Deadpool’s FM9 Review

Do you notice a difference between FM3 and FM9? (for scene switching).
I don’t have my FM3 anymore but I never had a problem with it. I don’t have a problem with the FM9’s either but that doesn’t mean it is or isn’t different—I just don’t have the ability to compare.
 
Update:
I upgraded to the FM9 Turbo. It's only a slight upgrade but I get near the limit on my kitchen sink type presets so the extra headroom is helpful.

More generally, the quality and capabilities of the Fractal units never ceases to amaze me. I was able to nail the tones of my favorite tube amps (EVH, Mesa, Peavey) and have started selling them off.

Keeley released the Halo and it instantly became my favorite delay pedal of all time. I put that on my FM9 board for a while because it was just plug and play. Recently Fractal released the Aurora delay in the Multi Delay block and it sounds basically identical to the pedal.

Routing is another feature I absolutely love. Some other units can run a parallel effects chain but the ability to run multiple effects all in parallel is very cool. And being able to assign specific ins and outs wherever I want is another amazing capability.

I'm sure there are things you can't quite do on the Fractals but I haven't run into any that are showstoppers. In fact I feel that in terms of tone and rig building, I'm really only limited by my creativity. If I can imagine a rig, I can pretty much build it inside the unit. Phenomenal.
 
I'm sure there are things you can't quite do on the Fractals but I haven't run into any that are showstoppers. In fact I feel that in terms of tone and rig building, I'm really only limited by my creativity. If I can imagine a rig, I can pretty much build it inside the unit. Phenomenal.

This, x1000.

When people ask if they think a Fractal unit is “too much”, especially when they add on ”I’m just a bedroom player”, I never get it. The space you play in doesn’t dictate what you should or shouldn’t use and even if you’re only into one genre now, there’s nothing saying you won’t be into others down the road and want access to more tones. Get it all now!

I was never really interested in classic Strat tones until after I got the AxeFX, now it’s what I play 95% of the time. It’s made me want to learn other styles of music just so I can dig into the tones.
 
This, x1000.

When people ask if they think a Fractal unit is “too much”, especially when they add on ”I’m just a bedroom player”, I never get it. The space you play in doesn’t dictate what you should or shouldn’t use and even if you’re only into one genre now, there’s nothing saying you won’t be into others down the road and want access to more tones. Get it all now!

I was never really interested in classic Strat tones until after I got the AxeFX, now it’s what I play 95% of the time. It’s made me want to learn other styles of music just so I can dig into the tones.
What are your go-to amp models for your Strat stuff?
 
What are your go-to amp models for your Strat stuff?

Every time I start exploring I find more I love, but the bigger ones-

JTM45
Bassman
Superlead
FAS Hot Rod
Brit 800 Mod
Toucana Clean

THe JTM45, Superlead and Brit 800 Mod are this week’s favorites. I have a ’Strat Marshall’ preset that goes up in gain stages with those amps and they sound killer on their own or throwing pedals in front of them.

This is a little couch noodle with the Bassman and a couple dirt pedals, coming out real cabs. The camera doesn’t pick up the low end all that well, but that’s one of my favorite things about those amps; that deep low end thump that is present even at apartment volumes.



I just got onto the Brit 800 Mod last night and man, that thing rips!
 
This, x1000.

When people ask if they think a Fractal unit is “too much”, especially when they add on ”I’m just a bedroom player”, I never get it. The space you play in doesn’t dictate what you should or shouldn’t use and even if you’re only into one genre now, there’s nothing saying you won’t be into others down the road and want access to more tones. Get it all now!

I was never really interested in classic Strat tones until after I got the AxeFX, now it’s what I play 95% of the time. It’s made me want to learn other styles of music just so I can dig into the tones.
This last year I decided to quit gigging and focus more on my family, so I've become a bedroom player. Since owning the FM9, I can say that believe it or not my playing has improved and I have more fun playing.

I also sold off my amps, which allowed me to explore more guitars. In the past, I've been a one guitar Les Paul kind of guy. Now, I've got the LP, a GREAT Strat, and a telecaster I recently built. Instead of spending all of my time and finances on pedals and amps, I'm loving learning the instruments I have.

To your last point, I feel the same. I never would have bought a strat if I hadn't found the Fractal. I'm finding the most enjoyment playing funk and fusion styles (with a strat to boot!!) and now I'm looking for different styles and challenging myself.
 
Every time I start exploring I find more I love, but the bigger ones-

JTM45
Bassman
Superlead
FAS Hot Rod
Brit 800 Mod
Toucana Clean

THe JTM45, Superlead and Brit 800 Mod are this week’s favorites. I have a ’Strat Marshall’ preset that goes up in gain stages with those amps and they sound killer on their own or throwing pedals in front of them.

This is a little couch noodle with the Bassman and a couple dirt pedals, coming out real cabs. The camera doesn’t pick up the low end all that well, but that’s one of my favorite things about those amps; that deep low end thump that is present even at apartment volumes.



I just got onto the Brit 800 Mod last night and man, that thing rips!

Sounds great man! For Strat style clean stuff I end up gravitating towards Mayer stuff so I end up using the Two Stone, the SSS "trick", or one of the Fender models. Actually I often blend a couple of those. But I've also noticed I can get a great clean out of many of the models. I also saw a video yesterday that discussed a few tweaks I want to experiment with in the amp block.
 
Ok. Initial review: Holy ****. I’m in love.

I wired up and fired up the pictured rig. I’m running an XLR to TS cable from Output 1 L to the 6L6’s FX return and Output 1 R to the Stealth’s FX return. The I disabled cabinet modeling and left power amp modeling on.

I haven’t even connected it to FM9 edit yet (in fact I haven’t even installed that yet, oops). All I’ve done so far is start going through factory presets (some but not all of the scenes in each preset). I think every preset I tried (only up to 27 so far) is usable depending on what you’re playing. that’s super cool imo.

Running this through the EVH FX loops is stupid good. The setup is dead quiet. Seriously no hum, no hiss. I love playing through a real tube power amp and cab. With my old AxeFX II I tried a solid state power amp into real cabs and it just wast quite the same. With that said when I play my FM3 (loud) through the HS7s it’s also exceptional. I haven’t used the FM9 through them yet but obviously it’ll sound just as awesome. But going through the amp FX loops and real cabs just blows me away. I’m not sure I could ask for a better rig for what I want.

Interestingly I have yet to get into any dual amp presets. The ability to run dual amps is a big reason I wanted this unit to exist so I’m excited to do so. Right out of the box though I’m feeling like my initial impression from when it was announced—that the FM9 would be absolutely perfect for me—was spot on.

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The Les Paul looks very JP with the uncovered bridge pup. Wired JP style I assume?
 
Sounds great man! For Strat style clean stuff I end up gravitating towards Mayer stuff so I end up using the Two Stone, the SSS "trick", or one of the Fender models. Actually I often blend a couple of those. But I've also noticed I can get a great clean out of many of the models. I also saw a video yesterday that discussed a few tweaks I want to experiment with in the amp block.


Man, I’ve ignored the Two Stones quite a bit, I don’t think I’ve tried one since I got a Strat, or maybe just once trying to go for an EJ rhythm tone because he was using Two Rocks for a little while. I’ll have to give them a shot.

Getting great cleans should never be a hard thing to do on a Strat, so I hope you’re getting some great cleans! I really dig setting the amp so when the guitar volume is full up, I can smack the strings and get some break up, but rolling the knob down to 8 cleans it right up, from there I’d rather stack drives in front to work my way up in gain. I’m currently figuring out which amp I want to buy to do exactly this with. I’ll check this vid out tonight for sure!
 
The Les Paul looks very JP with the uncovered bridge pup. Wired JP style I assume?
That was a Seymour Duncan DDJ. It was my Adam Jones/Tool guitar. I've since sold that guitar because it was a lot of money wrapped up in a guitar I wasn't playing very much. I basically replaced it with an Epiphone Adam Jones sig.
35886924-FE7F-46C3-A814-00E6C7C410A3.jpeg
 
Man, I’ve ignored the Two Stones quite a bit, I don’t think I’ve tried one since I got a Strat, or maybe just once trying to go for an EJ rhythm tone because he was using Two Rocks for a little while. I’ll have to give them a shot.

Getting great cleans should never be a hard thing to do on a Strat, so I hope you’re getting some great cleans! I really dig setting the amp so when the guitar volume is full up, I can smack the strings and get some break up, but rolling the knob down to 8 cleans it right up, from there I’d rather stack drives in front to work my way up in gain. I’m currently figuring out which amp I want to buy to do exactly this with. I’ll check this vid out tonight for sure!
Oh yeah, I'm getting great cleans already. My Fender JM sig is amazing. So is my partscaster tbh. And the Strandbergs...and the Teles...lol.

You might also check out @jkaneshiro23 Presets and YouTube channel. He's mostly focused on JM tones but those big cleans are just phenomenal no matter what you're playing if going for clean tones.
 
This thing is ridiculous.

Being a bit of a 5153 fan, I decided to play around with an all EVH amp based preset. I wanted a very clean tone reminiscent of the EL34 head. That amp isn't modeled but that's fine. I put the 100w green model in the amp 1 block with gain and input trim down pretty low. That gave quite a nice clean sound but lowered the volume a bit so I compensated by bumping the level up a little. I made a few tonal adjustments and ended up with a pretty good clean.

Then I setup an expression pedal to increase the gain and input trim, while at the same time lowering volume a little. This way I could morph between clean and a pretty nice crunch. I wasn't close to done though.

Next I added the amp 2 block parallel to amp 1. I loaded the EVH 50w blue model and set it about as clean as I could get it; the gain and input trim are really low. I setup the same expression pedal similarly to how I did for the green model in amp 1, so it take the blue from clean to quite a heavy rhythm tone.

Still not quite done, I set the same expression pedal to control a mixer block that fades between the amp 1 and amp 2 blocks.

The end of this session was setting the same expression pedal to adjust the gate threshold a bit when fading between clean and high gain.

So now I have a nice smooth morph from a good clean tone, through low and mid gain tones, up to a great high gain tone.

Kinda silly how easy it is to do things like that that would be quite complicated or impossible on a normal rig....or even other modelers.

Damn I love my FM9.

I guess I should put a pic of the setup in this thread. It's WDW with a Fender FR-12 in the middle, flanked by a pair of PXM-12MPs.

IMG_3752.jpeg
 
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