Struggling With Clean Tones

D

DangMe

Member
I’m trying to dial in a Tele country tone. It sounds okay, but to my ears it’s a little clinical and sterile sounding. When I play through my amps I don’t have this problem. I’m getting great drive tones with my FM9. Here’s an example of a patch I made, I don’t know why it says it’s 25min. It’s only around 30 seconds.

I appreciate any help.

 
Post a clip of similar riffs recorded with your amps so we can have a reference of what you’re going for.

You probably bounced the entire project with 100+ empty bars instead of just the region with recorded audio.
 
I will be keeping an eye on this thread. I haven't yet received my first Fractal unit, an FM9 (coming next week) but a clean country tele tone is something I'll be after. But not crystal clean Twin like tone, which can sound a little sterile at low volumes even with a valve amp. Both of my amps are 50 watt and don't have the clean headroom you think they would. A mesa fillmore 50 and a Fargen DBC 50. The clean tones I get from those amps, when cranked up somewhat will yeild some natural compression and when you dig in hard will have the slightest of hair on the notes. Which I would then boost with a kingsley page for solos. Thats the kind of clean I will be going for on the FM9 for country sounds. That and a Brad Paisley like vox cleanish.
 
DangMe said:
I’m trying to dial in a Tele country tone. It sounds okay, but to my ears it’s a little clinical and sterile sounding. When I play through my amps I don’t have this problem. I’m getting great drive tones with my FM9. Here’s an example of a patch I made, I don’t know why it says it’s 25min. It’s only around 30 seconds.

I appreciate any help.

Click to expand...

What is the signal chain in this?
 
strabes said:
Post a clip of similar riffs recorded with your amps so we can have a reference of what you’re going for.

You probably bounced the entire project with 100+ empty bars instead of just the region with recorded audio.
Click to expand...
This is my PR that I built into a York IR. Sorry I’m just noodling and using a Strat. I’ll try to post something similar with a Tele later when I get home.
 
DangMe said:
This is my PR that I built into a York IR. Sorry I’m just noodling and using a Strat. I’ll try to post something similar with a Tele later when I get home.
Click to expand...

I would record some dry guitar and reamp it thru the amp and the IR. Then loop the dry and reamp through the fractal amp model and the same IR while dialing in the amp, listening to the results and comparing to the real amp. Shouldn’t be too hard to get them sounding pretty close.

I’m assuming you have a reactive loadbox for the amp, so you could even place the amp + loadbox in one of the fractal loops. Then put a cab block after so they’re both running into the same cab block, thus controlling for as many variables as possible. Then you could use scenes to toggle between the fractal amp and the real amp and load box in real time while the recorded dry guitar is playing. This can all be done with USB, or even just put a looper block up front before the amp model and fx loop and record some dry guitar into the looper block and let it play while you dial in the fractal amp.
 
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DangMe said:
I’m trying to dial in a Tele country tone. It sounds okay, but to my ears it’s a little clinical and sterile sounding. When I play through my amps I don’t have this problem. I’m getting great drive tones with my FM9. Here’s an example of a patch I made, I don’t know why it says it’s 25min. It’s only around 30 seconds.

I appreciate any help.

Click to expand...

FWIW - and I am not a country guy - that tone sounds great to me and is what I imagine when I think "tele twang in good country music"

What sounds clinical/sterile to my ears usually translates to "not enough juice". If this is a DR model, does adding a touch of grit help it feel better under your fingers? Either turning up the drive or adding a super mild King of Tone OD perhaps? I'm talking Drive 1, Tone 5, Vol 5 kind of thing and roll back the guitar volume a bit
 
all of the sample audio sounds really good to my ears as well as the playing, for me I always just roll off the input in the amp model and turn up the amp master gain to compensate as well as some tone tweaks but w/FM9 dialing in a awesome tone is a joy these days.
 
I took my FM9 to rehearsal and everything sounded really good. Now I just need to setup the FM9 so I can quickly access the high-pass filters on the cab block. I’ll do that later today. Thanks for the help and suggestions everyone!

On another note I saw EJ last night had to come home and attempt to dial in his clean tone. He was using Two Dual Showman(Twins) and another Fender Silverface(Rhythm) and a Plexi.


IMG_1594.jpeg
 
Actually a little surprised to see the SM57s that far off the grill cloth. It could be the angle, but those look like ~3 inches out!
Im sure EJ plays LOUD and the extra space there probably sounds awesome with his already bright tones.
 
Countryclarke said:
Actually a little surprised to see the SM57s that far off the grill cloth. It could be the angle, but those look like ~3 inches out!
Im sure EJ plays LOUD and the extra space there probably sounds awesome with his already bright tones.
Click to expand...
They’re a little closer than they appear in the photo.



 
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