FM3 for REAL Jazz

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 :)

Try it out.

Another amp i use on the Fm3 sometimes with my 335 is the ODS-clean. On that amp though i have found i like the treble a little higher, and i also turn down the master volume knob to avoid poweramp distortion.

Here's a sample of that ODS-100 clean sound. It's from a video lesson i made on phrasing exercises.

I do like that the amp compresses a bit, so i have the gain a bit higher on this video. But if you want it cleaner just lower the gain.

 
I always thought jazz was kind of a counter culture movement of the time, break away from the confines, free form, opposite of big band eta standards etc etc

Seems having to have a required amp, is just like falling in line with the society jazz reveled against no ?

It’s like if you need to wear a punk rock uniform from Hot Topic at the mall your missing the spirit of punk rock in the first place
 
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...
Precisely, that is the very definition of "tyranny of the majority". It is an inherent weakness in democracy (and capitalism) which was coined by Alexis de Tocqueville. I was simply pointing out that this problem is not new. It is the reason left-handedness was seen as a real disadvantage when I was boy and, therefore, my parents choose to force right-handness on me.
 
I think the real problem here is that "REAL jazz" tone that the OP is looking for is a fictional subset of jazz tones. Although he's not mentioned any players who have that sound he's looking for, he has mentioned a lot who aren't. The truth is Polytones and Henricksons didn't exist back in the early days of jazz. Players just played through whatever was available, which was a lot of Fenders at the time. Even today, someone like Peter Bernstein, Gilad Heckselman, Lage Lund, or Julian Lage (when he's playing an archtop) all play through Fenders. None of them are doing the Polytone thing. Even players like Benson or Kriesberg are doing a solid state paired with Fender approach and never a solid state alone. The truth is that there isn't this one, monolithic "REAL jazz" tone and there never was. It has always been a variety of clean amps, more often than not various Fender combos. Case in point, here's that early pre-mustache video of Joe Pass playing a Fender Jaguar of all things through a blonde Fender Bassman stack and he still sounds like he always did on archtops through Polytones later in his career (the "Virtuoso" albums don't count because those were often no amp at all - just a mic on the guitar and that's it):

 
' 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)?'

I understand the post was long, but you didn't read it. peace.
fabio

The "issue" is the same with the request for SS bass amps and why the JC-120 squeezed in here is rather strange. The Fractal topology is based around emulating the way a tube breaks up as such solid state models essentially remove the parts of the fractal modeling engine which make it what it is. I think there are paths to kinda manually creating the tones of those amps for those who really want them either starting with the JC-120 model or forgoing the amp block all together. Otherwise, request the feature and see if Fractal responds. I imagine if enough people agree, they will not ignore it as it is a bit of a missing link in the modeling world in general.
 
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 :)
Huh? You appear to have crossed the beams somewhere.
 
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Precisely, that is the very definition of "tyranny of the majority". It is an inherent weakness in democracy (and capitalism) which was coined by Alexis de Tocqueville. I was simply pointing out that this problem is not new. It is the reason left-handedness was seen as a real disadvantage when I was boy and, therefore, my parents choose to force right-handness on me.
One man's "tyranny of the majority" is another man's "supply and demand". For better or worse, depending on your point of view, Fractal is a business that must make decisions based on improving overall sales of their devices and spending their efforts against improvements that are going to positively impact the most people. It seems to me it would take a perfect world where Fractal could handle everyone's demands to avoid this as the opposite situation ("tyranny of the minority") would leave more people unhappy and lacking what they ask for. If we applied the same logic to something like medicine then would it be preferable for doctors and researchers to focus on cures for widespread diseases that impact the most people, or rare diseases that only affect a small number of people at the expense of the majority? The unfortunate thing in life is that someone always gets let down or left out. It is an unfortunate truth in life. The best we can do is focus our efforts on helping the most people people we possibly can at any given time. Sorry for the philosophical tangent. Carry on!
 
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:

If it sounds good, it IS good. Old saying.

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

How do you guys get a good jazz sound out of it?

To me, Jazz tone is Wes Montgomery. Please take everything I say with that as a caveat.

I started with the Studio Clean preset in an early firmware version of the FM3 and then changed the amp to, if memory serves, a Mesa preamp using an ES-335 and an ES-137 Custom, not a fully hollow jazzbox. Then I started dialing in the BMT and presences settings. Once I got it close I went into the EQ page on the amp block and did an overall EQ by ear. It ended up being pretty radical, far from what I would have expected.

Then I went back and did some fine tuning of the basic tone controls.

I ended up with a killer Jazz preset that I like as much as any "real" amp I've ever heard.

I ended up copying the settings onto my FM9 with later firmware before selling my FM3 and it still sounded great but not quite as exceptional. Still, it's more than good enough for me to use for practicing and live playing.

Currently my FM9 is boxed up because I recently moved but if you send me a DM I'll send you the settings once I break it out.
George Benson, and many other users of the Fender Twin Reverb would beg to disagree.

The George Benson Hot Rod Deluxe is a great amp for Jazz with a speaker change. It's what I've been using for a few years now.

I thought the Roland Jazz Chorus was the king of jazz amps.
No, it is not.

I personally really dislike the way it sounds. To me, it's only virtue is that it's loud and clean.
 
Please understand first of all that what I am about to say is translated with Google translate, so if any statement I make offends anyone it could be because of the translation.

I fear that in this Thread we are focusing more on the meaning of "REAL" Jazz than on the problem posed by the OP, which in my opinion is (yes) real.
I've always been a "tube" guy since the days when back in 1984, with my student savings, I bought a Fender 75 amp (ops..It doesn't appear among the 303 amp models of the FM3).
Having said that, I believe that yes, even a silverface oriented tube with ultralinear transformers like the Fender 75, will struggle to reproduce the tone and dynamics that the OP described, not impossible, but tiring.
And very heavy!
In Kg and unfortunately also in the sound "paste".

The FM3 would be the best solution, a light device, to be combined with one or two good FRFRs (I have two RCF NX 10-SMAs), it should contain all the knowledge regarding the guitar.

It will certainly be my limit, I won't deny it, but among so many exciting tones (I adore Jazz but not only), I haven't yet managed to "nail" that sound so well described by the OP.

Having said that, 5 months ago I have had a wonderful daughter and, despite being enthusiastic about her, in the little free time that this situation gives me, I have to choose whether to study Wes Montgomery's chord solo on "Gone with the wind" or navigate through the parameters of the FM3 to try and get close to THAT sound.
This is why I believe that even just a model of an SS amp (not the overrated Roland JC120 please) would be an infinite help to me.
Being a Junior member I can't post links but to give an idea of the sound I mean listen to anything by Royce Campbell (even if he's an L5 man, I prefer the ES175 though because it's more "electric", I have both).
Good music to all.
Alessio
 
...5 months ago I have had a wonderful daughter and, despite being enthusiastic about her, in the little free time that this situation gives me, I have to choose whether to study Wes Montgomery's chord solo on "Gone with the wind" or navigate through the parameters of the FM3 to try and get close to THAT sound.

Study Wes.

Tone is far less important than your playing.
 
The "real jazz" discussion is stupid gatekeeping and nothing else. If anything I thought jazz would be about accepting ideas that are outside the box rather than pigeonholing what is "real" jazz.

Sounds to me OP is getting hung up on the idea of having his exact preferred amp models represented in the FM3. Honestly a lot of owners do that based on all the "please add this amp model" threads. But just because something is not in the box, does not mean those sounds aren't achievable with a bit of listening and effort.

Listening to the clips OP posted here and here, they are looking for a mid-forward, smooth, almost DI sound. To me that could be achieved by focusing on the Fender-based amps, maybe the Princeton or Twin depending on what kind of dynamic range they are seeking, set up to never distort by e.g reducing Input trim knob. Add a compressor up front to smooth things out. Or even leave out the amp block altogether and run more like a DI signal through it, using EQ blocks for sound shaping. Finally choose an appropriate cab sim - cabs miced with a darker sound might be preferable here.

For what they are looking for, the FM3 might be the wrong device and they would be just as happy with some a Jazz-focused preamp box.
 
I think the real problem here is that "REAL jazz" tone that the OP is looking for is a fictional subset of jazz tones. Although he's not mentioned any players who have that sound he's looking for, he has mentioned a lot who aren't. The truth is Polytones and Henricksons didn't exist back in the early days of jazz. Players just played through whatever was available, which was a lot of Fenders at the time. Even today, someone like Peter Bernstein, Gilad Heckselman, Lage Lund, or Julian Lage (when he's playing an archtop) all play through Fenders. None of them are doing the Polytone thing. Even players like Benson or Kriesberg are doing a solid state paired with Fender approach and never a solid state alone. The truth is that there isn't this one, monolithic "REAL jazz" tone and there never was. It has always been a variety of clean amps, more often than not various Fender combos. Case in point, here's that early pre-mustache video of Joe Pass playing a Fender Jaguar of all things through a blonde Fender Bassman stack and he still sounds like he always did on archtops through Polytones later in his career (the "Virtuoso" albums don't count because those were often no amp at all - just a mic on the guitar and that's it):



The "real jazz" discussion is stupid gatekeeping and nothing else. If anything I thought jazz would be about accepting ideas that are outside the box rather than pigeonholing what is "real" jazz.

Sounds to me OP is getting hung up on the idea of having his exact preferred amp models represented in the FM3. Honestly a lot of owners do that based on all the "please add this amp model" threads. But just because something is not in the box, does not mean those sounds aren't achievable with a bit of listening and effort.

Listening to the clips OP posted here and here, they are looking for a mid-forward, smooth, almost DI sound. To me that could be achieved by focusing on the Fender-based amps, maybe the Princeton or Twin depending on what kind of dynamic range they are seeking, set up to never distort by e.g reducing Input trim knob. Add a compressor up front to smooth things out. Or even leave out the amp block altogether and run more like a DI signal through it, using EQ blocks for sound shaping. Finally choose an appropriate cab sim - cabs miced with a darker sound might be preferable here.

For what they are looking for, the FM3 might be the wrong device and they would be just as happy with some a Jazz-focused preamp box.


Yeah sorry guys, you convinced me: I'm looking for the wrong tone, very likely because of my restricted definition of a music.
thank you for your contributions
 
Please understand first of all that what I am about to say is translated with Google translate, so if any statement I make offends anyone it could be because of the translation.

I fear that in this Thread we are focusing more on the meaning of "REAL" Jazz than on the problem posed by the OP, which in my opinion is (yes) real.
I've always been a "tube" guy since the days when back in 1984, with my student savings, I bought a Fender 75 amp (ops..It doesn't appear among the 303 amp models of the FM3).
Having said that, I believe that yes, even a silverface oriented tube with ultralinear transformers like the Fender 75, will struggle to reproduce the tone and dynamics that the OP described, not impossible, but tiring.
And very heavy!
In Kg and unfortunately also in the sound "paste".

The FM3 would be the best solution, a light device, to be combined with one or two good FRFRs (I have two RCF NX 10-SMAs), it should contain all the knowledge regarding the guitar.

It will certainly be my limit, I won't deny it, but among so many exciting tones (I adore Jazz but not only), I haven't yet managed to "nail" that sound so well described by the OP.

Having said that, 5 months ago I have had a wonderful daughter and, despite being enthusiastic about her, in the little free time that this situation gives me, I have to choose whether to study Wes Montgomery's chord solo on "Gone with the wind" or navigate through the parameters of the FM3 to try and get close to THAT sound.
This is why I believe that even just a model of an SS amp (not the overrated Roland JC120 please) would be an infinite help to me.
Being a Junior member I can't post links but to give an idea of the sound I mean listen to anything by Royce Campbell (even if he's an L5 man, I prefer the ES175 though because it's more "electric", I have both).
Good music to all.
Alessio
I think you got the point.
Probably, and it's my fault, writing 'real jazz', while obviously referring to the tone (being this the topic of this forum), I was mostly (and vastly) misunderstood, as I wanted to teach what jazz is, that of course is not of my interest here.
For the rest, you pointed out exactly how I feel about the tone I'm looking for.

I thanks all people partecipating to the thread, for the effort to be helpful, and they were in many ways: I collected some presets and some advices to check asap, very happy about that.

But I'd like that you all guys would be so nice to understand how difficult is to keep this thread focused on the topic, when many contributions just point out somewhere else, like rock-ish jazz tones or just plain clean guitar sound, or when most of people still suggest amps that I explicitely asked to exclud from discussion since the first post, simply bc they dont fit this need (Fenders and Roland Jazz Chorus).
On the other hand, I appreciated so much, and learned a lot from all the people that suggested tweaks/turnarounds to force available modelled HW on the FM3 to provide a tone that could sound somewhere near.

Fabio
 
Try it out.

Another amp i use on the Fm3 sometimes with my 335 is the ODS-clean. On that amp though i have found i like the treble a little higher, and i also turn down the master volume knob to avoid poweramp distortion.

Here's a sample of that ODS-100 clean sound. It's from a video lesson i made on phrasing exercises.

I do like that the amp compresses a bit, so i have the gain a bit higher on this video. But if you want it cleaner just lower the gain.



Hey Thank you!
Your playing and lessons are amazing, such as your tone :)

I think this is a good example: even tho I definitively appreciate your tone, if you have time try to listen to the clips I posted, you will notice thatthe attack and sustain of the notes are mostly different, compared to yours: I can feel that 'valvish' attack in your sound that I was trying to avoid, in favor of a more defined, clear yet warm and beefy attack you get from the SS amps I posted, and where the 'prominence' of low-mids gives also that 'sustain' to the note (but without compression).

Didi you, with your experience on this device, ever tried to get also that tone? I bet, but I should try to tell, that starting from your preset I could accomplish the tonal balance I desire, still I'm not sure I can fix the note attack thing, since it seems 'connaturated' to the device.
I had the same issue with my former HX Stomp, and that's the reason I finally got rid of him, after years of tries.

cheers and again thank you!!
Fabio
 
Hey Thank you!
Your playing and lessons are amazing, such as your tone :)

I think this is a good example: even tho I definitively appreciate your tone, if you have time try to listen to the clips I posted, you will notice thatthe attack and sustain of the notes are mostly different, compared to yours: I can feel that 'valvish' attack in your sound that I was trying to avoid, in favor of a more defined, clear yet warm and beefy attack you get from the SS amps I posted, and where the 'prominence' of low-mids gives also that 'sustain' to the note (but without compression).

Didi you, with your experience on this device, ever tried to get also that tone? I bet, but I should try to tell, that starting from your preset I could accomplish the tonal balance I desire, still I'm not sure I can fix the note attack thing, since it seems 'connaturated' to the device.
I had the same issue with my former HX Stomp, and that's the reason I finally got rid of him, after years of tries.

cheers and again thank you!!
Fabio

Thank you.

This is the kind of tone i'm after, so i haven't tried getting that tone from the solid state amps you posted yet. I could give it a try though.
I'm playing guitar in a stage musical at the moment so my Fm3 is on that stage, so i can't try it now. But the last show is next monday, so i can give it a try after that when i have my Fm3 at home.

The Hendriksen jazz amp is more or less an eq with amplification and reverb, so i think i would not use a amp block and go for a 1x10 ir that has a lot of low mids, use a paramentric eq block to do high and low cuts, and a graphic eq to work as the Henriksen tonestack. Probably a very slight compression as well from a compressor block, since most amps add some compression.
 
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