kirkpetrucci
Member
Hey guys, I don't post here too often, but I thought I'd post this story about FW10.
I play in rhythm/lead guitar in Threat Signal and the Jeff Loomis Band. I did a tour with Jeff's band a few months back, and we were out with the band Soilwork. During our rehearsals I was using FW9. IMO it sounded awesome, and I loved the patches that I had made. We got to rehearsal, and Jeff is using a modeler from an unnamed company. We were all running direct, and we all couldn't help but notice that my guitar sound was lacking and somewhat harsh in the high end compared to Jeff's rig. Now, this is probably most due to how I had my patches tweaked. After rehearsing for 3-4 days, I just wasn't satisfied with my guitar tone.....I knew it was lacking something, but couldn't figure out what.
We get to the first show of this two month long trek across North America, and I HAD to get this tone issue sorted out. I'm a tone freak, and can't stand it when I'm not completely satisfied with my tone
. So, I message Matt Picone about FW10, and being the super cool guy that he is, he sent me the latest working beta that Fractal had at the time. Now, I know this is stupid in most people's eyes, but I took a huge risk and updated to FW10 an hour before we hit the stage for our first show. I sat there and waited for it to install onto the Axe-fx, plugged my guitar in, plugged in some Skullcandy Aviator headphones (yes, believe it or not, I tweaked my first FW10 tones for the tour on these).....and was amazed!! Everything sounded so live and real. The dynamics were just like the actual amps, and this firmware added what IMO was missing from the past versions. The "thunk" control! Everything finally had that cab "weight" to it, and sounded so punchy.
I was getting tons of compliments from people about how awesome my tone was. I had people tell me that my tone was a lot more real sounding than other band's tones that use the Axe-fx, and they loved that aspect. Not only did fans and other bands on the tour notice, but Jeff noticed and gave me a huge compliment as well! Multiple times throughout the tour he looked to me at soundcheck and said "Damn....I can't get over how awesome your tone is!". Remember what I said he was using at the beginning of this post? Very cool to hear that from someone like Jeff.
That goes to show you how amazing FW10 is, and that you can even tweak some patches an hour before you go on stage with Skullcandy headphones....and still sound awesome.
Keep an eye out for some videos that Jeff and I are going to be doing with Fractal sometime in the (hopefully) near future!
- Travis
I play in rhythm/lead guitar in Threat Signal and the Jeff Loomis Band. I did a tour with Jeff's band a few months back, and we were out with the band Soilwork. During our rehearsals I was using FW9. IMO it sounded awesome, and I loved the patches that I had made. We got to rehearsal, and Jeff is using a modeler from an unnamed company. We were all running direct, and we all couldn't help but notice that my guitar sound was lacking and somewhat harsh in the high end compared to Jeff's rig. Now, this is probably most due to how I had my patches tweaked. After rehearsing for 3-4 days, I just wasn't satisfied with my guitar tone.....I knew it was lacking something, but couldn't figure out what.
We get to the first show of this two month long trek across North America, and I HAD to get this tone issue sorted out. I'm a tone freak, and can't stand it when I'm not completely satisfied with my tone
. So, I message Matt Picone about FW10, and being the super cool guy that he is, he sent me the latest working beta that Fractal had at the time. Now, I know this is stupid in most people's eyes, but I took a huge risk and updated to FW10 an hour before we hit the stage for our first show. I sat there and waited for it to install onto the Axe-fx, plugged my guitar in, plugged in some Skullcandy Aviator headphones (yes, believe it or not, I tweaked my first FW10 tones for the tour on these).....and was amazed!! Everything sounded so live and real. The dynamics were just like the actual amps, and this firmware added what IMO was missing from the past versions. The "thunk" control! Everything finally had that cab "weight" to it, and sounded so punchy.I was getting tons of compliments from people about how awesome my tone was. I had people tell me that my tone was a lot more real sounding than other band's tones that use the Axe-fx, and they loved that aspect. Not only did fans and other bands on the tour notice, but Jeff noticed and gave me a huge compliment as well! Multiple times throughout the tour he looked to me at soundcheck and said "Damn....I can't get over how awesome your tone is!". Remember what I said he was using at the beginning of this post
? Very cool to hear that from someone like Jeff.That goes to show you how amazing FW10 is, and that you can even tweak some patches an hour before you go on stage with Skullcandy headphones....and still sound awesome
. Keep an eye out for some videos that Jeff and I are going to be doing with Fractal sometime in the (hopefully) near future!
- Travis
