Power Amp Matters -- Fryette PS2

[OrganicZed]

Okay, the wife had a baby shower to attend today so I had the house to myself for a few hours and I did the side by side test.

Here's how I set it up: I ran the Fryette PS-2 and QSC RMX2450 each into their own side of the the same stereo cab (VHT era FatBottom 4x12). I then set up a patch so that I could switch scenes to toggle between the outputs feeding the respective amps. I volume matched them by ear and proceeded to play with the settings in the two scenes. I set the amp blocks the same except with respect to the impedance curve settings (full amp modeling on, no cab block). The output mode was set to SS power amp and cab. I tried to get the two signals sounding the same by adjusting the impedance curve manually for the one going into the Fryette. I was playing at volumes around the 110 dB in the room.

Thoughts: The Fryette produced a tone with a lot more high frequency content no matter how I set the impedance curve in the Axe-FX. I was able to tame it some with the output EQ from the amp block, turning the presence knob to zero, or by using the resistive load setting for the impedance curve, but it was still apparent when switching between the two amps. The depth knob on the Fryette was a welcome addition as it allowed the ability to add in some extra girth / thump to the tone, but I was able to mimic that on the QSC just by boosting a bit of lows in the output EQ. I liked the way that the tone reacted to guitar volume knob adjustments a bit more when using the Fryette, but I mostly attribute that to the extra high frequency content and the fact that I prefer brighter clean / edge of breakup tones. Picking dynamics with the two amps seemed very similar, so clearly that was coming from the Axe-FX and not from the power amplifier.

My conclusion: I prefer the solid state power from the QSC RMX2450. I was surprised by that outcome. That added high end from the Fryette tube amp was pretty strident in comparison and it wasn't something that I was able to overcome with settings in the Axe-FX or on the power amp itself. The transparent nature of the solid state power from the QSC gave me all the control over the tone with the settings in the Axe-FX. I thought I had remembered the solid state amp sounding too stiff, but that wasn't the case when I was playing through it today. It felt really natural and had plenty of dynamic range.

The PS-2 did add some extra sauce to the tone and I could see why some prefer it as their power amp of choice, but I think I'll be relegating it to re-amp / attenuation duties or as a power amp for my GP/DI.

 

[Smellytele]

Been tweaking on my FM3>PS100>tl806 with an EV12L setup for a little over a week. I found another post where a member posted his speaker settings in the amp block and he said he was setting HF res, LF res, speaker distortion, speaker compression, and speaker compliance all to zero. This took out the high end thing for me and all of my sans-cab block presets sound even better.

Yesterday I got together with some pals and we set up my FM3 against a couple of their "real" amps. First was the AC20. We ran both the FM3/ps100 and my pal's AC20 into the same 806 cab. Though the amp settings on the Fractal and the AC20 were not set identical, we absolutely nailed it; the FM3 into the ps100 was indistinguishable from the AC20 in both tone and feel. None of us were expecting that. I thought it'd be close, but the results blew my mind.

Next up we did the same set up with another pal's "Blackfaced" 69 Bassman. I used the 65 Bassman amp on the Fractal. The real Bassman had much more gain at low volume settings so I had to crank up the "gain" knob on the Fractal a good bit higher than what was on the real amp. But again, nailed it. What I think some people forget after spending a lot of time with modelers that have been dialed in to sound like their favorite recordings is how bight and raw these amps are when it's guitar>cable>amp. And this is gonna sound kinda odd, but I had to actually kinda make the Fractal amps sound "worse" to match the real amps.

I do think it's worth pointing out that I think speaker choice has a huge factor on the sound. And I think that since we were plugging everything into the same speaker cab probably also had a huge impact on being able to match the Fractal to the amps.

Another side note; we also ran an Iridium with the cab IR loader disabled into the ps100 set up and it sounded really good, I'd be happy to gig with that setup (but I sold my Iridium to help fund the FM3). Then we ran a Helix into it bypassing the IR's. Well, I'm just not a Helix guy. We tried to tweak on it but it just wasn't getting there. I think we would have to probably get into the editor to fine tune the amps, but we couldn't make it sound good from the floor unit. No doubt user error, none of us have deep dove into Helix, even my friend who owns it.

The big bonus is that I ended up making two new presets based on the tones of my two friends' amps. I haven't added anything to them yet, the presets are literally just in, amp, and out. I'm getting ready to fire it up and add some basic effects and use both the presets for my weekly Sunday afternoon gig.