"You need to be an engineer..."

RevDrucifer

RevDrucifer

Fractal Fanatic
"....to get a good tone out of a Fractal"

Let me relay my experience as an AxeFX user a few moments ago; I wanted to try adding a Jose mod to the 6CA7, so I placed an amp, cab, delay and reverb blocks on the grid and went about tweaking the reverb because it's better when it's wetter. I noodled around for about 10-15 minutes, getting lost in the 6CA7 a bit and actually forgot I loaded it up to make it a hot-rodded Jose. This is what I was hearing at that time, which I found a little bassy-



So I went to the amp block to tame some of that bass and it dawned on me-
Screen Shot 2023-10-28 at 5.21.29 PM.png

I hadn't even tweaked the amp block yet. At that point I assumed somehow the cab block got switched back to Channel A somehow, which I dialed in for a Deluxe a few days ago. To my surprise-

Screen Shot 2023-10-28 at 5.22.31 PM.png

It also had not been touched.

I was quoted recently for saying "It ain't the fuckin' Fractal, buddy" in response to someone complaining about not being able to dial in a good tone with one. I rest my case.

In full disclosure, I am a Chief Engineer for a living, so maybe there is something to that. :tearsofjoy:
 
RevDrucifer said:
"....to get a good tone out of a Fractal"

Let me relay my experience as an AxeFX user a few moments ago; I wanted to try adding a Jose mod to the 6CA7, so I placed an amp, cab, delay and reverb blocks on the grid and went about tweaking the reverb because it's better when it's wetter. I noodled around for about 10-15 minutes, getting lost in the 6CA7 a bit and actually forgot I loaded it up to make it a hot-rodded Jose. This is what I was hearing at that time, which I found a little bassy-



So I went to the amp block to tame some of that bass and it dawned on me-
View attachment 128793

I hadn't even tweaked the amp block yet. At that point I assumed somehow the cab block got switched back to Channel A somehow, which I dialed in for a Deluxe a few days ago. To my surprise-

View attachment 128794

It also had not been touched.

I was quoted recently for saying "It ain't the fuckin' Fractal, buddy" in response to someone complaining about not being able to dial in a good tone with one. I rest my case.

In full disclosure, I am a Chief Engineer for a living, so maybe there is something to that. :tearsofjoy:
Click to expand...


I see you are on the same amp path I'm on right now. I did go for the Arredondo mod, and that was the final piece for me; it was better than any OD in front of the amp, and I've tried them all. Your clip sounds righteous!
 
State of Epicicity said:
I see you are on the same amp path I'm on right now. I did go for the Arredondo mod, and that was the final piece for me; it was better than any OD in front of the amp, and I've tried them all. Your clip sounds righteous!
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This is where I ended up about 4 minutes later. Added the Ideal Saturation Switch, played with the Tone menu and moved the mic back a bit. Done. These are vintage-voiced singles coils, FWIW. Also, I noted you over at TGF as influencing me to roll my own Jose!

(random wanking noodles)
 
RevDrucifer said:
This is where I ended up about 4 minutes later. Added the Ideal Saturation Switch, played with the Tone menu and moved the mic back a bit. Done. These are vintage-voiced singles coils, FWIW. Also, I noted you over at TGF as influencing me to roll my own Jose!

(random wanking noodles)
Click to expand...


I bought some of the Random Wanking brand ramen noodles recenlty, and they were okay, but I added some soy sauce to get that real umami flavor really humming. I then immediately got high blood pressure.

I love the tone again! Very cool you're doing this with an SSS setup. I'm using it with an HS, and the cab I ended up using was one from Overloud TH-U, their 4x12 Orange cab, with a 414 Gold and 57 mix; it just sit perfectly for me. I keep going back and forth with the DynaCabs in the unit as well as Cab Lab 4 though, but I have pretty limited playing time right now and I get immediate results with TH-U, so it's faster to me. Although I'll tell you, I did get an ideal Deluxe Verb tone with the built in Dyna Cab recently.

By the way, the first part of your recording made me think of an alternate intro to Hot For Teacher. I feel like you could just loop the intro drums and put that on top and it would sound right. :)
 
Frodebro said:
Take away all of the parameters except the authentic page, and there's your easy UI. ;)
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Which still does not make things like effects and the cab sim easy.

I think people here forget the point where a lot of people are coming to digital modeling. The world they know is something like this:

Guitar -> a few pedals -> combo amp. Turn it loud enough and it's going to sound pretty good.

They have:
  • Never miced an actual amp so mic types, their placement, high/low cuts etc are all new stuff to learn.
  • Never had to truly understand how to work the amp's tone stack (EQ) so differences in behavior between amp models might be hard to get.
  • Never used an effect with much more than 3-4 knobs. Just getting started with some of the effects can be daunting, even if the default settings for many are great and only need mix reduced a bit.
  • Never cranked their amp to play with powertube distortion because it gets ungodly loud and neighbors/family/band mates/soundguy complains. So gain vs master vs output level are foreign concepts.
  • Never played through a fullrange system so their reference point is that speaker sitting on the floor in the room. Then they wonder why the modeler doesn't sound like that, especially with some not-that-great headphones.
This is of course a generalization, but the point is that with the current paradigm of all digital modelers, you do have to become more like a studio engineer to get great results out of it.

Obviously throwing in an amp and cab block into a preset and just adjusting amp settings will get you somewhere, but not to the point that you are getting great results. I don't know about others, but I probably spend the most time getting my cab sims just right and Dyna-Cabs have certainly made that way more pleasant.

Fractal can ultimately only do so much to help as at some point personal responsibility kicks in. If you are not willing to read the manual, or at least watch Cooper Carter and Leon Todd, then you are unlikely to ever get to the point where a complex modeler like this works for you. These people do seem to exist.
 
Great tone!!

But there’s a lot of difference depending the situations.

Dialing a tone that’s sound great at home is a thing but you need some skills to dial a tone that can be played on some 15kw + foh.

Dialing a live tone that can be heard, cut well through a mix with a specific band and also try to not sacrifice your tone and the feel you get playing that tone is another set of skills.

The tone you recorded is awesome but i would not even try it in a live situation.
 
Joshua_L said:
Great tone!!

But there’s a lot of difference depending the situations.

Dialing a tone that’s sound great at home is a thing but you need some skills to dial a tone that can be played on some 15kw + foh.

Dialing a live tone that can be heard, cut well through a mix with a specific band and also try to not sacrifice your tone and the feel you get playing that tone is another set of skills.

The tone you recorded is awesome but i would not even try it in a live situation.
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That gets into strawmen territory, "good for a live tone" was never part of the equation.
 
laxu said:
I think people here forget the point where a lot of people are coming to digital modeling. The world they know is something like this:

Guitar -> a few pedals -> combo amp. Turn it loud enough and it's going to sound pretty good.
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Certainly true for a lot of people. But also, it is worth remembering that the Pod 2.0 came out in 1999. There is one or two generations of guitarists who grew up using digital modelling and have followed the parameterization trend as it has grown.

For me, I didn't buy my first proper valve amp until 2007, just one year before my band TNBD got started. I'd already been playing guitar for almost 5 years at that point, almost entirely with a PodXT Live, Amplitube 1, and various other little freebie plugins you could find back then. My DAW of course at the time was EnergyXT, a semi-modular DAW which actually thinking back to it, had a similar workflow to the Axe FX!

1698593165760.png

Haha! Look at that glorious nonsense!! What a time to grow up it was back then.
 
laxu said:
Obviously throwing in an amp and cab block into a preset and just adjusting amp settings will get you somewhere, but not to the point that you are getting great results.
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Also on this point, I don't really agree.

On the Axe FX II it wasn't true. But on the Axe FX III you can throw an amp block in there and a cab block in there, tweak just the stuff on the simple tone page, and get some really good tones with very little faff.

Axe FX II seemed to require PEQ blocks almost everywhere!!
 
It's easy to get great things out of a current generation Fractal with minimal experience or fuss, but one of the big selling points of these units is how far out into the weeds you can go with deep parameters, and for that you pretty much need to put in the time to learn what those parameters are all about.
 
Could also go full caveman

Turn random knobs till sound good

game show television GIF
 
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