. So having a few different ones to choose from seems like it would save time trying to dial something in, while playing with others, like at a rehearsal.

Plus it seems like every time I go tweaking, I get a little better at it, and get closer to the kinds of tones that still sound great to me when I first fire up the Fractal.
 
For me, not really.

I want the amp to sound like it really does in real life, just as I want my guitars to sound like they would through the real amp in real life.

My effects pre and post might have commonalities, like my rotary block is one of four variations in my library, and the flanger block is based on the sound Hendrix used in the studio, otherwise the sounds and presets have variations making them unique. I do want clean, edge-of-breakup, a lead tone (which usually gets ignored because the edge-of-breakup ends up sounding great live) and something ambient-like or based on a particular song even though the amp and overall sound is different. I have a longer/deeper delay channel usually based on a tape delay for when I feel like making pedal-steel sounds too.

But I want the amp to shine and sound like it should.
 
York Audio said:
@Mark Wein It’s true that using different amps dialed in with the same IR can sound a little homogenous. The cab is the main filter in our tone affecting what we hear. It’s kinda like a filter on a camera. Whatever “style” we use puts its character on everything we see. Pictures of different things with the same filter will all have a cohesive theme to them, but using different filters on the same subject will give you a much broader variety of colors and textures.

If you’re looking for significant character diversity, changing your cabs will give you a lot of options. If you want variety within the same cab, try using some really bright IRs and dial in your amps with darker settings, or try darker IRs with brighter amp settings.

I hope this helps.
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it helps for sure thanks .
 
I run an 8 scene preset most of the time with stomp buttons.

I trend toward a certain clean and certain heavy dirty tone. Then I build the other six in between with varying gains and tones to force myself out of my little comfy box. It's very enlightening!
 
Mark Wein said:
that you're making them all sound the same because thats the sound you hear in your head?

I have some pretty good live presets but I wanted to build a library of different versions built around different amps...sort of like bringing a pedalboard to a gig with a different amp. After building a batch of these presets I realized that regardless of amp type they all kind of sounded the same with just a slight difference in flavor.
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That is exactly right.
And I am essentially looking for the amp model (don't care which one it is) that I can tweak out to get "my" sound the closest to what I hear in my head.
So when I find one...I declare it the "holy grail" and use it for a while. Then I'll hear somebody getting a great sound with another amp model and I'll jump on that one and tweak and then declare the search is over and I found the sound!
And then a few months later... :laughing:
 
Robbie Boyette said:
That is exactly right.
And I am essentially looking for the amp model (don't care which one it is) that I can tweak out to get "my" sound the closest to what I hear in my head.
So when I find one...I declare it the "holy grail" and use it for a while. Then I'll hear somebody getting a great sound with another amp model and I'll jump on that one and tweak and then declare the search is over and I found the sound!
And then a few months later... :laughing:
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Then I'll make a preset out of 8 of them, tweak each scene for a while, play them for a while, dig em.

Then a while later I'll wonder if the differences between scenes matter at all to anyone who's not tweaking them.

EDIT:
It's not that they're not different, they are. I'm just not sure if any are clearly better than the others.
 
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