Friedman IR-X

Jarick said:
I bought one yesterday and made some clips comparing it to my Axe FX 3 if anyone's interested.

IMO it's a very cool unit especially for the price. You get a two channel tube preamp, plus IR loader, power amp sim, and boost. All analog and tube front end, digital back end, and MIDI programmable. It's not competing against the Fractal gear, it's competing against things like the Strymon Iridium type pedals.

Sounds awesome to me with very little fuss. Clean channel is pretty flexible, dirty channel nails all the BE tones of course, takes pedals really well, works with effects really well. I hooked it up in 4 cable method into the Axe 3 and it's just awesome like that. You can use the MIDI switching to change channels too with scenes. Pretty damn cool.

Again, $500 for a two channel tube preamp with footswitch and power amp/IR to go direct, not going to find a lot that can compete with that IMO.
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Would like to hear these clips!
 
Jarick said:
Again, $500 for a two channel tube preamp with footswitch and power amp/IR to go direct, not going to find a lot that can compete with that IMO.
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I mean....

Victory makes some of those, right? Or are the direct outs missing IRs?
 
marsonic said:
Probably true. But, it's not the only thing, even if it's a new and apparently really cool one.
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yeah, but I am friedman fanboy, so it works for me nicely. Especially because it is instant gratification without any tweaking, which I can’t really say about friedmans inside fractal.
I had be50dlx/100dlx and JJ100, but sold all of them, because ares 15.01 firmware was spot on with friedmans.
But since cygnus launched, I wasn’t happy with friedman models at all and pretty much had regrets that I sold my amps.
Now the IR-X totally scratch my itch when I want to have that sound.
 
marsonic said:
I mean....

Victory makes some of those, right? Or are the direct outs missing IRs?
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I‘m not shure but I think that the Victory Pedals doesn’t have power amp modeling and the capability to use your own IR‘s. They are „just“ preamps.
 
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Thomas Obester said:
they have class D power amp, which doesn´t really sound all that great.
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there are a few variations on what Victory do - they initially came out with preamps such as the countess and sheriff etc and then they have some such as the duchess which include a power amp
 
Aivoryuk said:
there are a few variations on what Victory do - they initially came out with preamps such as the countess and sheriff etc and then they have some such as the duchess which include a power amp
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yup, but the power amp sounds like sd powerstage or something similar.
So you are loosing on feel, because there is no interaction of impedance modeled and probably some other magic aswell.
It´s like going from fractal with power amp sim off to class D power amp.
You need to have that power amp sim on, otherwise it sounds flat and dead.
 
2112 said:
Here's the preset btw
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will check this for sure and let everyone know.
You said it the video it´s friedman BE V3 with depth around 2-3 and that´s it, right ?
How u had IR-X hooked up ? Guitar to IR-X input and balanced out to fractal´s input 1 ?
 
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OrganicZed said:
Leon Todd mentioned in an episode of The Gear Podcast that he was able to match the sound of the Friedman IR-X
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And this is surprising? I remember when it was posted that Dave Friedman himself guessed wrong on clips of his own amp and an Axe-Fx.
They have it backwards in this product. Preamps are what's best about modeling.
 
Anakron said:
And this is surprising? I remember when it was posted that Dave Friedman himself guessed wrong on clips of his own amp and an Axe-Fx.
They have it backwards in this product. Preamps are what's best about modeling.
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Well....I actually think the poweramp sim is what's best about modeling, but that's because I tend to prefer non-MV amps that don't get any drive from the preamp (one exception to that is that one of the Friedmans I played was great...just huge and expensive compared to a Fractal setup).

And, you know, everything else about modeling.

I don't know why I resisted it (modeling) for so long.

Thomas Obester said:
yup, but the power amp sounds like sd powerstage or something similar.
So you are loosing on feel, because there is no interaction of impedance modeled and probably some other magic aswell.
It´s like going from fractal with power amp sim off to class D power amp.
You need to have that power amp sim on, otherwise it sounds flat and dead.
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You could still run the Victory pedals in a loop followed by the Tube Pre for power amp modeling....but that won't do the dual-amp on an FM3 thing that someone mentioned. And....might be kinda pointless. I do think that the Super Dutchess is a really cool amp, and it might be fun if Fractal created a model of it. But...the reason I like it is that it can kinda get a Tweed sound with the mid kick and voice switches....and Fractal's already got most of the Tweed amps. So....it's probably kinda redundant.

The more I think about the IR-X, the less I think it's "for me". I don't have extra IO on my FM3 to use it as a parallel amp, and upgrading to an FM9 or AF3 to get the IO would also give me another amp block to use...and It's really close to what I'm already doing except that it has some preamp tubes and doesn't include any of the effects that I like.

I'm sure it's perfect for someone...just not me.

It might be nice as a backup...assuming that it's the Fractal that goes down and not whatever you're using to monitor. Except that it won't route the non-guitar monitor signal the way I do with my FM3.

I commend Friedman for creating it; I really do. I just...don't care to buy one.
 
It sounds great, and there was never any doubt of that. I admire all of Dave Friedman's designs.

I couldn't help but think of the Atomic Amplifire Box, and what a feature packed and cool little pedal that was. I still have mine. It was really the same idea (just without tubes), but went above and beyond by including a compliment of basic onboard effects, like compression, delay, and reverb and a switchable boost. It also had a very simple software interface and allowed swapping out custom IRs.

AFB.jpg
 
Another good demo here vv No word on Canadian availability / price yet. I have Strymon Iridium which I like and is in similar category - intrigued with this one being real pre tube based - anxious to give it a try.

 
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