I'm a gigging bassist and had the same problem. Even with others' presets, Leon Todd's tutorials, and my own experimentation, I couldn't get my sound to be anywhere near as thick-and-rumbling-yet-clear-and-a-bit-chewy as my rehearsal rig or my gigging rig. And with those rigs I just power them up and they're perfect - no pedals or anything else in the signal chain. I have no doubt it COULD be dialed in in the FM3, but I'd already spent several hours over several sessions working on it so instead of recreating the wheel my solution was to run a bass Sansamp that I had laying around in front of the FM3 for bass guitar tones. Sounds phenomenal now. There's also the bass amp pack (Austin Buddy?) that might be worth exploring.Hi All
I have mean guitar tone but my bass sounds thin and lack of punch in the low end, anyone can share with me a good preset?
Audient ID-22 + Dynaudio BM6 mkiiiWhat sort of speakers are you listening through?
Hi I can invest in Sansamp pedal if this is what will give me tone I'm after, I didn't like the Austin buddy presets..I'm a gigging bassist and had the same problem. Even with others' presets, Leon Todd's tutorials, and my own experimentation, I couldn't get my sound to be anywhere near as thick-and-rumbling-yet-clear-and-a-bit-chewy as my rehearsal rig or my gigging rig. And with those rigs I just power them up and they're perfect - no pedals or anything else in the signal chain. I have no doubt it COULD be dialed in in the FM3, but I'd already spent several hours over several sessions working on it so instead of recreating the wheel my solution was to run a bass Sansamp that I had laying around in front of the FM3 for bass guitar tones. Sounds phenomenal now. There's also the bass amp pack (Austin Buddy?) that might be worth exploring.
Yes my bass after setup, I'm into progressive metal bass sound.. with a regular Ampeg bass amp my Ibanez bass sound beast.What’s your genre @Kfir? Is your bass set up properly with the correct relief and pickup height? Fresh strings also often help a lot. The FM3 sound very much like going into a high quality clean preamp, so it should be possible to do most kinds of tones from there.
Two things that got me where I wanted to go-
The right IR. I wasn’t getting what I wanted with the stock IR’s. I know I bought Dr. Bonker’s bass cab pack which has some great ones, a York Audio 8x10 if I remember right and also had the IR’s that came with AB’s bass presets. It’s been a while since I’ve looked, but there’s one IR in the AB pack, I think it’s called Secret Weapon(?) that was great, but for the most part, the York 8x10 pack has been my go-to.
Using both an amp block and a direct signal w/ a compressor on it coming out the same output. I tend to approach that like Dug Pinnick sets his rig(s) up; all the dirt has the low end chopped off entirely, it’s just mids and treble while the DI is handling all the low end. I still dial a good amount of high end in the DI, but a lot is coming from the distorted amp. If I remember right, the clip below is a mix of a boosted JCM800 into a York 8x10 IR w/the DI.
I also track a separate DI going into Logic, I’ll almost always end up tossing the CLA-Bass plug-in on that for a really clean, compressed to hell and back tone.
I’ve posted this a lot over the years, so forgive me if it’s been seen before, but this was pretty much my ideal bass tone for the heavy stuff.
I believe I posted the preset in AxeExchange but it was for the AxeFX III and I didn’t include the IR due to it being a 3rd party.
Also of note; I’ve got 3 different basses, a Warwick 5-string, Peavey Millenium 5-string and the Spector Pulse. Each bass sounds entirely different with the same preset and only the Spector has that perfect balance of balls and top end. You can hear it unplugged just the same, you can breath on the Spector’s lowest string and it sounds like an anvil getting dropped on an empty steel cargo container.
This sounds great, I can't seem to find a York 8x10 though for sale, do you have more details on that one? I found an Ampeg 410 pack though
Hi everyone!I've asked Danny Miranda from Blue Oyster Cult for some comments here. He's been touring and recording with the FM3. I know he uses custom presets, but they started life as members of the Austin Buddy Bass pack.
Also the first thing is to pick an amp that best suits your sound -Hi everyone!
I have been working with the FM3 for a little over a year- and gradually adding it to my live rig as well as my studio Rig. I couldn’t be happier!
Now the FM three is the only thing I use both live and in the studio.
A lesson that I’ve learned with any block, is to not overdo it—
Meaning don’t turn up the low end all the way don’t turn up the distortion all the way etc.
knowing that every block that is added can have The tendency to make the sound smaller and more narrow as easily as it couldn’t become bigger and wider—
It is a tightrope for sure -just as any complex amplifier or any pedalboard .
Overloading gain stages and going into the red , Will slowly but surely rob your tone!
What helped me out was picking the right amplifier to start with and the right cabinet—
Getting the right IR for you is very important-and maybe wait until you get a sound to your liking to start incorporating compression -because used incorrectly it can rob your dynamics, and that sets off a whole load of problems. I love the speaker impedance control— I find that to be one of the more musical components of the Fractal system !
I have a direct signal running parallel at all times— that is crucially important to me and not to forget that you can always blend the amp sound into the direct sound and vice versa! Hope this is a good start and I will be posting some sound examples!
Two things that got me where I wanted to go-
The right IR. I wasn’t getting what I wanted with the stock IR’s. I know I bought Dr. Bonker’s bass cab pack which has some great ones, a York Audio 8x10 if I remember right and also had the IR’s that came with AB’s bass presets. It’s been a while since I’ve looked, but there’s one IR in the AB pack, I think it’s called Secret Weapon(?) that was great, but for the most part, the York 8x10 pack has been my go-to.
Using both an amp block and a direct signal w/ a compressor on it coming out the same output. I tend to approach that like Dug Pinnick sets his rig(s) up; all the dirt has the low end chopped off entirely, it’s just mids and treble while the DI is handling all the low end. I still dial a good amount of high end in the DI, but a lot is coming from the distorted amp. If I remember right, the clip below is a mix of a boosted JCM800 into a York 8x10 IR w/the DI.
I also track a separate DI going into Logic, I’ll almost always end up tossing the CLA-Bass plug-in on that for a really clean, compressed to hell and back tone.
I’ve posted this a lot over the years, so forgive me if it’s been seen before, but this was pretty much my ideal bass tone for the heavy stuff.
I believe I posted the preset in AxeExchange but it was for the AxeFX III and I didn’t include the IR due to it being a 3rd party.
Also of note; I’ve got 3 different basses, a Warwick 5-string, Peavey Millenium 5-string and the Spector Pulse. Each bass sounds entirely different with the same preset and only the Spector has that perfect balance of balls and top end. You can hear it unplugged just the same, you can breath on the Spector’s lowest string and it sounds like an anvil getting dropped on an empty steel cargo container.
That's a very sensible approach-- to make the "DI" path basically preserve the low-end from anything that might compromise it. And run the mids and top through "character development" of any sort.
I'd probably tend to be subtle about the compression on that lows path- so nothing robs the punch of the attack. I'd probably use it for tracking, and disable it for live.