The very best place to start is to plug in your guitar and step through the factory presets. Turn up the volume to 90db, loud enough to be a good simulation of a live band setting. That’s important to get some acoustic coupling with the guitar and to avoid the Fletcher-Munsen effect from affecting what you hear. Fractal put significant effort into tuning the presets for the Cygnus firmware to highlight the unit, and there are some great sounds and examples of how to do things. Copy the presets you like to a separate bank, then continue listening. When you finally get through them, take the first one you liked and tweak it to your taste. Again, remember to adjust the EQ of a preset at band volume or you risk getting too much bass and/or treble. If you plug the unit into a set of good neutral powered monitors or FOH speakers you can quickly get very workable sound from the factory presets then build your own presets from scratch at your leisure.
The Snapshot tool (the little camera icon) toward the top-right of the editor is handy when editing because you can revert changes. Before you start making changes click the camera to save the starting point, then click it when you are at a spot you want to remember. Finally click Save when you are happy with it. At that point you might want to tell the editor to save the preset’s blocks to the library to begin assembling building blocks for your own presets; that’s found under the Preset menu.
When you have made it through the presets you copied you should have a good collection of various blocks. Read the manual to get the concept of presets, scenes and channels, then start building your own presets. At that point you will have questions so ask a specific question about something in the sub-forum, attach your preset, and we’ll try to help.
As a starting point, read
https://wiki.fractalaudio.com/wiki/index.php?title=Presets#Guidelines_for_creating_presets and
https://wiki.fractalaudio.com/wiki/...odels_list#FRIEDMAN_BE_2010_.28Friedman_BE.29 for rock sounds and
https://wiki.fractalaudio.com/wiki/...ace.2Fblackface_Fender_Bandmaster.2C_AB763.29 for cleans and be sure to follow the links to Yek’s write-ups about the amps.
Remember to backup the system and presets often. The files can be compressed and archived into a single file that is smaller than a single bank’s file so they won’t take much room.
The manual is worth reading several times, along with the blocks manual. The wiki is full of great information so read through pages to get tips collected from the forum.
Leon Todd and Cooper Carter have great demo videos on YouTube that are worth watching.
The stand-alone Fractal-Bot has been integrated into the editor, so you probably won’t need the standalone version. Don’t try to run it at the same time as the editor: they’re mutually exclusive and can’t run at the same time.
Don’t write off the sound of the built-in amps and cabs immediately, they’re very powerful and flexible. Some people want a standard cab but you lose some of the flexibility the unit offers.
