Congrats and good luck!
I remember when I posted something similar, someone said something along the lines of "get ready for the most inspiring piece of gear you've ever bought"....and I honestly rolled my eyes a bit (but kept it to myself).
Yeah...whoever that was turned out to be right.
I'm sure it's not for literally
everyone, that there are people who just won't get along with it or who really can't deal with the slightly old-school completely un-tablet-like UI or who get buried in the options and the almost arbitrary-seeming limitations. But...I have a hard time imagining such a person.
One of the most flexible and inspiring pieces of gear out there.
what advice can you offer a Fractal newbie?
Go through the factory presets. They're actually flat-out gig/stadium-worthy, unlike basically every other multi-fx/modeler I've tried.
You might wind up like me, not want to use any of them, and wipe them off your device (you can get them back). Or you could end up absolutely loving some of them. I don't remember all the details, but I'm pretty sure Cooper Carter was involved in something like a Superbowl Halftime Show...that ended up using a factory preset. Maybe it was Maroon 5. Maybe it wasn't the Superbowl...but something huge like that.
If nothing else, you will learn things from analyzing them.
There are also a lot of different ways to use it. All of the factory presets and it seems like most users either use presets and scenes or setlists and songs. I don't. I re-map all of my footswitches per-preset and use it more like a traditional pedalboard. Because I just want to. And because I find it more flexible - each preset effectively loads the footswitch configuration I want for that preset using per-preset overrides.
Also, whatever silly idea you have...someone here is going to have an opinion, solution, or advice if you need it.
If you use YouTube, go ahead and subscribe to G66, Cooper Carter, John Nathan Cordy, and Leon Todd. Leon and Cooper are on this forum at least sporadically, and they all have interesting ideas that
will teach you about a lot of things you can do with it that you probably wouldn't think of on your own. Whether you use them long term or not, sometimes it's just fun to play. I don't play metal, but I think I've learned more from Leon Todd than from any other single source (not to insult the others - I just like his presentation style).
I intend to learn how to set up and adjust presets from the unit before I dive into FX edit, so I know how to make adjustment on the fly at gigs,
That's worth doing, at least to a degree.
BUT....
IMHO, FM3-Edit (or FM9-edit/Axe-edit, etc.) is amazing and much simpler. There are things you can't do in the software that you can do on the device (or at least that I can't find in the software). But....you're probably not going to re-wire a pedalboard at a gig...you're probably going to turn knobs and not much else.
Once you know how to navigate to the knobs you might need to turn and put the ones that you're
really likely to turn on the Perform and PP-Perform pages...IMHO, that's plenty good enough for making adjustments on the fly at gigs.
Also, learn how to save a preset to a new preset number on both FM3-Edit and the device....and do that when you're tweaking. You might never go back to a previous version...but they're really nice to have.
My "kitchen sink" preset is called "602v25-2exp". Which means that it's the 25th version of my main preset that I started on firmware version 6.02 and is made to work with 2 expression pedals. It makes sense to me. And for one of the few times, I had an issue and had to go back to v24 to figure out something that I had done wrong (just the other day).
. I have been browsing the manual as part of my research. It’s a bit difficult to follow without the unit in front of me, but I’m sure it will become clear when it arrives. I intend to learn how to set up and adjust presets from the unit before I dive into FX edit, so I know how to make adjustment on the fly at gigs,
Thanks for the top tips.