A bit of a disasturous first gig with the FM9

G

golfnut

Member
It probably didn't sound as bad as I think. Some others thought the sound was fine but I didn't. No fault of the FM9. This is my first forray in to Digital modeling. I took quite care, working day and night for good tones. I set them at gig volumes (gig volumes for legions\small clubs)
I really shouldn't have taken it to this gig. I should have brought my Fargen tube amp. Big over sized 2X12 cabinet. I kind of knew it when the bass player showed up with his new monster bass stack. It was an outdoor gig-No soundman. So every one lit it up volume wise. I had the Fender FR12 cranked almost full. I had the out on the FM9 almost full. It was loud and just about still buried. My tube amp would have moved serious air and would have more than kept up. We only do about 3 to 4 gigs a year like this so I will know next time to bring a tube amp.
The trebles were fizzy and distorted. The mids were honkey and hollow and harsh. The Bass was so over powering it was awful. Thank gawd I had eq on the fr12 to somewhat compensate. I had the bass, mid and treble each down to about 2. I had set the presets with everything, including volume on the fr12 at noon. Some of this is my fault. I'm pretty sure I mixed the presets with the treble and mids a little hot. I think I learned enough to right this. As well I'm gonna look for a location bigger than my office and a little more open to redo my presets. My office has no one there on Saturdays and Sundays and I think I can get permission to use a room there. There's a couple of pretty big rooms and the noise won't bother anyone.
The last thing I'm thinking of when doing presets and using the FM9 and FR12 in general. I think I should have either the FM9 out or the master on the FR12 on max and control the volume from the other. For example Put the FR12 volume max and control the levels from the FM9 out. Does anyone do it that way with their FRFR cabs?
 
For a gig like that. I like to run into my Quilter Tone Block and either a 2x12 or 4x12. Best of both worlds.

I have yet to find a FRFR solution I like but honestly I also haven't been searching since I'm not doing a lot of gigs right now. That should ramp up next year though.
 
The last time i played with and for (a few) people was in an enormous barn, pretty nice sounding, but really tall ceiling and quite big. It was my first time out with modeler, a Helix, using two (not great) Alessis monitors.

With nobody else playing, it sounded great. With the full band going (8 piece with full horn section, nothing but voice and horns in the PA), it was still cool where I was standing. However, the speakers were too close to me, so elsewhere, like on the recordings, I was kind of buried. If I had heard a less me-centric mix and wanted to turn up, those monitors were already hitting their limiters, a lot, they had nothing left.

Moral of the story is that it takes a lot of power to do rock band volume with a modeler and FRFR. Moral #2, which may or may not apply to you, is to make sure your tones aren't only cool, they also cut enough to not get lost; that full-sounding low end and low mids eats a lot of power. Moral #3, which sounds like it doesn't apply to your situation, is to get away from your speakers while you're adjusting stuff, so you're hearing a realistically balanced mix.
 
@golfnut You may already have set this, but you want to have +4dBu set on the 'Audio' tab under ('Setup' in the editor) for the output going to the Fender FR-12 to maximize levels. That is generally the correct FM9 output setting for a connection to the Fender.

That way you don't have to push the FR-12 as hard. I never want to have the volume on my FRFR maxed out, as you were considering. unless it is absolutely necessary because of excessive stage volume or a large venue (in which case, as you mentioned, I would regret not having brought a heftier monitoring alternative). Would rather drive it with sufficient signal from the FM9. Otherwise, you introduce additional noise from the FRFR and put additional strain on it that may eventually result in damage to the FR-12's electronics or speaker.

Lastly make sure you have sufficient level on your presets, if necessary, by raising the level on either the amp or the output block.
 
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Sorry your gig didn't turn out the best. That's never fun.

golfnut said:
The trebles were fizzy and distorted. The mids were honkey and hollow and harsh. The Bass was so over powering it was awful.
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Those are classic symptoms of dialing in tones at lower volume than the gig. When you're crafting your tone, make sure that "gig volume for legions\small clubs" isn't just "sounds damn loud at home." :)

And dial your tones in a mix, not by themselves. Often, a little EQ can make all the difference between riding on top of the mix and getting buried by it.
 
playmusic said:
@golfnut You may already have set this, but you want to have +4dBu set on the 'Audio' tab under ('Setup' in the editor) for the output going to the Fender FR-12 to maximize levels. That is generally the correct FM9 output setting for a connection to the Fender.
Click to expand...

Yup. The -10dB setting will adversely impact perceived volume, and what
you can squeeze out of the setup.
 
Are you talking about this? It is showing my output 1 as -dBv. Are you saying I should bump that to +4. It also shows as "Stereo" should that be set to "Sum L=R". Thats how my amp blocks are.

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Now it all makes sense. I bumped up out 1 to +4 and was able to get my preset levels to zero thereby hardly going in to the red at all and still have lots of volume to work with and this is with my FRFR volume backed down to half (noon)
And for some reason my presets even sound better. Not so harsh.
 
First, it sucks when you don't feel satisfied with your sound on a gig.

Reading your post, I don't think the tube amp is the solution. If you had taken something like a Fender Blues Jr (1x12), you would likely have had the same experience of getting buried in the mix. A 1x12 combo would be close to a single FR12.

If you need to move a lot of air to match the rest of the band, you need bigger speakers. This would be true with FRFR or regular speakers. I have a couple of Atomic CLRs and on some gigs I bring both and put them on top of each other so effectively creating a 2x12 FRFR, works great and is a quite a bit louder than a single one. Since you already have your 2x12, I'd bring that next time with a power amp to drive it.

In my experience, it's also much better to have more speakers running at lower power than fewer running full power. The big difference with FRFR and non-tube power amps is that if they start clipping it's a big problem, vs a tube amp with regular guitar speaker gets musical when they clip. So again, if you need to move more air, get more speakers. The Fm9 can easily handle the biggest stadiums on the planet, but only with the right power amp and speaker combination.
 
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