Kelleys Heroes
Experienced
I've had my FM3 for several months now, but like many others I've had limited opportunity to use it in a live situation. In the past month I picked up 6 gigs, and used the FM3 exclusively for all of them (along with an FC-6). I’m a tube/analog guy all the way, so this was uncharted territory for me!
The gigs were a trio situation, and I switched between Electric and Acoustic. It was nice to have both plugged in at the same time, and to have different presets that would mute the other instrument. The downside to this was that the tuner is only active in one of the inputs at a time. Easy enough to change on the fly, but the dreaded snark tuner got the call instead!
Some of the gigs had great house sound and monitors, but a few had PA for vocals only. My Atomic CLR was used in that case, plus one time as a stage monitor. Spending the time to level your presets is crucial to using the FM3 seamlessly.
I used Austin Buddy presets, except for my acoustic preset. This was crucial, since I wanted to have 5-6 different amp sounds all ready with my own effects. Dumble, AC-20, Super and Deluxe Reverbs and a Texas Lonestar were my initial choices. And then after each gig I tweaked them again, and added another amp model for each subsequent gig. The sounds were all great, my bandmates and sound people all gave compliments.
Overall I am very happy with using the FM3, but if you are used to always making minor adjustments to your sounds, you are adding precious time in between song-changes. The learning curve for a plug and play guitarist like myself is considerable, but partly because there is so much you can do with the unit, it is tempting to start adding things to your rig you might not have otherwise considered.
I don’t know, maybe when my gig schedule resumes sometime in 2021 ( I hope), maybe I will feel compelled to drag around my old Fender amps again, but I doubt it!
The gigs were a trio situation, and I switched between Electric and Acoustic. It was nice to have both plugged in at the same time, and to have different presets that would mute the other instrument. The downside to this was that the tuner is only active in one of the inputs at a time. Easy enough to change on the fly, but the dreaded snark tuner got the call instead!
Some of the gigs had great house sound and monitors, but a few had PA for vocals only. My Atomic CLR was used in that case, plus one time as a stage monitor. Spending the time to level your presets is crucial to using the FM3 seamlessly.
I used Austin Buddy presets, except for my acoustic preset. This was crucial, since I wanted to have 5-6 different amp sounds all ready with my own effects. Dumble, AC-20, Super and Deluxe Reverbs and a Texas Lonestar were my initial choices. And then after each gig I tweaked them again, and added another amp model for each subsequent gig. The sounds were all great, my bandmates and sound people all gave compliments.
Overall I am very happy with using the FM3, but if you are used to always making minor adjustments to your sounds, you are adding precious time in between song-changes. The learning curve for a plug and play guitarist like myself is considerable, but partly because there is so much you can do with the unit, it is tempting to start adding things to your rig you might not have otherwise considered.
I don’t know, maybe when my gig schedule resumes sometime in 2021 ( I hope), maybe I will feel compelled to drag around my old Fender amps again, but I doubt it!
