Oh gotcha. But I dont think this is primarily about IRs in your case if that's the type of sound you are lookin for. At 3:10 I have been trying to get this type of sound for the longest time as well for another type of sound I'm trying to add to my repertoire.
It's a more instant type of breakup and gain characteristic. At least from this Paul Gilbert Clip. Sounds to me he may even be using a modded JCM900 which has lots of solid state circuitry and telling people he is using something else.
And believe it or not, that may be your answer as to why you may be having issues getting what you want out of the Fractal. You may be needing solid state amplification or modeling for the type of sound you are going for. Many artists lie and say they use tube but actually have solid state or at least some solid state op-amp based tone somewhere in the circuit. It has happened with even one of my favorites who is not even well known but who has sent me on a wild goose chase with every tone lie under the sun till I found out what he actually uses from one pic I noticed and it was a sansamp psa-1. Which I've also requested to be modeled in the Fractal.
Or it can be a solid state based pedal combined with a heavily modded tube amp. These pros go through ridiculous mods and tons of them - to both tube circuits and solid state ones. They have the endless money to be able to hire people for that.
You may want to try the JMP Pre-1 model in the fractal as it's the closest I've been able to get to a fast solid state sound. But I'm still not quite able to get the type of sound I'm looking for in
It's possible to do with tubes too but you need some crazy amp mods to get it right but if you do get it right with a tube amp, it's amazing.
All these reasons is why I have for the longest time been requesting a JCM900 model. The 3:10 part of that clip you sent made me instantly think of that amp.
Avid makes a decent sansamp PSA-1 plug-in in both AAX and AAX DSP. But it doesn't sound like the older first generation of the rack which was the much better one and then Sansamp change the circuit to a cheaper circuit in the later 1.1 to reduce production costs. I hate it when companies do that. It makes you pull your hair out and treat your units as if they are darts and your drywall as if it's the dartboard.
Very very interesting observations about solid state stuff, muchly appreciated. I was thinking a lot about this today and it had me thinking to Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush Live, the intro to Johnny B Goode, he has this tone that is ultra-immediate, and I pretty sure I remember him saying he used solid state amps on that tour because tubes were too unreliable. He's a blues-rock guy from Montreal, Canada, this dude could shred! and this was in the 70's. I love the intro tone he has, it's solid, and has that percussiveness that's so necessary for fast playing. Also, I thought about that immediacy and percussiveness I get from my solid state Marshall practice amp, sounds amazing for a little amp. I paid $80 for it at a pawn shop. Then I remembered Ty Tabor of KingsX talking about how good the Lab Series L5 ( solid state), and what a tone he has!
This led me to pickup the guitar today and plug into the Afx3 and 'start over' in a sense. I tried the JCM preamp as you suggested, it forced me to think outside of the trap I'm currently caught in. The 1st thing I did was switch my toggle over to series from parallel, which is how I always run it. In series, it's like a layer of kleenex has been taken off the mids, but there is more potential for thin, shrill, hi-mid nastiness. I eq'd for that and then dug into the settings. First thing as usual, turn Tube Sag to Zero, remove compression from wherever I see it, turned the Power Amp to 'off', boom, instantly better for immediacy. But, still, something was bothering me, so I ran through a bunch of different amps, and the way they respond is very very different. I stopped at this point, I know what I need to learn, and it's a lot, and I don't have the energy today, but ... one thing occurred to me to try very quickly, and that was my other guitar, a Yamaha Pacifica, I took the Ibanez Jem jr pickup out of the Ibanez jr I have ( I stuck a Seymour Duncan in it because I thought it would sound better) and put it in the Yamaha Pacifica to replace the YP's stock pickup. I plugged the $250 Y pacifica in, with the Ibanez Jem jr pickup and wow, what a colossal difference, punch and tone and I can't believe it ...
sigh. I have to dump the Seymour Duncan, it's making things so difficult, it's a Seymour Duncan TB5 Trembucker custom Bridge, and it's not happening, at all. I want to buy a pickup that is as punchy ( in the right way) as the stock Ibanez pickup, but with 4 wires output, so I can attach it to a 3-way mini toggle switch. You can't do this with the stock pickup because it only has 2 wires coming from it. I must find a pickup that can match the Ibanezs pickup punch and tone, any suggestions would be welcome.
Congrats on nailing the JCM 900 from intuition. It's always good to find out your instincts were on point.