I'm not sure what you mean by tight, but in my experience, it's easier than ever to achieve a good tone.
Look at the changes you made in the past to achieve a good, tight tone, and consider undoing them.
New presets in a day or two.
Day 1 and day 2... are gone!
Maybe... SOON?
Soon. I've got a cold so I haven't been terribly productive. On top of that I got sidetracked modeling this Friedman Smallbox. So it will be another day or three.
I guess I don't understand the big deal with the presets.
I "learned" on Fremens presets a few years ago and have been making my own pretty much ever since. EXCEPT for some of the very cool ambient presets some post or some that just sound outrageously good.
I would love it, if when you ran these updates, the firmware would adjust everything so that the general sound would be close to where you had it.
No one is forcing you to do that, and frankly no one cares. Not to sound harsh but its the truth. If FW"X" sounds better to you then maybe thats just your thing.
I have two XLs and I upgraded one to firmware 18. Here is what I noticed...
1. Amp tone control (that was way cool) is missing... not sure what it was called but you could select Warm, Modern, Vintage, etc.
2. A preset using the 5153 Blue amp that had the "Warm" setting... now muffled with too much low end thump.
3. A preset using the 5153 Red amp that had the "Modern" setting... now way too much treble like am radio static.
Which brings me to the BIG PROBLEM I see with Fractal and these updates...
Everybody talks about how they love the tone consistency from venue to venue, night after night. What about the tone consistency from update to update? Seems like at some point Fractal would address this and solve it. I mean really... we tone chase, we have the perfect tool to get that unique sound, and it's gone with an update. The chase starts over. Sure we love the added "whatever" that the new update brings, but at what cost? Why would we want to find the tone we love, then have to chase it over and over?
I would love it, if when you ran these updates, the firmware would adjust everything so that the general sound would be close to where you had it. Like a tone match of what you had previously, only instead of a block it would effect the actual controls. As a matter of fact, I wish tone matching in general could have the "added option" of simply applying the EQ adjustment to the controls/eq settings of an amp block, and then not having to use the tone match block once they were applied. This would make the tone matching more powerful IMO.
Please someone chime in on this.
i completely agree. i've read things where people basically said
"man, fractal came out with ANOTHER free firmware update. omg when will they just stop improving this thing and leave it how it is so i don't have to update anymore..."
haha. you really don't have to update. you don't! but because you read other people enjoy the update, you just can't help yourself and need to do it, right?
previous discussions of this topic over the past 7 years have brought up having an optional "public beta" team, where basically every firmware that we've had is a "public beta" and only very large changes would be a Public Final release. so like FW1.00 would have been the Public Final release for a while, then maybe FW6.00 - maybe a year later - then maybe FW12 another year later, then maybe FW18 due to G3 modeling, etc.
that's only 3 upgrades for the general public. while the "public beta" team had everything since then available.
but we DO already have that setup. its just that people can't stop themselves from updating. so it's really on them.
Be sure to check out the new cabs.
A pretty cool combination is to use the 4x12 Fractal GB and the 4x12 Fractal V30 in stereo.
Hey - Regarding the cabs that are included with the firmware -
Do we need to load them manually, or is that taken care of by the firmware update?
Thanks
They replace some older Factory Cabs. Read the details here: Firmware 18.01 Released - AFT's Notes | AxeFxTutorials.com