Friedman Master Volume

hemmelight said:
Slightly old thread, but I was also disappointed to find that the BE100 in particular was really woofy and mushy sounding the first time I tried it.
I gave up after tweaking and messing with low cuts to the cabs etc. Just used other amps and wrote this one off.
😍
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Marshalls are still better, full stop. :)

It's nice to have variety, but I never got the appeal of the Friedmans---either
in real life or in the modeling world of Fractal. They just take everything away
from a Marshall that makes them great and people then assume it is an some
drastic improvement and not a tragic setback. ;)
 
Searching for some good "hair on the notes" low/mid gain tones that I could pair with my heavier rhythm preset (HBE 2010) and stumbled across this thread - so happy I did! There are so many good tips here that I just tried and man, am I digging the BEC45 as my new low gain tone. Turning up the MV and changing the Tone Stack to Plexi absolutely makes a difference!

Between this thread and the more recent one for the Brad Whitford GOT series and the deep dive into some of his amp tweaks and using those in my Friedman presets has been a game changer! Thank you!
 
LerxstFan said:
Searching for some good "hair on the notes" low/mid gain tones that I could pair with my heavier rhythm preset (HBE 2010) and stumbled across this thread - so happy I did! There are so many good tips here that I just tried and man, am I digging the BEC45 as my new low gain tone. Turning up the MV and changing the Tone Stack to Plexi absolutely makes a difference!

Between this thread and the more recent one for the Brad Whitford GOT series and the deep dive into some of his amp tweaks and using those in my Friedman presets has been a game changer! Thank you!
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You wrote at just the right time; I was messing with boosted Plexi type tones with the Hook, but you just reminded me where I needed to be haha! I'm glad this worked well for you; this is too awesome of an amp for anyone not to try with the MV high!
 
State of Epicicity said:
You wrote at just the right time; I was messing with boosted Plexi type tones with the Hook, but you just reminded me where I needed to be haha! I'm glad this worked well for you; this is too awesome of an amp for anyone not to try with the MV high!
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I’m still not really onboard with the Friedman’s for some reason. Master high or not I just like other amps better.

Speaking of the Hook, it was my main amp when I 1st got my FM3. It stopped sounding good to me so I moved on. Just tried it again a couple weeks ago on the new firmware and I’m loving it again. The Hook is a great Marshall type amp. I run the master around 5-6 or so. The other channel models also sound good. Happy to have it back!
 
I've not played through the Hook models much and will check those out. It's funny how I used to play through a Mesa Mark IV short head and 2 2x12 cabs for years, and since I discovered Fractal most of the amps I'm really digging are in the Marshall sound ballpark. I love DT and Petrucci, and his tones, but for my band and the 70's to today's music that we cover, the Friedman's and the Band Commander seem a much better fit.

There are so many amps and so much flexibility to tweak that are beyond me, so I'm grateful for the people in this community who dig way deeper than I do and share their insights to make everyone's Fractal journey better!
 
skolacki said:
I’m still not really onboard with the Friedman’s for some reason.
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Yeah I agree, too. I loved the Friedmans in the AFII and Ares-era AFIII, so much so that all my main presets were based on different Friedman models. But Cygnus changed those amps way too much for my taste and for my use case. They're still lovely amps if you need punchy low-mids, which can be amazing for leads. But now I just use the FAS Hot-Rod if I need that Hot-Rod Marshall tone. For all other Marshall needs, there are a plethora of other Plexis and Plexi-derivatives.
 
I like the Hook a lot in the low to mid gain channels, but for my taste I found the channels still not to feel as dynamic as the BE-100, with my style and my guitar. I think it's like clothing; the amp just has to fit right for who you are as a player, at that moment.

Ever since the latest huge update I've barely been able to play guitar because of awesome but crazy life events, but the moments I've been able to steal really underlined to be that all amps should be on the table for everyone just to retry. I.e. to say, for those who've dismissed certain amps because the didn't work well for your playing before, it's utterly worth it to revisit them now with Cliff's most recent big updates, because it really is striking me like we have a new modeler in there. I've found so many amps working well for me in different ways, it's really gratifying. For me the BE-100 turned into a holy grail the moment I turned up the MV, and that has continued to be the case, but all that really matters is that you find whatever allows you to say what you've got to say with your instrument. There's such a torrent of tone available in the Fractal units, I can't see anything one wouldn't be able to achieve.
 
State of Epicicity said:
I like the Hook a lot in the low to mid gain channels, but for my taste I found the channels still not to feel as dynamic as the BE-100, with my style and my guitar. I think it's like clothing; the amp just has to fit right for who you are as a player, at that moment.

Ever since the latest huge update I've barely been able to play guitar because of awesome but crazy life events, but the moments I've been able to steal really underlined to be that all amps should be on the table for everyone just to retry. I.e. to say, for those who've dismissed certain amps because the didn't work well for your playing before, it's utterly worth it to revisit them now with Cliff's most recent big updates, because it really is striking me like we have a new modeler in there. I've found so many amps working well for me in different ways, it's really gratifying. For me the BE-100 turned into a holy grail the moment I turned up the MV, and that has continued to be the case, but all that really matters is that you find whatever allows you to say what you've got to say with your instrument. There's such a torrent of tone available in the Fractal units, I can't see anything one wouldn't be able to achieve.
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The Key point you make in there
I agree with 100% the amps you did not like or passed over before will sound different now and your top 5 may change in Cygnus 2.0

For me I would have not really spent much time on the Matchless D30 or the JVM but I saw a vid of a guy playing the JVM orange recently so I pulled it up through a York IR in grabbed Petrucci medium delay and man is it good
 
State of Epicicity said:
I like the Hook a lot in the low to mid gain channels, but for my taste I found the channels still not to feel as dynamic as the BE-100, with my style and my guitar. I think it's like clothing; the amp just has to fit right for who you are as a player, at that moment.

Ever since the latest huge update I've barely been able to play guitar because of awesome but crazy life events, but the moments I've been able to steal really underlined to be that all amps should be on the table for everyone just to retry. I.e. to say, for those who've dismissed certain amps because the didn't work well for your playing before, it's utterly worth it to revisit them now with Cliff's most recent big updates, because it really is striking me like we have a new modeler in there. I've found so many amps working well for me in different ways, it's really gratifying. For me the BE-100 turned into a holy grail the moment I turned up the MV, and that has continued to be the case, but all that really matters is that you find whatever allows you to say what you've got to say with your instrument. There's such a torrent of tone available in the Fractal units, I can't see anything one wouldn't be able to achieve.
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Congrats on awesome life events!
 
Randalljax said:
The Key point you make in there
I agree with 100% the amps you did not like or passed over before will sound different now and your top 5 may change in Cygnus 2.0

For me I would have not really spent much time on the Matchless D30 or the JVM but I saw a vid of a guy playing the JVM orange recently so I pulled it up through a York IR in grabbed Petrucci medium delay and man is it good
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It's funny you mentioned the JVM Orange, because that's one I recently discovered that I now love that I never really liked at all before. To me it's a metal tone with soul to it. I haven't gotten around to the D30 yet in Cygnus 2.0, but as soon as I can get back to devoting real time to playing again, I'll be revisiting all the models. I'm keeping a very open mind to all tonal options, and I'm finding that rediscovering dismissed amps is the biggest joy. The other thing is to make sure not to use default speaker impedance curves too, in my opinion. They are so drastic it's basically like changing amps. I like to settle on an IR (or set of IRs) first, then set the global speaker impedance curve to match the IR, choose the amp model, reset the amp block, set Speaker Thump to match the real world (my guess is Amp Wattage / Cabinet Wattage * 5), then set Speaker Impedance by ear, then start tweaking authentic controls, then either start modding the amp or just use a drive in front.
 
Terref69 said:
What a cool thread. have to try this when I get home..Should I try this on all amps? MV 7 or 8?
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Thanks! I did try a high MV on a ton of amps, with mixed results. The real magic I found here was with the BE-100, but I also got really great results on unexpected amps, like the 5150. To me, using a high MV with a 5150 turns it from a metal amp to an awesome rock amp. But you really have to very liberal with turning the tonestack knobs to get a high MV to work on particular amps. It's been a little bit since I did this, so I can't remember which other ones were pleasant surprises.
 
Terref69 said:
What a cool thread. have to try this when I get home..Should I try this on all amps? MV 7 or 8?
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It all depends on how gain/dirt you want and need. The MV on the BEC45 for me is at 6, with the gain at 1.4. Plenty of hair on the notes and responds well when rolling off the guitars volume or picking lighter or harder.
 
Dave Merrill said:
Congrats on awesome life events!
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Much appreciate Dave! In three days my wife and I are closing on our first house. We moved a few states away, with our home business, have been living out of an AirBnB in the middle of nowhere for the past couple of months while we try to find out what towns we liked, and looked at about a million houses. We got really lucky because we don't have the means to compete with the people who were winning in the seller's market. We thought things would have cooled down more from the pandemic, but they hadn't cooled as much as we'd hoped. But we did find one couple selling a house who allowed for a home inspection, which others did not, and it came back with stuff we could handle. The house hunt had become demoralizing before we found the right one, then magically the right one came along. It's been a stressful yet exhilarating experience. So now it's just the craziness of setting up in a new state both for ourselves and our business, and learning what it is to be a homeowner first hand!
 
Randalljax said:
the JVM but I saw a vid of a guy playing the JVM orange recently so I pulled it up through a York IR in grabbed Petrucci medium delay and man is it good
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State of Epicicity said:
JVM Orange, because that's one I recently discovered that I now love that I never really liked at all before.
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The JVM Orange OD2 sounds 99% identical (and amazing) as the Friedman HBE C45 used to in Ares. It’s the amp I go to to get the Marshall-y high-gain modern metal (à la Perpihery:III). It’s probably one of the biggest surprises in Cygnus X2 for me! So woody yet so tight. One of the best mixes of chuggaliciousness and articulation. To my ears, it stands in between a 5150 and a Mesa Mark series amp. It’s odd the real amp gets a bad rep, but I guess most of Marshall’s recent offerings do.

It was awesome to learn that Fluff also based his live preset for his band around that exact model.
 
Saarang Narayan said:
The JVM Orange OD2 sounds 99% identical (and amazing) as the Friedman HBE C45 used to in Ares. It’s the amp I go to to get the Marshall-y high-gain modern metal (à la Perpihery:III). It’s probably one of the biggest surprises in Cygnus X2 for me! So woody yet so tight. One of the best mixes of chuggaliciousness and articulation. To my ears, it stands in between a 5150 and a Mesa Mark series amp. It’s odd the real amp gets a bad rep, but I guess most of Marshall’s recent offerings do.

It was awesome to learn that Fluff also based his live preset for his band around that exact model.
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It’s a great model, the main reason the JVM gets slagged iIMO is because the noise floor on that amp is insane like higher than a 5150
That why when they did the Satch they reduced the gain compression a bit and added a noise gate
 
I used to love the JVM OD2 Green preset on the FM3 with a drive in front and a better IR. I don't like it as much now for some reason. It used to have a really nice low mid growl to it.. not sure if my tastes have changed or the preset/amp changed, but I'll have to try the Orange and see if I like it better. I noticed from the JVM manual that the OD2 had a bump in the 500hz range rather than the 650 like a typical Marshall.
 
Fizz said:
I used to love the JVM OD2 Green preset on the FM3 with a drive in front and a better IR. I don't like it as much now for some reason. It used to have a really nice low mid growl to it.. not sure if my tastes have changed or the preset/amp changed, but I'll have to try the Orange and see if I like it better. I noticed from the JVM manual that the OD2 had a bump in the 500hz range rather than the 650 like a typical Marshall.
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That is the Red Channel I think
The orange is the standard Marshall
 
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