My reaction after taking a break

[Chromatizm]

I had the exact opposite experience.

I'm not sure OP was saying Helix sounds better in general or it's easier to dial in good sounds. I think he's saying that he was using too much of the options Fractal provides, tweaking them to a point where it actually began to make the sound worse, not better. And with Helix he is forced to use simpler chains which sounds better if compared to over-engineered presets. And now that he realized that he'll going to start from scratch with Fractal.
I can relate cause I used to do it all the time, and still have a bad habit of having all drives and compressors enabled at the same time in some presets Then I switch to a Dry scene with default settings and go - sheeeeeeit, I need to start again, I've killed the great amp sound by all those unwarranted tweaks

 

[Anthony76]

Treat it like an amp and a pedal board, see if that gets you to where you want to be. If not the Helix is working for you so you’re covered.

 

[NattyBar]

Ohhh boy have I been down this road a couple of times. Making a series of tweaks to ‘massage’ the tone and in a short amount of time things start to sound very processed and unnatural.

Our ears and brain is so inconsistent in how we hear things across time so two steps I take to make sure my presets are protected from over tweaking.

1) Factory Presets & @austinbuddy Packs: I have a shortlist of presets which are straight up raw amazing amp tones that I love from both of these sources. I’ll often reference back to these presets to hear the impact of the edits I’ve made and whether it removed something I like.

2) Don’t Edit the Master: I try to save a copy of my main presets before I make edits so I can reference back to it when needed. Backups too. Snapshots inside are also helpful but after a few of those that list can get a bit confusing.

 

[rog]

Get really weird - chain them together. Use the amp you like from the Stomp with an IR from the FM3. Then use the reverbs and delays from the FM3, but the Freqout in the Stomp.*

Alternatively, put each on top of a Roomba. Arm them with something, and let them fight it out. There can be only one.


*I have no idea if this is even possible.

 

[Joshua_L]

Ohhh boy have I been down this road a couple of times. Making a series of tweaks to ‘massage’ the tone and in a short amount of time things start to sound very processed and unnatural.

Our ears and brain is so inconsistent in how we hear things across time so two steps I take to make sure my presets are protected from over tweaking.

1) Factory Presets & @austinbuddy Packs: I have a shortlist of presets which are straight up raw amazing amp tones that I love from both of these sources. I’ll often reference back to these presets to hear the impact of the edits I’ve made and whether it removed something I like.

2) Don’t Edit the Master: I try to save a copy of my main presets before I make edits so I can reference back to it when needed. Backups too. Snapshots inside are also helpful but after a few of those that list can get a bit confusing.

Or a thing that happened to me also :

You « massage » your main presets and say « hell yeah now it’s fantastic! ». Then go trough original and « massaged » multiple times and you shut down the fm3.

The next day you just switch on the fm3, play and think « yeah I know I was right spending all this time tweaking my tones, never been so great »

And then you watch the preset number and…. It’s the original one…untweaked

So now I make sure I play at least 3/4 days before touching anything and lose hours of my time

 

[skolacki]

So I haven’t had my FM3 for around 2 months since I left the country Dec 27 for a military band deployment. I took my HX stomp with me as a backup in the event the FM3 didn’t arrive in a timely manner on the military pallet transportation system we use for moving gear on deployments.

Well…. The pallet didn’t come until two days ago so I was using the HX stomp with great success in the meantime. I have to say the Line 6 stuff has really caught up imo. Reason I say this is because I was happy to have the FM3 back but after my gig tonight I don’t know what else to say except I thought my FM3 sounded like garbage.

I’ve been a victim of option paralysis and have tweaked the fractal products into the wee hours of mornings and it’s like I’m never really satisfied. With the HX stomp the Mesa Mark V clean model was like 100% exactly the clean pedal platform tone I like and I was able to get a really great sound from it.

I just feel like I’ve gotta start over with the fm3 and ditch some of the fluff I’ve adopted like multiband comp after the amp to tame lows and another compressor after that as a “post amp studio sweetener”. Stuff like that isn’t used in analog guitar chains anyway. Sure we can bring the studio to the stage but… I’m going to try and simplify things a bit and see if I get more satisfaction.

I don’t use comp much and definitely not 2 since it sucks up power. It could be you haven’t found your IR’s yet. And maybe not your amps. I’ve tried a bunch but only a handful have stuck. The FM3 should be able to deliver your tone. The tools are there and all the advanced parameters aren’t necessary to get a nice sounding amp block. I’m usually just drive amp cab reverb delay looper and a GEQ to comp my phones. IR in Ultrares always. With what’s left I might have a phaser, chorus, comp, or pitch and I don’t often use those. That’s me though, your needs will be different. The IR is maybe more important than everything else. I have 2-3 that I use and that’s it.

 

[millman]

I use comp only for sustain in certain instances, like clean tones or a really washy reverb sound. Otherwise, I want the Amp raw. I want to be the one taiming the sound of the Amp and not extra compression. I also want as much dynamics as I can get out of my hands.

 

[Riccardo Ros]

Thanks for this post and the great advice from @Chromatizm !
It made me question my presets and I'm starting to remove things here and there..!
The wonderful never ending quest for tone.

Today this was also in my feed... I think it goes well with the topic of simplicity (I know... I know... tone is in the hands)

 

[Chromatizm]

Thanks for this post and the great advice from @Chromatizm !

I just got hit by the thought that the idea actually belongs to Fractal with their "Dry" scenes in most of the presets I just adopted it instinctively after some time, without even realizing why those Dry scenes are there - initially I replaced them with yet another "way-too-much" scene setting. Not any more!

Great video by Mark - thanks for sharing!

 

[GuyJames]

I had the exact opposite experience. 5 minutes after getting my first Fractal unit I had a more realistic AC30 tone than I had ever gotten after 5 years of tweaking with Helix, simply by pulling up the Fractal AC30 on default settings and picking the stock 57+121 factory IRs. No EQ, no high/low cuts, no tweaking to get the high end right, just effortless natural accurate tones.

The artist I work for uses Helix because that's what I was using in 2018 so they made the switch for the whole band, and every time I boot up that unit during production rehearsals or at a show I can't believe how sterile it sounds on the factory presets and the presets I spent years dialing in. It's insane to me that the original amp models never get updated, even as they release newer amp models with "better" modeling.

Just like the endless tweaking to get the high end right on the amps, on the wet fx I'm constantly tweaking things to get the mix right, whereas on Fractal everything effortlessly blends together and sits well with the dry, just like with real amps & pedals or plugins. The quality of Fractal's wet fx are so much better too, particularly the reverbs; Helix's reverbs are a joke by comparison and the latest algorithms use a ridiculous amount of the DSP.

Also no multiple parallel paths, fixed linear signal path, no block bypass dry through options, buggy annual firmware releases, no block channels, the editor GUI is terrible i.e. the parameters are bars that extend the entire length of the window instead of the industry standard knobs/faders. As a result you're able to display far fewer parameters at once in the window which requires scrolling down, which would be fine except that the parameter values are also affected by scrolling with the mouse so unless you scroll in a certain tiny area on the right side of the window when you try to scroll down you mess up the parameter values, etc....

I haven’t tried many of the line 6 amp model but the Mark V clean is actually very nice and a great platform form drive blocks. Yesterday though I went and built a super simple preset on the FM3 and was very happy with the results. I just needed to lower my compression and not overdo the tweaking.

One thing I don’t seem to vibe with is using different amps for clean and gain. I guess I’ve always used clean amps with overdrive pedals so when I have that clean tone and then switch to a different amp it has a completely different feel which I find jarring.

Plus the FM3 doesn’t have gapless channel switch yet which I find annoying so I’m going to stick to using a drive block in front of the amp for now

 

[strabes]

I haven’t tried many of the line 6 amp model but the Mark V clean is actually very nice and a great platform form drive blocks. Yesterday though I went and built a super simple preset on the FM3 and was very happy with the results. I just needed to lower my compression and not overdo the tweaking.

One thing I don’t seem to vibe with is using different amps for clean and gain. I guess I’ve always used clean amps with overdrive pedals so when I have that clean tone and then switch to a different amp it has a completely different feel which I find jarring.

Plus the FM3 doesn’t have gapless channel switch yet which I find annoying so I’m going to stick to using a drive block in front of the amp for now

I’m the same way, I’ve always used an amp and drive pedals, or since using modelers I’ll toggle the amp drive or input trim up a down for cleans and crunch on a plexi for example. But then again I’ve never been a high gain player. To me the fractal amps take drives and especially wet effects so much better than the line 6 stuff.

 

[Paulzx]

I have to say the Line 6 stuff has really caught up imo. Reason I say this is because I was happy to have the FM3 back but after my gig tonight I don’t know what else to say except I thought my FM3 sounded like garbage.

I really wish this was true, then I could have simply carried on using my Helix floor! For an FM3 to sound like garbage, you really have to be doing something wrong in my opinion. I'm new to the FM3 but it's really easy to dial in great tones, some you don't even have to dial in at all.

I am playing high gain rock and metal though, in which case there's no comparison between the units. What sort of tones are you playing.. which amp models sounded like garbage?

 

[smj]

So I haven’t had my FM3 for around 2 months since I left the country Dec 27 for a military band deployment. I took my HX stomp with me as a backup in the event the FM3 didn’t arrive in a timely manner on the military pallet transportation system we use for moving gear on deployments.

Well…. The pallet didn’t come until two days ago so I was using the HX stomp with great success in the meantime. I have to say the Line 6 stuff has really caught up imo. Reason I say this is because I was happy to have the FM3 back but after my gig tonight I don’t know what else to say except I thought my FM3 sounded like garbage.

I’ve been a victim of option paralysis and have tweaked the fractal products into the wee hours of mornings and it’s like I’m never really satisfied. With the HX stomp the Mesa Mark V clean model was like 100% exactly the clean pedal platform tone I like and I was able to get a really great sound from it.

I just feel like I’ve gotta start over with the fm3 and ditch some of the fluff I’ve adopted like multiband comp after the amp to tame lows and another compressor after that as a “post amp studio sweetener”. Stuff like that isn’t used in analog guitar chains anyway. Sure we can bring the studio to the stage but… I’m going to try and simplify things a bit and see if I get more satisfaction.

Perhaps you can shed some light on what “garbage” sounds like to you. But to the compression, it’s one of the most complex tools in audio to really master.

Aside from putting a compressor in your blockchain, there’s still other parameters to look at… like the speaker compression in the cab block, the sag button in the amp block. Plus, changing power output tubes as well as the variac control.

I use more compression if I’m playing live and everything is monitored in ear and I’m going direct. I’m not trying to squash transients, but more raise the floor a bit to keep the guitar sitting in the mix better.

But yes, I too oscillate between helix and fractal. For a university ensemble I teach, I got them HX stomps for guitars and bass. They are at the very least great for someone new to the modelling world (and amps in general) because there are less options to mess around with as they’re already baked in.

Sean Meredith-Jones

 

[TheRedDevil]

Fehler wie diese sind der Grund, warum ich in jedem Preset eine „Standard“-Szene habe, in der nur Verstärker- und Boxenblöcke mit den Standardeinstellungen aktiviert sind. Alles andere ist ausgeschaltet, vielleicht eine kleine Verzögerung um 10 % im Mix, wenn sich der Sound zu trocken anfühlt. Keine ausgefallenen Verstärkeranpassungen, keine Kompressoren, die meisten Regler auf 5.
Das ist mein Realitätscheck. Nach jeder größeren Bearbeitung wechsle ich zu dieser Szene und stelle sicher, dass ich es nicht übertreibe.
Ich kann meine frühen Presets nicht anhören, sie sind einfach nur Müll. Ich behalte sie zur Erinnerung!

That's it, never trust you ears!!! I always save the old settings and compare it next day with the new onces again.

 

[dpeterson]

Dude whatever works works. Some guys get great tones out of old pods. A LOT of records were recorded with them, and POD Farm or whatever it was called. If you play through a gorilla combo amp and get your tone so be it. Don't try to bend to the herd.

 

[Marc Maroni]

I tried very hard to like my Line 6 Helix Rack. It sat right below my AX3 and I actually went a whole month of playing it only. After much tweaking I got some good hard rock tones and was semi happy with it. That was until I decided to turn on the AX3 again. It was such a big difference that I never used the Helix again and sold it. Everyone has a different idea of what their sound should be so for some Line 6 may be it. For myself i will always be a Fractal person.

 

[USMC_Trev]

So I haven’t had my FM3 for around 2 months since I left the country Dec 27 for a military band deployment.

Which band are you in?

 

[Dickie Fredericks]

I never sit around and tweak presets. If I don't like what I've got I build a new preset. That's pretty rare though. I don't have time to tweak. It cuts into my playing time.

 

[Cainer]

I think when you have SO many parameters available to you, it can be easy to get in the mindset that you NEED to adjust and customize all of them to dial in the best tone, but I've found 9 times out of 10 I end up just reverting the parameter back to default because either I can't tell a difference, or I can't tell if it's made it better.

I remember ages ago with the Axe II getting prepped for a cover gig where I had to play some U2 so I looked up Edge's rig, and picked the corresponding models in the Axe FX - no tweaking, nothing, and bang, it was almost dead on tone-wise. But in my infinite wisdom, I started tweaking the deep parameters, convinced I would squeeze out 'the tone' and of course by the time I was done thought I had nailed it, but came back the next day and it was godawful. Reverted back to the starting point and it was glorious again.

Anyways, all that to say that a lot of people can get saved from themselves with a less tweakable product - just because it's there, doesn't mean you need to adjust it! lol My best results have always been treating it like I would a real amp/rig. Bass, Mid, Treble, Volume, everything else is icing. There area few dep parameters I've learned how to use and often do, but I have to be honest with myself that with most of them I'm like a monkey trying to operate a camera.

 

[Paulzx]

Exactly. If you like the Line6, why try to force an FM3 to work for you?

If you own an fm3 and you end up preferring the Helix, that is a fail in my opinion, and I own both. If you ve failed to get better tones out of an fm3, that deserves some kind of investigation because option paralysis is nothing compared to endless tone tweaking on a Helix.

I don't agree that it's easier to get tones out of the Helix. Stock settings are shite on the Helix, it's famous for that. Fm3 tones are very good at default because the tones are better to begin with. You don't even need to mess with the deep parameters.

Now if you said you prefer Helix for foot switching, I would agree, but that's the only area it is better in.