Introduction thread

This is kind of crazy after all these years. Anyway I was last on here around 14 years ago. I bought an original axe fx second hand and I never really got along with it. I tried some other things like pod x3 and maybe something else then eventually got a Kemper and really that has kept me pretty happy for the past 10 years or so. I think it is still an awesome unit but I like to experiment and the Kemper is kind of limited in certain ways. I mostly use the PC editor and hardly touch the thing and that is the kind of workflow I like. I watched a few videos about what else is available these days with a PC editor and landed on thinking the FM3 was probably the unit for me. Seems powerful and flexible enough, but who knows maybe I will want to upgrade later. I like to get in the weeds with these things so I'm sure this forum will help me figure out everything I need to.

As for my guitar journey I have played on and off for around 30 years. Covid did something to me and I lost interest in guitar for a few years but recently have gotten back into it and picking a guitar up every few days and I'm having a lot of fun again. I work from home in my home studio so at any time I feel like it I can pick up a guitar and play. Getting back into it has had me delving more into the Kemper and some pedals and now with this FM3 unit I will have more than enough to keep me busy. I don't have any ambition but I like to record any cool ideas I come up with so maybe eventually I will get motivated to put something together, but really just picking up a guitar and playing and enjoying it is all I aspire to do on a regular basis.

So anyway, glad to be back and I look forward to digging into these forums some to learn things.

Room is messy, trying to work on that, but here are some pictures of my favorite guitars. They are dead simple partscasters. Squire body/fender neck, one pickup. I have the humbucker one in drop D and most of the time if I'm just noodling around I like the neck pickup one. I like how lightweight squire guitars are and I like hard tail, never was much of a trem guy, so this is what I landed on. I have a bunch of other guitars I hardly touch, but I do have a PRS I kind of like. I'm definitely a strat guy though, nothing else really feels right. Was going for a yen/yang kind of thing with these two guitars, it was a fun project and I'm still playing them. I think I might do another set of maybe a blue one and a red one with some different pickup configurations.

Strat1.jpegStrat2.jpeg
 
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tcleary said:
This is kind of crazy after all these years. Anyway I was last on here around 14 years ago. I bought an original axe fx second hand and I never really got along with it. I tried some other things like pod x3 and maybe something else then eventually got a Kemper and really that has kept me pretty happy for the past 10 years or so. I think it is still an awesome unit but I like to experiment and the Kemper is kind of limited in certain ways. I mostly use the PC editor and hardly touch the thing and that is the kind of workflow I like. I watched a few videos about what else is available these days with a PC editor and landed on thinking the FM3 was probably the unit for me. Seems powerful and flexible enough, but who knows maybe I will want to upgrade later. I like to get in the weeds with these things so I'm sure this forum will help me figure out everything I need to.

As for my guitar journey I have played on and off for around 30 years. Covid did something to me and I lost interest in guitar for a few years but recently have gotten back into it and picking a guitar up every few days and I'm having a lot of fun again. I work from home in my home studio so at any time I feel like it I can pick up a guitar and play. Getting back into it has had me delving more into the Kemper and some pedals and now with this FM9 unit I will have more than enough to keep me busy. I don't have any ambition but I like to record any cool ideas I come up with so maybe eventually I will get motivated to put something together, but really just picking up a guitar and playing and enjoying it is all I aspire to do on a regular basis.

So anyway, glad to be back and I look forward to digging into these forums some to learn things.

Room is messy, trying to work on that, but here are some pictures of my favorite guitars. They are dead simple partscasters. Squire body/fender neck, one pickup. I have the humbucker one in drop D and most of the time if I'm just noodling around I like the neck pickup one. I like how lightweight squire guitars are and I like hard tail, never was much of a trem guy, so this is what I landed on. I have a bunch of other guitars I hardly touch, but I do have a PRS I kind of like. I'm definitely a strat guy though, nothing else really feels right. Was going for a yen/yang kind of thing with these two guitars, it was a fun project and I'm still playing them. I think I might do another set of maybe a blue one and a red one with some different pickup configurations.

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Welcome (back)!

Your post mentioned FM9 and FM3 - which one did you get?
 
scottp said:
@tcleary That natural finished guitar in the rack caught my eye, can you show us that one?
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Sure. I have quite a few tele style guitars. The natural one is some random guitar body I found on ebay I think a long time ago. it has a strat cut out and is pretty thin and comfortable to play. I put a squire neck on it, no idea where it came from. I'm not sure what pickups are on it.

While we are talking Teles I think this is the most fun one I have. It is a Baja with fender noiseless pickups and I got as close as I could to Keith Richards open G tuning and string sizes. It is a pretty novel tuning if you have never tried it. The thing is heavy as hell though, my light guitars spoil me, so I usually only play it for a bit if I play it at all.

tele1.jpgtele2.jpg
 
Hi, my name is Adrian (ericmelvin10 in the guitar forums).

I’m a Kemper Profiler Amplifier beta tester (for > 10 years).

I used to play my Bogner xtc classic and my VHT-Fryette Sig X, mainly at recordings and big gigs.
While the venues were smaller I start “cloning” my rig with the kemper and play with it.

For even smaller places, I like to play with my Laney Lionheart loud pedal and an L6 HX effects.

While this setup works for playing my stuff, and the kemper worked great for cloning the studio sound of other jobs and translate it to live situation… It lacks some flexibility when it comes to play other people’s music (that I didn’t record)…

Here comes the fractal FM3.

The perfect small/medium/big gig machine.
Not the exact same tones, but a lot more flexible… and more live friendly (when playing with poweamps and cabinets) than the kemper or the helix.

Regards from Barcelona, SPAIN.
 
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I've been running the BOSS GT1000CORE with a few pedals on the front and back end along with reverb units in the loops. It worked very well but I wanted access to more amp models, a better way to manage effects in parallel and channels, better software for quicker preset builds for particular songs and more foot switching capabilities. I got all of that and a whole lot more in the FM9 Mark II Turbo.

A big tip of the hat to Cooper Carter, Rosh Roslin and Leon Todd for their incredibly well executed videos. Those videos combined with a quick skim of the manual PDF made it very clear how this unit works and more importantly, how I could achieve my own goals with it.

When the FM9 showed up I spent a day just exploring the factory presets and by the end of the first week I had already built about 20 presets (and song lists) based on particular songs. I had also saved quite a few effects block settings. After about a month with the FM9, I can say it is well designed and intuitive. Next level stuff!

Eric
 
Hi all,

New Axe-FX III user here from the Netherlands. I've played guitar for about 34 years with different setups. My previous setup was a Kemper with various effect pedals and in October I decided to try the Axe-FX III. I'm really impressed with it and it feels nice to have a simple setup again where I can control all sounds with Axe Edit.

Like others have mentioned, the tutorials and resources are extremely useful and have helped me a lot with getting to understand the possibilities of the Axe-FX III. And all the resources of amplifiers and pedals are also very interesting to read.

Nice to meet you all!

Regards,
LosBastardos
 
LosBastardos said:
Hi all,

New Axe-FX III user here from the Netherlands. I've played guitar for about 34 years with different setups. My previous setup was a Kemper with various effect pedals and in October I decided to try the Axe-FX III. I'm really impressed with it and it feels nice to have a simple setup again where I can control all sounds with Axe Edit.

Like others have mentioned, the tutorials and resources are extremely useful and have helped me a lot with getting to understand the possibilities of the Axe-FX III. And all the resources of amplifiers and pedals are also very interesting to read.

Nice to meet you all!

Regards,
LosBastardos
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Welcome to the fun zone, @LosBastardos! If your journey parallels ours — and it probably will — you’re in for some good times. :)
 
LosBastardos said:
Hi all,

New Axe-FX III user here from the Netherlands. I've played guitar for about 34 years with different setups. My previous setup was a Kemper with various effect pedals and in October I decided to try the Axe-FX III. I'm really impressed with it and it feels nice to have a simple setup again where I can control all sounds with Axe Edit.

Like others have mentioned, the tutorials and resources are extremely useful and have helped me a lot with getting to understand the possibilities of the Axe-FX III. And all the resources of amplifiers and pedals are also very interesting to read.

Nice to meet you all!

Regards,
LosBastardos
Click to expand...
Goedemorgen van Arizona!
 
Hello everyone!
My name is Francesco, from Italy, and I've been a long time lurker in this forum. But now that I've finally acquired a FM3 MII Turbo, I thought that it would have been nice to become an active member of this forum!

So, here I am, let me introduce myself and give a little bit of background.
I was a long-time Helix user, having bought a Helix Floor just before Covid times (end of 2019). I managed to do a single live gig with it and then Covid shutdowns begun. Nice timing! I experimented a little bit with it at home, but was never fully satisfied with it. Maybe it was the monitoring method that I chose (Powercab 112 Plus, and/or low-mid tier Beats headphones), maybe it was the playing volume (never loud enough), but I always found the amp models lacking something. I liked it for the ease of use, its versatility and the multiple ins/outs, but that was it.

After some guitar hiatus period (my old band split up, but that's another story), last year I started playing guitar again, and, since I had moved for work, I didn't want to haul the ol' big Helix when visiting my parents. That thing is huge! Wanting something smaller, and with better amp simulations and effects, I quickly steered towards Fractal. Before jumping ship, I tried documenting myself as much as possible on how the Fractal modelers work, what's the philosophy behind these systems, and finally decided that they could be the right system for me. Being a chemist by trade, I am accustomed to seeing and working with graphs, plots, functions, and most of all, old 90's electronic instruments! And so it seemed appropriate to jump on this really detailed and versatile modeling system! Thanks to Marco Fanton's videos and tutorials, I decided it was time to sell the Helix and order the FM3.

Now that I've had the FM3 for a few days, I started getting acquainted with the on-board presets, to see which amp models and effects I like best, and then to start experimenting with my own sounds. First off, operating the FM3 without the editor is not as complicated as they say. Granted, creating a new preset from scratch is quite cumbersome, for that I prefer to use the editor. I really enjoy the sounds I can get from this little unit, even with the sub-par Beats headphones (I'm planning on getting higher quality cans, tho). The feel IME is superior to that of the Helix ecosystem, and so are the effects (especially the reverbs and delays). I have yet to experiment with higher gain amps, but the crunch sounds I can get with the Plexis and the Friedmans are my cup of tea! Overall, I am really satisfied so far, and look forward to use this little gem live.

Do you have a similar experience, jumping from Helix (or other modelers) to Fractal?
I hope I haven't bored you too much, see you in here! :)
 
Pink Taco said:
Hello everyone!
My name is Francesco, from Italy, and I've been a long time lurker in this forum. But now that I've finally acquired a FM3 MII Turbo, I thought that it would have been nice to become an active member of this forum!

So, here I am, let me introduce myself and give a little bit of background.
I was a long-time Helix user, having bought a Helix Floor just before Covid times (end of 2019). I managed to do a single live gig with it and then Covid shutdowns begun. Nice timing! I experimented a little bit with it at home, but was never fully satisfied with it. Maybe it was the monitoring method that I chose (Powercab 112 Plus, and/or low-mid tier Beats headphones), maybe it was the playing volume (never loud enough), but I always found the amp models lacking something. I liked it for the ease of use, its versatility and the multiple ins/outs, but that was it.

After some guitar hiatus period (my old band split up, but that's another story), last year I started playing guitar again, and, since I had moved for work, I didn't want to haul the ol' big Helix when visiting my parents. That thing is huge! Wanting something smaller, and with better amp simulations and effects, I quickly steered towards Fractal. Before jumping ship, I tried documenting myself as much as possible on how the Fractal modelers work, what's the philosophy behind these systems, and finally decided that they could be the right system for me. Being a chemist by trade, I am accustomed to seeing and working with graphs, plots, functions, and most of all, old 90's electronic instruments! And so it seemed appropriate to jump on this really detailed and versatile modeling system! Thanks to Marco Fanton's videos and tutorials, I decided it was time to sell the Helix and order the FM3.

Now that I've had the FM3 for a few days, I started getting acquainted with the on-board presets, to see which amp models and effects I like best, and then to start experimenting with my own sounds. First off, operating the FM3 without the editor is not as complicated as they say. Granted, creating a new preset from scratch is quite cumbersome, for that I prefer to use the editor. I really enjoy the sounds I can get from this little unit, even with the sub-par Beats headphones (I'm planning on getting higher quality cans, tho). The feel IME is superior to that of the Helix ecosystem, and so are the effects (especially the reverbs and delays). I have yet to experiment with higher gain amps, but the crunch sounds I can get with the Plexis and the Friedmans are my cup of tea! Overall, I am really satisfied so far, and look forward to use this little gem live.

Do you have a similar experience, jumping from Helix (or other modelers) to Fractal?
I hope I haven't bored you too much, see you in here! :)
Click to expand...
Welcome!

Yeah, there are a lot of people here who came from the Helix ecosystem, myself included. I actually really liked my Helix, had a bunch of tones that I thought sounded great...but I felt it was a lot of effort to get sounds that simply twisting knobs should do, and I wanted to try something new anyways, so I bought my FM9 and haven't looked back.
 
Allow me to introduce... myself.

Just picked up my Fractal FM9 and I’m beyond excited to dive in! I’m especially looking forward to setting up the setlist function for my live gigs. My band plays mostly 80’s pop rock covers, and I play lead guitar on a Fender Strat HSS 70th Anniversary Amethyst... love that thing.

This is my first real step into the modeler world, and I can't wait to start building tones, dialing in scenes, and getting everything show-ready. Looking forward to learning from all of you and being part of the Fractal family!

See you around, and see you on stage!
 
Funny thing is, this forum wouldn't let me post the name of my band, No P0litics, because I guess the P word is off limits. HAHA
 
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