FM3 for REAL Jazz

A

abendJazz

Member
Good morning to all users,
I just got my FM3 and I'm ready to work on it to get a jazz guitar sound.

First of all, I want to apologize if this is not the right part of the Forum, I posted here and in the Presets sections, in case tell me where is better to post it and feel free as Administrators to delete/move to right place, thank you in advance :)

So far, I checked all ampli but I cant find any jazz oriented amplifier. I want to start a topic about jazz guitar, firstly as a 'cry of pain' for the disappointment about lack of jazz amps, then to know (if possible) what's the technical issue (if any) to model amps for this musical genre, and then to start a positive, propositive way to share real solutions and solve this issue.

How do you guys get a good jazz sound out of it?
Why tthere's NO ONE popular jazz amp modelled in this unit (and in all other modelling units, for that matter)? Don't tell me bc of lack of users, I see modelled amps that 99% of people have no idea they could even be existed dozens years ago and they are unfindable on the market and maybe played just ONCE by a (not so) famous guitaritsts, still they are perfectly modelled and loaded in the FM3. What happens with jazz amps? What's the issue to model a simple, popular and vastly used amp as a Polytone or an Henriksen (that would be enough, btw)?

RULES FOR THE DISCUSSION:
1. NO Roland Jazz Chorus: despite the name, it's a strange amp with big clean headroom, yet it's commonly NOT used for jazz just bc it DOES NOT has a typical jazz sound
2. FENDERs: you can force some of them to simulate a sort jazz sound, but they're not intended primary for jazz, that valve attack sound and small headroom are not good for classic jazz (of course EVERYBODY KNOWS they were used ALSO for jazz in the '50, '60, such as unknown amps or direct in the board like Joe Pass, still that's not what an average nowadays jazz player would to look for). It seems that Fenders are the preferred jazz amps to give to a jazz guitarists by rehearsals studios managers because they dont have specific amps for jazz, you find yourself playing jazz chords with a 'funky' attack and when you complain they answer 'everybody play jazz with fenders' that is totally false, they're not the first choice for any guitarists that play jazz, maybe for those that play 'also' some jazz. Personally, I use to struggle 1hr on tone controls and all, why other band members swear at me :)), but can get a barely usable jazz tone out of them like once in 12 times.
3. using only PEQ maybe with a clean preamp, is NOT the answer: I dont need 1400 euros fractal device for that, I want to use the capability of this device and go stright into the board with a jazz sound, FM3 is meant for that right? I didnt buy it as an FX unit to add to a real amp or cab.
4. PLEASE avoid answers like: 'any amp played clean', 'Mike Stern uses fender guitars, chorus, dist, go for that', 'depends what you mean for jazz, many players I know they play fender/Bogner/younameit with distortion' eìtc etc. I mean, I'm not into rock and for me any amp crancked up in distortion is good for that music, but I know rock people can recognize so subtle differences in distortions that they need tons of different amps, that for me are exactly the same, to get what they need. Please respect that other musical genres are as much as picky in their own pitch. Effective jazz sound is not 'any clean amp or no amp with trebles rolled off' and is the exact inverse of a contemporary Fender amp, where you have a hole in the mids and overwhelming basses and trebles with a sparkling edgy 'crunchy' valve attack, instead we need prominence of good sweet mids, with rounded high and bass, yet a good 'umph' in the attack without sparkles or any crunchy 'edge'.
5. So far, I am aware of the high level of FM3, both amp and fx wise, and the quality sound it produces, so please avoid to answer just to tell that FM3 is great, we already know that and I have NO DOUBTS about it :)

Thank you to all and hope this can become an interesting discussion.
Fabio
 
Honestly, if you are talking about amplifying a non-laminate, spruce-top, archtop's tone with all that complexity intact, the best jazz tones I have heard are achieved by running the signal straight into the board through a good direct box. I am not trying to be a contrarian, however, Fractal is clearly focused on amps as extreme tone modifiers whereas traditional jazz guitar tone tends to be more about preserving more than molding.

I am so glad you called out the Roland "Jazz" Chorus series. I have rarely heard one of those sound good for any genre.

The best jazz amp I personally ever had was a Standel Super Artist loaded with a JBL 15" speaker.
 
I think there actually are some Jazz stuff in the factory presets a Joe Pass , I don’t recall the amp but I have definitely seen some presets
 
I didn’t read the whole post but I’m using the Mesa boogie lone star amp. This amp sounds better than my real Mesa boogie California tweed. I have a real henriksen jazz amp and honestly the lone star sounds better in the axe.

I must point out that I’m also using a freyette lx in and a Mesa boogie cab with the axe.

I am very picky about my jazz tone and I am very experienced with jazz guitar so hopefully you’ll give the amp a try. I was also very frustrated about the lack of jazz amps
 
Ciao markwayne, thanks for your reply.
Well, also but not exactly. That's a great sound, but a standard, 'classical mainstream', jazz sound is not an acoustic boutique sound with a splash of 'electric'.
Instead, it's the typical sound you can find in most important jazz guitar recording, something around a Gibson 175/L5 with a Polytone or another SS Amp.
Reference can be recording from Joe Pass, Wes, Jim Hall, Grant Green, just to name a few.

Actually I thank you for your answer also because it's kinda 'exemplificative' of what I meant in the first post:
anyone into (or around) jazz knows what a jazz guitar sound is, but when it comes to a discussion, most of the people just partecipate pointing out something else, that of course was used here and there by some guitarists, but you cant call it THE jazz guitar sound.
In this way discussion, unfortunately, tend to loose value and interests, because the topic became messy and unclear.
That's what I tried to 'limit' in the first post.

As an example, of course ALSO metalheads play clean sometimes, but I'm not helping someone asking me how to get a real metal sound if I answer 'play clean with a lot of chorus', because everybody knows that 99.99% that's not what that guy is asking for.
I feel exactly like this reading most of threads about jazz sound in this forum, that's why I wanted to try my 'shot' to get finally something else.

Cheers and thanks to you :)
 
djdannyp said:
George Benson, and many other users of the Fender Twin Reverb would beg to disagree.
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Yea that is a great amp for sure. Lage Lund, Mike Moreno, Julian Lage, Ben euson, Gilda’s hekselman and Romain pilon also love the amp. I do understand why some people don’t like it. I didn’t dig the one in the axe fix until I used it with a real cab.
 
Ciao Fixated,
that's interesting and somewhat unexpected, thank you so much, I'll try ASAP.
And yeah, you understood me totally: we have to do 'acrobatics' with amps intended for completely other stuff and force them to get maybe somewhere near but not on what we need, because the few amps we need are never modeled, while you have literally DOZEN versions of the same rock amp with almost not perceivable differences...
Why? It's a mistery to me.
Also a bigger choice of studio preamps could be useful, for sure more than the 120th version of the same Marshall amp.
 
abendJazz said:
Ciao Fixated,
that's interesting and somewhat unexpected, thank you so much, I'll try ASAP.
And yeah, you understood me totally: we have to do 'acrobatics' with amps intended for completely other stuff and force them to get maybe somewhere near but not on what we need, because the few amps we need are never modeled, while you have literally DOZEN versions of the same rock amp with almost not perceivable differences...
Why? It's a mistery to me.
Also a bigger choice of studio preamps could be useful, for sure more than the 120th version of the same Marshall amp.
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If you want you can dm or post a clip of your tone if you’re not happy with it and I can give some axe fx oriented tips on a jazz tone.
 
Well, what kind of guitar are you using? What pickup? What strings? Which player has the tone you're after? What don't you like about the sound you're getting? Which models have you tried? What are you monitoring through?

Sean Meredith-Jones
 
djdannyp, thank for your contribution.
Would you classify George Benson or Lage Lund as the standard jazz guitar sound or a variation of it?
I wrote a huge forst post exactly to explain that I'm looking for the standard, basic, classical jazz guitar sound you listen in recordings and that it's not useful to answer pointing out guitar players with another sound saying 'but they play jazz...'
I would never answer to a quest for metal sound suggesting, idk, a Fender Tweed 20w because I heard a metal head used it for a clean choruswed arpeggio.
 
I understand where you are coming from. I'm very familiar with classic jazz guitar tone you seek and, IMHO, a great deal of it comes from a time when the technology wasn't there and people were making all kinds of compromises just to to make their instruments louder. This can be mimicked in the Fractal world without using an amp model. My question would be why?

The first time I got a chance to play a really nice archtop that happened to be in my luthier's shop one evening, I realized that I would rather just stick a mic on that box than even mess with a guitar amp. It was just so expressive and deep, I was hooked.
 
thanks smj,
well that is the other type of answer usually we get: what are your equipment? read 'the problem very likely is you'.
With my setup, completely jazz-wise as that's the music I like and play, I get immediately and easily perfect jazz tone out of any jazz oriented amp.
That's the problem, not my equipment :)
 
One thing I want to also point out is that m I was watching a new kurt rosewinkle gig on YouTube and noticed that he was using the fm9 for the effects but chose to keep using a real amp.
 
Fixated said:
If you want you can dm or post a clip of your tone if you’re not happy with it and I can give some axe fx oriented tips on a jazz tone.
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That's so nice from you! Thank you so much! I'll do it for sure asap (I'm actually on trip for work for few days).
Also if you'd be so kind to share your presets, It'd be awesome. Of course I'll share mine too as soon as they are convincing :)
 
As someone who's primarily played jazz for over 20 years, I would push back a lot on the assertion that Fender amps are "not what an average nowadays jazz player would to look for." My amp of choice for years before going digital was a Deluxe Reverb and most of the guys in my area that aren't doing the Henrikson or Quilter thing are all using Deluxe Reverbs or some other small Fender.

IRs make a huge difference in tone. I own an early 80's Polytone Minibrute IV and I can get that sound easily in the FM3 using the Jazz Chorus with a Polytone IR. Dr. Bonkers has several Polytone IRs for sale on his website for super cheap. The 15" one is what I use and it sounds like my Polytone. All of those solid-state, super clean amps are all doing the same thing: ultra-linear response with no breakup. Because of this, yes, any clean amp will get you that sound. The biggest difference is the tone stack (which is switchable in the advanced settings in the amp block and the source of the Fender scoop) and especially the IR that you use with it. The thing that makes a Jazz Chorus sound like a Jazz Chorus are those two 12" speakers in the cabinet. The only difference between the Minibrute I and IIs and the IIIs and IVs are 12" vs 15" speakers (and reverb).

I'd recommend giving the Dr. Bonkers Polytone IRs a shot with the Jazz Chorus model. That should get you where you want for the classic, flatwound archtop sound.
 
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Tonestack and IR, otherwise clean is clean.

You can try one of the active tonestacks, or Roland/Dumble perhaps, or you can essentially flatten many passive tonestacks by diming the mids with the lows and highs way down or off to taste (M/F/V tonestacks etc), or even use the Null tonestack with the input and output EQ's or external EQ blocks.

You can use the Amp Block's Input and Master Trims to clean things up, so there are lots of ways to get where you're going with any number of primarily two gain stage amps, or the Tube-Pre (the Axe FX's greatest super powers are lurking in the amp block's advanced tabs!).
 
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I’m not a jazz guy, so forgive the lack of knowledge. But all jazz players don’t sound the same. They surely are not using some unobtainable amp that only jazz guys know about. I’m certain many have used common amp types, for no other reason than that is what is available to them. For my benefit:

1 What amplifiers are hugely popular and used by many successful jazz artists that aren’t in the Fractal units?
2. Which amplifiers, specifically, have you used to get this elusive tone?

With hundreds of amp models at your disposal, I’m certain there are amps available that have been used on many jazz recordings. I’m very curious to know what is missing. Again, please forgive my ”outsider” questions, but even we non-jazzers are curious about the tone quest of others.
 
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