5150 Presence Knob

Do You Want the 5150 Presence Control to be Authentic?

  • Yes

    Votes: 160 36.6%

  • No

    Votes: 277 63.4%
  • Total voters
    437
didn't distorted guitar tones get invented cuz some 60s hipsters turned up too loud n damaged their amps n speakers but kept on playing cuz it kinda sounded cool?
 
State of Epicicity said:
For idealized versions of amps, we have the FAS amps as well as whatever models of modern ones are idealized versions of classics.
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Yea, I've always found the concept of idealized amps that can accommodate "circuits" and functionality we'd never be able to utilize in the real world absolutely fascinating and compelling.

I'd love for more development/improvement of custom, next generation FAS amps that can "go where no amp has gone before". Take the best concepts/stagesfrom real amps, leave the bad/less desirable features behind, and I can only imagine where things could go with all of that.
 
yek said:
The sound isn't different. Just the behavior of the control is. Hardly a reason to dedicate a custom model to that purpose. AFAIK we have only one custom model of that kind: the USA MKIIC++. I hope it stays that way.
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The USA MKIIC++ isn't just different tapers, it's a different model. I think Cliff was quoted otherwise, but if you set all the knobs to 0 or 10 and compare they still sound different. With the controls are min or max the taper would no longer affect the sound.

notalemming said:
I'm almost afraid to bring this up as being 100% authentic on this would be a major step backwards IMHO but what about all the Triaxis models? I know you had one for years & so did I but for those who don't know, all the controls had really crude resolution, ie, they all went from 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5 etc. Also, you had presets for the graphic EQ with no control of the exact EQ slider settings, only what Mesa decided was perfect (according to the manual, no one has ever wanted to change the presets except 1 guy who used it for bass. I wanted to change all of them). I asked Mesa why it was like this & they said it would be too much work to have finer resolution LOL! Are the Traixis models on the chopping block for an authentic revamp? I think this would be a be careful what you wish for moment for the absolute authentic crowd.
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The triaxis preamps work that way because they wanted to be able to save and load settings with MIDI. But a potentiometer is an analog device, it doesn't "Save and load". Some companies have motorized actuators that adjust pots, but that sounds like a reliability nightmare for something you're going to put in a rack and carry across continents. What happens when one of the motos inside the unit dies and suddenly the bass setting is stuck no matter which preset you load? What about if the battery dies and the preamp forgets where the pot currently is. How far can it safely turn it up or down before it breaks when it doesn't know what it's currently set to? And this was the 90s, making a microcontroller which reads the value from the pot to determine where it's set wasn't practical.

So what did they do? Well, a pot works by starting at 0 ohms and increasing until X ohms at the far end of travel. lets say from 0-10MOhm. How can you create a rugged, simple, and cheap way of having the values between 0 and 10MOhm without a pot? Just make a big row of resistors that go from 0, 1M, 2M, ....9M, 10M, and let your "Setting" choose which resistor to use. You don't get any in between settings, but you do have a rugged reliable way to chose between those 10 settings. Now the triaxis has 20ish settings for each but that's the concept, and why they come in discrete steps.

Never mind me, carry on.

This one is a reasonable one to just model as a continuous pot, returning all the in between values.

sprint said:
My guess is that the Mark GEQ will get a duplicate but authentic version since changing it directly could affect quite a lot of users across all the Mark models.
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I was cery against the "ideal/authentic switch for the presence pot" because as a software solution that was too much work for dubious benefit.

But the EQ section of the amp block already lets you chose between Mesa 5-Band, 10-band, and more. It could be a simple addition to rename the current 5-band to "FAS 5-Band" and then add a "USA 5-Band" with the stock tapers thatn people can choose between.

laxu said:
If I were to buy a real 5150, knowing about the presence control I'd probably want to mod it with a better pot taper to make it more useful...

I feel vindicated defending the ideal option as the posts above show that it wasn't some deliberate design choice to make it sound a particular way but "we had these parts and Eddie didn't complain".
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"More useful" is a weird way to put it. All the same sounds are still there, it's just at different settings. And there's even less argument about it's usefulness in the Axe FX where you can adjust it to the 0.01 if you desire.
 
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IronSean said:
So what did they do? Well, a pot works by starting at 0 ohms and increasing until X ohms at the far end of travel. lets say from 0-10MOhm. How can you create a rugged, simple, and cheap way of having the values between 0 and 10MOhm without a pot? Just make a big row of resistors that go from 0, 1M, 2M, ....9M, 10M, and let your "Setting" choose which resistor to use. You don't get any in between settings, but you do have a rugged reliable way to chose between those 10 settings. Now the triaxis has 20ish settings for each but that's the concept, and why they come in discrete steps.
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That's not what they did. The Triaxis used LDRs as variable resistance elements. There were resistor strings that were used to set the LDRs but those resistors weren't in the signal path.
 
Yorke2112 said:
Lmao, Ok! I assumed you put it up for a vote. I guess someone else did that?
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He put up a poll to poll the opinions of the forum users where the loudest and questest users had equal say. He also opened it to discussion to allow the loudest users to also speak their piece.

Then he decided what he preferred.

If the poll was overwhelming (not just first past the post, but truly 90+% of the users voted ideal) while all the arguements were the same, then ideal may have won because despite the vocal minority the vast majority of users voted otherwise.

But instead how I would sum up this thread was 2/3 voted ideal, 1/3 voted authentic, but many people on the authentic side has strong arguments and many people on the ideal side said "I don't really use that amp but like the idea of it being slightly more consistent in case I do" and others said "actually I don't care much but the autnetic people have convinced me to change my vote". Through some nebulous and immeasurable calculus based on the opinions and passions shown in this thread that I'll call "Cliff's years of experience creating extremely good modelling technologies and running a successful business selling them" the decision seems to have fallen with the Authentic side.


... Or he's going to swap it back and forth every firmware from now until we eventually start a bloody civil war and tear this community apart from the inside out while Cliff retires quietly to a tropical island to laugh at what he wrought.
 
IronSean said:
He put up a poll to poll the opinions of the forum users where the loudest and questest users had equal say. He also opened it to discussion to allow the loudest users to also speak their piece.

Then he decided what he preferred.

If the poll was overwhelming (not just first past the post, but truly 90+% of the users voted ideal) while all the arguements were the same, then ideal may have won because despite the vocal minority the vast majority of users voted otherwise.

But instead how I would sum up this thread was 2/3 voted ideal, 1/3 voted authentic, but many people on the authentic side has strong arguments and many people on the ideal side said "I don't really use that amp but like the idea of it being slightly more consistent in case I do" and others said "actually I don't care much but the autnetic people have convinced me to change my vote". Through some nebulous and immeasurable calculus based on the opinions and passions shown in this thread that I'll call "Cliff's years of experience creating extremely good modelling technologies and running a successful business selling them" the decision seems to have fallen with the Authentic side.


... Or he's going to swap it back and forth every firmware from now until we eventually start a bloody civil war and tear this community apart from the inside out while Cliff retires quietly to a tropical island to laugh at what he wrought.
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:tearsofjoy:
 
FractalAudio said:
The sad part is only three (so far) people got this.
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"The Lady of the Crystal Lattices,... [angels sing] ...her arm clad in the purest shimmering grill cloth, held aloft the 1/4 inch jack from the bosom of the secret sauce, signifying by divine providence that I, Cliff, was to code Cygnus. [singing stops] THAT is why I'm your king!"
 
James Freeman said:
The 5150 is on countless metal records and still in production AS IS after 30+ years.
Mistake or not, I trust Fractal to deliver an authentic experience, it's why I bought mine.
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Yep. It’s a quirk of the real amp, and Fractal having that same quirk shows that every component is accurately modeled.

FAS Originals are the place for fixes, mods, idealizations, etc. (Or a switch on the “Ideal” tab, which we can inhibit.)

If the Axe-FX were an “in the flavor of” modeler, like BOSS’s stuff, then I’d feel differently. But Fractal is the most accurate modeler of real amps, their components, and their sound out of all the brands.

“If the knobs are the same, it sounds the same.” - Cliff. I think that should continue to be the philosophy.

 
I voted no and to wiki the reason (we now know it was a mistake)

However, my vote was influenced (as apparently Sprint) by the fact that the Mark EQs are idealized and assumed other amp models have some controls idealized as well.

It’s confirmed that now it’s only the Mark series with the idealized EQ.

Should FAS now be required to be consistent and remove that from the Mark series?

Or to accommodate everyone …add the option for authentic in the Mark series? ….which then to be consistent again …add the option as well to the Stealth 100?

FWIW …After realizing it was limited to just the Mark series EQ ….I’d have voted yes on the poll…
 
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