Help a newbie dial in a Friedman Smallbox preset please.

S

sfla99

Member
Hi all,

I am very new to Fractal and the FM3, this is my first time trying to build a preset, I am using LT Mix 7 in the preset and my aim was to get cleans from the Friedman Dirt Shirly and Gain from my favorite pedal (Small Box), in this case the amplifier since the pedal does not exist. I watched a TON of videos from LT and CC among several others, and think I am on track with this but I have to be honest, I am not sure the tone I am getting is any good, I mean yes, it sounds decent through my Red Sound Elis.8 but every rehearsal I come home and keep tweaking to try and fix it so it sounds right.

I am new to modeling and the whole FRFR thing so I am unsure I am aiming for the right tone (still have analog tube sound in my brain) versus trying to get a recorded mic'ed up cab tone.

Am I going about this wrong or is this a decent start, could any one lend a hand to tell me if I am going about building these patches in a less optimal way? I just want to show up at a rehearsal and have some awesome tones. Last night someone said to me "what happened to your tone, it used to be awesome, tonight sounded sterile", that felt bad, though I was using a Deluxe with a super boutique pedal board.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

PS. the Val / Wah => M-Plex is triggering on pedal (2).

Thanks in advance!
 

Attachments

  • FM3-Smallbox Live.syx
    24.1 KB · Views: 14
I bought my first Fractal product in 2013 (Axe Fx II). Since then I've had the Axe 8, FM3 and now the FM9. I still tweak stuff after pretty much every rehearsal. I'm at a point now though where I get compliments on my tone pretty much every gig I play. Sometimes I get some comments along the lines of that a certain song sounded a bit harsh or something like that, that I take on board and keep tweaking.

There's a couple of tricks I've learned along the way. Volume makes everything better. Guitar is just meant to be played loud. Every time I think a preset I previously created doesn't sound right I turn up the volume and 99 times out of a 100 it "fixes" it.

It's always good to approach creating a preset the way you would a physical rig, using one IR is a good start. A lot of people really like LT tv7 but it's never really been my thing. I've been using Legacy #103 forever but has now starting using DynaCab 1960TV. Still not 100% convinced it's better but everyone's raving about Dynacabs so willing to give it a go for a while. If I revert to #103 at some point I wouldn't be surprised. And I think it's a good start to use one IR for everything, whichever one you like.

It's also a good idea to listen and figure out what you like, which is also always in whatever the context you're playing. I think the more instruments, the narrower you'll need to keep yourself. If you listen to guitar stems from our favourite records, they are usually way harsher than we imagine. In my current band it's me on guitar with bass, drums and a female vocalist. That means that in this context there's a big sonic space for me between the drums and bass at the bottom and our female vocalist at the top where I can live without getting in the way of anyone. But if there was another guitarist, keyboard player or sometimes a male vocalist is in the same sonic spectrum as guitar which means that we have to be more careful, and it's advantageous to carve out a narrower frequency range for your guitar. You'll just have to experiment here.

It's also good to not get hang up around a certain model. My two favourite models for a long time is the AC20 and Dirty Shirley. I've never owned or even played through either of them. They just speak to me. Sometimes I read about other models and think I "should" like them, but then every time I come back to these two.

Another trick I've used many times is to dial in two similar presets and try them out at rehearsal. Keep your Smallbox preset and do another one with the Dirty Shirley, BrownEye, 1959SLP, 1987X, Brit800, Studio20 or anything else really. You can change mid song and ask your band mates what they like or listen to what you like.

And lastly, pretty much whatever you do - it takes 10 years to get good at it. Enjoy the ride 😀
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom