Fractal Audio AMP models: Fryette D60 (Fryette Deliverance 60H)

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* EDIT: Up-to-date information is available in Yek's Guide to the Fractal Audio Amplifier Models *

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FRYETTE D60: based on Fryette Deliverance 60H

Steven Fryette founded VHT Amplification, a well-known amplifier brand (guitar amps and power amps). He sold the brand name in 2009 and continues to design and sell products under his own name. The famous VHT power amplifiers are now Fryette power amplifiers.

The D60 models are based on the VHT, eh, Fryette Deliverance 60H amp (Mk I). It’s a 60 watts head, running on KT88 tubes. The Deliverance is capable of delivering (bad um tss…) tight, dry, aggressive high-gain tones, especially popular with metal players.

Back in the Axe-Fx Standard/Ultra days, the Fryette model was one of the really high-gain models, and quite popular too. In those days it also was a very bass-heavy model, which is no longer the case.

Fryette:

“As with all Fryette amplifiers, the Deliverance Sixty amplifier beautifully accentuates the inherent qualities of any instrument. It breathes and dynamically responds to your playing technique exactly the way a great guitar amp should. And as stomp boxes have gained more widespread appeal, you will find Deliverance amps to be pedal friendly and ultra-responsive to the many colors pedal effects produce.​

The Deliverance preamp section has a broad dynamic range, which accounts for its extra touch-sensitivity and excellent guitar volume response. In addition, clean and overdriven voicings can easily be dialed up on the Deliverance Sixty using the unique GAIN I / GAIN II structure, tone controls, presence and depth. From there, just a little tweaking on your guitar volume and tone controls will yield a surprising amount of control.​

The D60H power amp section is designed for big round tone and dynamic response at low to medium guitar volumes and a rapid but smooth transition into saturation, turning rich and thick at full guitar volume. This combination of preamp voicing and power amp response enhances the unique character of any guitar and pick-up type.​

Specially designed, precision wound power and output transformers produce optimum performance, reliability and stability, delivering excellent power tube response and just the right amount of natural output transformer saturation and compression.”​

The amp has these controls: Gain I (voicing), Gain II (overdrive), More/Less switch, Master, Treble, Middle, Bass, Presence, Depth,

Fryette:

“The Input Sensitivity of an amplifier, commonly referred to as GAIN, determines how much overdrive and sustain your guitar will produce. Tonal balance, which we refer to as VOICING determines how the amp will respond to your playing style and sound with a particular guitar. Like all amplifiers, the D60 has tone and gain controls, but unlike any other amplifier the D60 gives you total control over VOICING and GAIN. This GAIN I / GAIN II / MASTER VOLUME configuration is the key to dialing in the Deliverance sound and volume to your specific requirements.​

GAIN I increases the gain amount as you rotate the knob clockwise. As the gain increases, the tonal balance is shifted from a treble and upper mid emphasis, which produces an up front sparkling tone, to a lower mid and bass emphasis, which produces a thick meaty tone.​

GAIN I / VOICING – Sets the amount of overdrive in the second gain stage. This first gain control also serves as a tone shaping control, counter-clockwise for crisp and articulate, clockwise for thick and saturated​

GAIN II increases the gain amount as you rotate the knob clockwise but with no alteration of the tonal balance. Different combinations of GAIN I and GAIN II settings, will have a dramatic effect on the response of the amplifier and the personality of your instrument. It is easy to get familiar with the action of these controls and you’ll be amazed with your ability to make any guitar sound mellow, fat, soulful or aggressive.”​

GAIN II / OVERDRIVE – Full frequency gain boost or cut. Sets the amount of overdrive in the third gain stage. Works in conjunction with Gain I to dial in the perfect overdrive/sustain amount for your guitar and pick-up combination."​

We’ve got two models of this amp, based on the Less (3 gain stages) resp. More (4 gain stages) modes of the amp. Personally I’m not particularly fond of the Less model. The More model rocks, although it’s easy to make it too saturated, and it has a slightly sterile sound to my ears.

Fryette:

"This switch selects three stages or four stages of tube preamp gain depending on the amount of overdrive required. LESS = 3 stages, MORE = 4 stages. When using stomp boxes or active pick-ups, four stages of gain are often unnecessary and generate undesirable levels of background noise, so the ability to defeat the additional stage is a real plus."​

The MORE / LESS switch activates or defeats a tube gain stage. The interesting and often overlooked benefit of this switch is that you can use it in conjunction with the gain controls to tailor your tone as well as distortion amount. For example, set GAIN I, GAIN II, MORE/LESS and MASTER VOLUME as shown in the photo above and play for a few minutes. Now set these controls as shown in the photo below. Notice that the overall amount of overdrive is approximately the same as it was but the tonal balance has shifted markedly from full and warm to crisp and spanking."​

Fryette uses custom speakers: Eminence P50 and Fane F70G speakers. We haven’t got those among our stock cabs, so make your own choice. You might like the Uber IRs (#50, #51, #52), or Mesa (#73).







 
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Thanks Yek. I appreciate your writing these up for us. Thanks for all your time and hard work.
 
Hm, might have to check this one out
EDIT: definitely a cool platform to work with, I can tell that once you hit the sweet spot on this one it'll be real nice....havent quite gotten there yet though :oops:
 
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I got a tone I like by setting both again controls around 7, and then auditioning cabs.
 
I can't find them right now but there is a guy from Europe named Tristan who played Fryette when I did and he had a bunch of killer non metal deliverance videos on YT
 
I really like the More model. I was using that for a few weeks with my band since it does the modern metal thing really well and my 7 string doesn't get muddy at all. But I'm on the ENGL Savage 2 model right now and I think I like that more.

I will definitely be revisiting this one in the future though.
 
Not sure how Cliff managed to capture the subtlety of Steven's PCB comments in this model, but I'm sure he'll make it obvious soon...

vht1.jpg


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Amazing! Reality surpasses fiction...

I'll put some Steve words about this model:
"Someone here said they thought our sound was too sophisticated to cop something like the guitar sound on Anarchy in the UK. So I took a couple of minutes and set up, I think the CLX, to sound like, or more correctly put across the attitude of that guitar sound. From there, we started exploring how we felt that there was something some people weren’t “getting” about our amplifiers—that their versatility is not a function exclusively of the feature set. How do we make that apparent? How do we put something into the hands of a player that illustrates the versatility absent all the features? The obvious answer was, “Let’s just yank out all the features that people think are responsible for the versatility, and then see if we’ve retained it. If we have, let’s throw it out there and see if anybody recognizes that.
The idea was to take your mind off of the switches and buttons and all that stuff. You just play, and then you realize, “Oh, wait a minute, I’m playing this amp that I never thought could do these sounds, and without all the features I thought I needed.” And that creates a moment of an awakening to a particular segment of the guitar-playing world that thought we were just a metal amp, or that we were just about whatever kind of sound or artist was associated with it."
http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/An_Interview_with_Steven_Fryette?
 
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After a wait period of 3 years I received my Fryette Valvulator GP/DI last week.
I pledged to the Kickstarter campaign because I wanted a small tube amp at home.

It's a nifty little tube amp for home/studio/direct recording. Just 1 watt. :)
It's got a preamp tube and a power amp tube.

And it's really versatile too. Ttwo very interactive Gain controls. Speaker and line outputs. Aux in. Silent load if the speaker's not connected. Effects loop. Headphone output with its own effects loop and aux in. 8/16 impedance switch. Cab/mic simulation (so you can run it right into a PA or FR monitor). SAG control ("Dynamics"). Direct In for another instrument. Direct Out (passes dry input signal for reamping). And Clean/Deliverance/Pitbull amplifier modes. All analog.

Sounds pretty good through my 1x12, using the built-in power amp.

I compared its Deliverance mode to the D60 model in the Axe-Fx II, using the FXL block and Input 2, and the Line output on the GP/DI. They do sound similar. The knob positions do not exactly match, which is only logical because the GP/DI is not a Deliverance itself.

The Pitbull mode is more agressive than the Deliverance mode.

I also compared the built-in cab/mic sim to Cab Modeling in the Axe-Fx II. It sounds rather fine by itself and better than competing products (Mesa and others), but it's no competition for Cab Modeling, the Cab block sounds much better.

The picture below is from the Fryette website.

IMG_2976__01214.1458846139.1280.1280.JPG
 
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After a wait period of 3 years I received my Fryette Valvulator GP/DI last week.
I pledged to the Kickstarter campaign because I wanted a small tube amp at home.

It's a nifty little tube amp for home/studio/direct recording. Just 1 watt. :)
It's got a preamp tube and a power amp tube.

And it's really versatile too. Ttwo very interactive Gain controls. Speaker and line outputs. Aux in. Silent load if the speaker's not connected. Effects loop. Headphone output with its own effects loop and aux in. 8/16 impedance switch. Cab/mic simulation (so you can run it right into a PA or FR monitor). SAG control ("Dynamics"). Direct In for another instrument. Direct Out (passes dry input signal for reamping). And Clean/Deliverance/Pitbull amplifier modes. All analog.

Sounds pretty good through my 1x12, using the built-in power amp.

I compared its Deliverance mode to the D60 model in the Axe-Fx II, using the FXL block and Input 2, and the Line output on the GP/DI. They do sound similar. The knob positions do not exactly match, which is only logical because the GP/DI is not a Deliverance itself.

The Pitbull mode is more agressive than the Deliverance mode.

I also compared the built-in cab/mic sim to Cab Modeling in the Axe-Fx II. It sounds rather fine by itself and better than competing products (Mesa and others), but it's no competition for Cab Modeling, the Cab block sounds much better.

The picture below is from the Fryette website.

IMG_2976__01214.1458846139.1280.1280.JPG
Do you think you can post some recordings?
Thank you, Coby
 
I always move on from this amp quick, it feels like it's missing some character.

Anyone got any good settings tips?

Same with me, I always thought it was cool, but it didnt really go the direction I want.

The other day I was browsing the VHT / Fryette thread on another forum and people were posting pictures of their amps, and I noticed one guy with a new D60 that had rather unusual settings compared to what I normally tried on that amp.

It was about as follows:
Gain I: 7
Gain II: 10
Bass: 6
Middle: 6
Treble: 6
Master: 2
Presence: 10
Depth: 10

Your milage may vary on this, but for a tight and aggressive metal tone, it was pretty good, better than anything else I'd got out of it. I had never thought to turn the poweramp controls so high, I usually had them between 0 and 5.

The basic eq also acts different from a normal EQ, though after setting everything to 6 I was really happy with the sound so I didn't bother tweaking further.

I did bring Gain I down to about 4 or so, and add a tubescreamer with the usual settings to add a bit more saturation and bite, and that worked really well also.

It's very bright though. I had to put a low pass blocking filter at about 9600hz, that seemed to take out the fizzy brittleness while retaining high end clarity.
 
I overlooked this amp but I had a question in my last Q&A about it, so i fired it up and loved it. It's like a cross between a Recto and a Mark series amp when set right.

 
It's like a cross between a Recto and a Mark series amp when set right.

Good call, you can get some real ‘roar’-y sounds out of it. It’s still one of my favourite amps in the box (definitely in the top 5), and with some light overdrive pedal can get some legit Nevermore - Dead Heart in a Dead World type sounds (which was recorded with a Recto).

I have to turn the Boost on in the amp block to get the level of gain I need though. I also have a Fryette GP/DI (which is great) and the D60 More model is more like the GP/DI set to Less.
 
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