FM3 for REAL Jazz

@abendJazz Is there a specific player you are trying to emulate? One of my favorite guitar players is Peter Bernstein and he gets a wonderful sound with his Zeidler into a Fender - I've seen him use a vintage Vibrolux live and it was phenomenal tone. Tom Ollendorf is another killer player and uses a Moffa archtop into Carr Sportsman (sort of a Fender Princeton with a master volume). Jonathan Kreisberg has a killer sound as well and he's using a 175 into a deluxe I believe.
 
I had to make some by tweaking parameters like Input Trim / Gain, Power Supply Sag, Transformer Drive, Impedance Match, Speaker Breakup... but the results are very satisfying. I have used Polytones and Henriksens, also Acoustic Image Corus. I prefer Fractal into a good FRFR.
 
@abendJazz Jonathan Kreisberg has a killer sound as well and he's using a 175 into a deluxe I believe.
Close, his formula is Fender tube + solid state, preferably a Deluxe and a Polytone, setup in dual mono, but I've seen videos with him using Twins and Jazz Choruses. He was in town here recently and borrowed my Deluxe and Polytone and it sounded incredible! Benson does something similar with a Twin and a Jazz Chorus, if I'm not mistaken.
 
I'm mainly a jazz guitarist and use the Fm3. There's lots of amp in the Fractal that can be used as jazz amps, you just have to find the right settings for you and the right IRs. I don't prefer the typical old school jazz sound, but like many jazz guitarists i like the fender sound.

So princetons, Twin reverbs and deluxe reverbs are all great jazz amps with the right settings in my opinion.

Actually many jazz recordings from the 50s used the tweed deluxe. The well known jazz record producer Rudy Van Gelder had a tweed deluxe in his studio that many guitarists like Grant Green and other used. The trick is to find the right settings.

Barney Kessel used a Gibson Scout if i'm not mistaken. That amp is also in the Fm3.

My prefered amp in the Fm3 for the moment is the Princeton AA964. Here's an video i recorded with that amp model:

Gorgeous.
 
Honestly, I plug my hollow body into the Fm3, vibroluxe with ya 1x10 ir, a bit of compression and reverb. You can push the vibroluxe too if you need bite out of it. The choice of mics helps too depending what you’re looking for.

Semi hollow guitar… I like the two rock a lot with the ya creamback 65 ir.

But still, I can’t tell from the op whether he’s using it and judging it as an amp in the room w/frfr, or recording with it. Two very different situations.

Sean Meredith-Jones
 
It's also possible as others has mentioned to not use an amp block.

The guitarist in this video uses just a compressor block, Eq block, reverb, delay and ir.


I don’t know how to play jazz or have the slightest idea how to craft a jazz tone, but this tone defines the perfect ”jazz tone” for me. YMMV.

EDIT: OMG I just noticed this guy looks exactly like me. Wtf 😂😂😂
 
I'm not a real jazz player by any means, but a couple suggestions.
  • Post some clips of tones you like, to give folks a more specific idea of what you do want.
  • One of my favorite clean amps in the Axe is the Archean Clean. Give it a try, and not just with the default tone settings, try to steer it in a direction you'd like to go.

Good luck :)
 
The thing is, the majority of the sound is not the amp. It’s the guitar and the hands. Great jazz playing has occurred with Teles and Les Pauls, various ES-type guitars, acoustics with sound hole pickups, nylon and gut string guitars, round-wound and flat-wound strings, 8”, 10”, 12” and 15” speakers, tubes, transistors and ICs, and they all worked because the person attached to the hands holding the guitar also turned the knobs and then played in a way that made the listener happy.

It’s not the amp model, it’s the person turning the knobs and vibrating the strings. The rest is just whatever was there.

Something that I learned early on with the Fractals was that some of the most beautiful cleans came from amps that are “known” for rock and roll, but the knobs were adjusted for a clean sound. Some of the most famous rock, blues, and arguably jazz, amps were designed and built by a guy, Howard Dumble, who was known for going for a high-fidelity sound. We can’t, and shouldn’t assume what an amp can do.
Okay, so jazz musicans, that I assure you they usually play thru an amp, dont need any modeler...

Sorry, It's unaccurate. Jazz musicans DO play thru amplifiers that are all but trasparent, but have a Jazz charachter (that I tried to describe many time here in the forum, without success). These amplis are just 'not distorted', not uncolored, and the references amps are:

Polytone, from 70's on
Henriksen, for nowadays

They DO color the sound in a jazz way.

Using stuff for rock'n' roll just in the clean area, isnt a solution, it's just a turnaround with poor results.

I must admit that I'm getting more and more suprised about how 'easy' are rock players on jazz tone, I wonder myself if they're so easy about their sound (read 'clean is clean, distortion is distortion', and that's it) why the hell are there 100's models of exactly the same amp...

And no, I'm not into a special fancy personal unheard jazz tone, I'm JUST and ONLY talking about tha classical tone every player has in mind when thinkng to jazz, after the tone of the great classical jazz guitarists. The ones people talks about here, such as Stern, Lage, or such, THOSE are special, fancy, rock-ish tone.

I insist on this: would you ever say to a rock player: if you're into metal, forget your quest for tone and play any chorused clean tone, I know many intros from Metallica with that sound, so that's the sound of metal...
 
Okay, so jazz musicans, that I assure you they usually play thru an amp, dont need any modeler...

Sorry, It's unaccurate. Jazz musicans DO play thru amplifiers that are all but trasparent, but have a Jazz charachter (that I tried to describe many time here in the forum, without success). These amplis are just 'not distorted', not uncolored, and the references amps are:

Polytone, from 70's on
Henriksen, for nowadays

They DO color the sound in a jazz way.

Using stuff for rock'n' roll just in the clean area, isnt a solution, it's just a turnaround with poor results.

I must admit that I'm getting more and more suprised about how 'easy' are rock players on jazz tone, I wonder myself if they're so easy about their sound (read 'clean is clean, distortion is distortion', and that's it) why the hell are there 100's models of exactly the same amp...

And no, I'm not into a special fancy personal unheard jazz tone, I'm JUST and ONLY talking about tha classical tone every player has in mind when thinkng to jazz, after the tone of the great classical jazz guitarists. The ones people talks about here, such as Stern, Lage, or such, THOSE are special, fancy, rock-ish tone.

I insist on this: would you ever say to a rock player: if you're into metal, forget your quest for tone and play any chorused clean tone, I know many intros from Metallica with that sound, so that's the sound of metal...
You still have not posted a clip of your tone with the sound you like. Why don't you? Then you can get help instead of an argument. (Or are you looking for an argument?)
 
@abendJazz Is there a specific player you are trying to emulate? One of my favorite guitar players is Peter Bernstein and he gets a wonderful sound with his Zeidler into a Fender - I've seen him use a vintage Vibrolux live and it was phenomenal tone. Tom Ollendorf is another killer player and uses a Moffa archtop into Carr Sportsman (sort of a Fender Princeton with a master volume). Jonathan Kreisberg has a killer sound as well and he's using a 175 into a deluxe I believe.
Bernstein has a wonderful tone! Love it!
Just...you dont get that sound from an archtop straight into fender amp, you get a mid-lacking sound with excess of high and bass and 'break-up edge' or sag note attack (sorry I dont know how to say it better in english).
Would be interesting to know how he can get that tone, but I'm definitively sure that the tones recorded in his albums' tracks get a good amount of processing on the board or in mix
 
Honestly, I plug my hollow body into the Fm3, vibroluxe with ya 1x10 ir, a bit of compression and reverb. You can push the vibroluxe too if you need bite out of it. The choice of mics helps too depending what you’re looking for.

Semi hollow guitar… I like the two rock a lot with the ya creamback 65 ir.

But still, I can’t tell from the op whether he’s using it and judging it as an amp in the room w/frfr, or recording with it. Two very different situations.

Sean Meredith-Jones
Thanks for your contribution, very useful since you're already using it!
Can you suggest some settings that makes you happy with those amps tone?
 
http://www.jazzapparatus.com/peter-bernsteins-gear/

ernstein has a wonderful tone! Love it!
Just...you dont get that sound from an archtop straight into fender amp, you get a mid-lacking sound with excess of high and bass and 'break-up edge' or sag note attack (sorry I dont know how to say it better in english).
Would be interesting to know how he can get that tone, but I'm definitively sure that the tones recorded in his albums' tracks get a good amount of processing on the board or in mix
 
The trick with getting fender amps to sound good for jazz is keeping the gain low, set the bass and treble control low ( i often like it between 2 and 3 depending on the amp model). Lowering bass and treble will make the mids sound fuller in comparison. Also the choice of speaker IR is very important. Often the ones rockers use has less low mids, so choose and IR with full mids. I often prefer IRs made with m160 mics or 121 mics.
Often lowering the input trim will get rid off any overdrive in the attack if that's an issue.
 
I am not a purist by any means and I will play whatever I'm getting paid to play.

I think the frustration that electric guitarists who play genres other than rock or pop may feel is the bias that most tools have for those genres.

It may just be a "tyranny of the majority" sort of issue.

I believe the reason they have a ton of Marshalls and Boogies and no Polytone is that there's a big demand for the former and virtually no demand for the latter. People want to play models of their dream amps, even if there's something already in there that can do the same sound. Capitalism is a cruel mistress indeed.

Why was there 20 buxom blondes to every skinny shorthaired brunette on Baywatch back in the day? Well there you go...
 
Gorgeous.
thanks for all the tips about amps, I'll try them asap.
your playing is beautiful, and yes I got that it's the typical choice for 'telecaster' jazzers, with a Fender tube, but you honestly said that you dont go for traditional jazz guitar sound, so that's the answer to different choices :)
 
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