Can't find a good high gain tone

P

prk_0721

New Member
Help, I bought the FM3 a week ago and have spent a few hours everyday trying to find a great high gain tone like what I have in my Kemper stage.
I'm playing through an EV ZLX200 speaker, guitar is a Suhr standard with EMG 85/SA/SA pickups.

  • The FM3 sounds very good and "real" for cleans and mid-gain crunch sounds. The top-end is very realistic compared to when playing real amps.
  • But the high gain sound I get were too "clear", not liquid or and saturated like what I get through my kemper or real amps. Cranking the gain, input boost or saturation result in more gain and mud but does not "liquify" or thicken the sound.
  • Strangely, palm muting the low E produce little bass while the low A produce too much resonating bass. I know the EQ of EMG pickups have some kind of a low cut, but this guitar sounds fine through my kemper and amps (marshall jubilee and orange TH30), the low end on my FM3 just felt very unnatural.
  • Adding a drive in front of the amp always sound worse than the amp on its own, unnatural bass cut and honky solid-state like mids. My Maxon OD and BB preamp does not do this with my amps.

Tried many combinations and the best I found so far is 5153 100w red, Splawn nitrous, and the IR I use factory 5153 SM57 H (It's no. 338 in the list) paired with something darker. Even then it falls short of what I'm looking for. Will try to tweak the unit for another 1-2 weeks and sell it if I still can't anything satisfactory.
 
In this forum you can find a lot of great players and sound engineers... but to reply to your "decision" you should write it down in a "question" form...
  1. what's the sound you're looking for (post recordings)
  2. what's your current preset (post preset)
  3. if you're already happy with another device.. use it! or post the sound clips (point 1)
High gain is a little bit generic... you already have on the FM3 some great examples to try out.. like the live tone of @2112 or the updated Petrucci Rig made by @Cooper Carter... does they sound any good for you? use them as a starting point?
 
This may not help, but how high is your master vol in the amp sims you're using? I'd lower that considerably and test. In my experience, many Kemper profiles are made with the (amp) master vol fairly low. That tends to affect how mutes feel.
 
jlynnb1 said:
the KPA also has an exaggerated midrange compression that makes the profiles feel unnaturally fluid/easy to play.
Click to expand...
The most "fluid" feeling when playing I've experienced was with NDSP plugins. It didn't sound too compressed, but the feel of all notes being even was there. I'm actually trying to get same sound with FM3 but falling short each time. Compressors don't really help, changing the sound in a way I don't like, and too much distortion is not my style.
Any suggestions? :)
 
I understand your frustration. I too often struggle with the sound in my head not being replicated by the Fractal. But it's not the Fractal unit. It's that I overall suck at dialing in "my tones" and the factory presets often sound different on my recordings vs what I hear through my headphones. I have zero experience with the Kemper but by all means, if you like the Kemper sounds, you should use the Kemper.
 
Dimi Guitar said:
This may not help, but how high is your master vol in the amp sims you're using? I'd lower that considerably and test. In my experience, many Kemper profiles are made with the (amp) master vol fairly low. That tends to affect how mutes feel.
Click to expand...
+1 for the prudent advice!

Most high-gain amps aren't really designed to be run with high master volume settings. Saturating an amp's power section rounds transients peaks and will cause farting in mids and lows at the extremes. It's pretty much the opposite of what modern players require.

I would suggest resetting the amp block, and then looping a chugga-chugga riff with the default settings. Experiment with the gain and master volume controls to tailor the amp's response to the character you like. Then, explore IRs or dial in a Dyna until it sounds like your sound. With high gain tones I typically find a fairly narrow range where the power section saturation is compressing and enhancing the sound while retaining tightness and definition. Let your ears be the guide and don't worry about the numbers. Also, consider a high pass on the amp's Input EQ if your low end is still too loosey-goosey.

Worth noting as well that if you're brand new to the Fractal stuff, the whole IR selection thing can be pretty disorienting at first. It's not supposed to sound like an amp--but the amp through a microphone. What really helped me out was my decision to run the FM3 as a "traditional" amp, that is, sending the preamp signal into a power amp and out through a real cab, more akin to a Kemper unit. It helped me a get a much better handle on creating sounds I liked, and I subsequently found it much easier to go back and select IRs after I already loved my sound in the room rather than the other way around.

There are similarities across devices, sure, but they have fundamentally different operating concepts. Not better or worse, but like anything else, it's gonna take some time and experimentation to become proficient. I guarantee though that having complete control over every aspect of your tone is well worth the learning curve.
 
Last edited:
Chromatizm said:
The most "fluid" feeling when playing I've experienced was with NDSP plugins. It didn't sound too compressed, but the feel of all notes being even was there. I'm actually trying to get same sound with FM3 but falling short each time. Compressors don't really help, changing the sound in a way I don't like, and too much distortion is not my style.
Any suggestions? :)
Click to expand...
The multi-band compressor is capable of some really great smoothing/enhancing. Just use low ratios and allow it to gently kiss your signal. Parallel compression can also be great for this sort of thing as well, either before or after the amp block. You can get away with some surprisingly extreme settings by blending a small amount of it back into the original signal using the mix knob.

I'm familiar with the "fluid" thing you're talking about and it could really be the result of a ton of factors. It could be of an impedance mis-match while plugged into your DAW. It could be that Neural is doing some clever compression/frequency management behind the curtain to give that feeling of smoothness. You could be hitting the plugin slightly above its intended reference level and squishing your dynamics a bit. Tons of possibilities. Whatever it is sure feels rad to play though, even if it isn't technically "accurate".
 
Last edited:
kywabunga said:
The multi-band compressor is capable of some really great smoothing/enhancing. Just use low ratios and allow it to gently kiss your signal. Parallel compression can also be great for this sort of thing as well, either before or after the amp block. You can get away with some surprisingly extreme settings by blending a small amount of it back into the original signal using the mix knob.

I'm familiar with the "fluid" thing you're talking about and it could really be the result of a ton of factors. It could be of an impedance mis-match while plugged into your DAW. It could be that Neural is doing some clever compression/frequency management behind the curtain to give that feeling of smoothness. You could be hitting the plugin slightly above its intended reference level and squishing your dynamics a bit. Tons of possibilities. Whatever it is sure feels rad to play though, even if it isn't technically "accurate".
Click to expand...
I think a while back Cliff posted some frequency analysis graphs that showed that the Neural stuff had more even order a less odd order harmonics than a real amp, meaning they might be "sweetening" the sound a little in their models.
 
Good to see OP returning and helping other people help him 🤦‍♂️

Its a bit of a grinchy response from me but asking for help/complaining in forums then dipping out seems to be a pretty constant thing. Like did you want help or just a one way vent?

Either way a demo of what your recorded tone sounds like now with a sample of something like you want it to sound like would be a good help. I find all the abstract talk kind of gets lost from person to person whereas hard examples speak for themselves.
 
IronSean said:
I think a while back Cliff posted some frequency analysis graphs that showed that the Neural stuff had more even order a less odd order harmonics than a real amp, meaning they might be "sweetening" the sound a little in their models.
Click to expand...
This makes a ton of sense.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom