Your favorites factory presets ?

B

Blueprint

Member
Hi all
Newbe here, I will receive my fm3 within a week. The title says it all, I want to know if there are some presets to try at first.
Thanks 😊
 
That depends. Do you prefer Italian food, or Vietnamese food, or Ethiopian food, or...?

Seriously, what someone else likes doesn't matter. It's all about what you like. Fire up your FM3 and start spinning through the factory presets. It couldn't be easier than that. You'll quickly discover what you and your guitars like best.

I'd tell you to have fun with it, but you will. :)
 
They are all pretty weird and not useable. I thought there would be more of them that were good out of the box but quickly learned to just make my own. Also, the overdrives and distortions are weak unless you like high gain heavy metal drives The best things about this pedal are the delays,reverbs, and modulation. The Amps and cabs are good but I find myself sticking to a select few choices there.
 
JoKeR III said:
Must....resist.

Don't.....feed.....the.....trolls.....
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I don’t know what that means".......... listen I love my Fm3 but as said by many on this forum, nobody buys this pedal to play the presets or use them for that matter.
 
Mine will be here this Thursday...But I haven't used a modeler yet that had good factory presets.
Building your own is always the best way.
 
Tommymo said:
They are all pretty weird and not useable. I thought there would be more of them that were good out of the box but quickly learned to just make my own. Also, the overdrives and distortions are weak unless you like high gain heavy metal drives The best things about this pedal are the delays,reverbs, and modulation. The Amps and cabs are good but I find myself sticking to a select few choices there.
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What’s weird about preset 000 59 bassguy?
 
Tommymo said:
They are all pretty weird and not useable. I thought there would be more of them that were good out of the box but quickly learned to just make my own. Also, the overdrives and distortions are weak unless you like high gain heavy metal drives The best things about this pedal are the delays,reverbs, and modulation. The Amps and cabs are good but I find myself sticking to a select few choices there.
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"They are ALL pretty weird and not useable". Really? I think one purpose of factory presets is to show case possibilities of the unit (i.e., Poltergeist Pigs and the like).

I have to second Rex's comment above that it depends on your flavor.

I'm at risk of sounding like a Leon Todd fan boy here, because I mentioned this in another thread, but you seriously need to check out his presets. It's pretty incredible how he's not pigeon holed into one particular sound. Enjoy.
 
Tommymo said:
I don’t know what that means".......... listen I love my Fm3 but as said by many on this forum, nobody buys this pedal to play the presets or use them for that matter.
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I can see possibly not finding the factory presets up to your standard but this has not been the general consensus in the threads I've read. I'd be interested in the threads you've seen that indicate other's displeasure with the factory presets.

What made me feel that you might be trolling was the added comment about the drives. Both of these comments are far from my experience as well as many others here so you can see how they could be misinterpreted.
 
I'm about a week in and in no particular order my favorite presets so far have been

65 Bassguy
AC20 Deluxe
Badger 18
Herbie (channel 3)
Hot Kitty
Friedman BE-100
Recto 2 (red modern)

All of these have been great for different things. They also gave me good examples to start building presets.

PS there is a synth preset called Synth Lineup in there that is ridiculously fun to play with.
 
Here's my two cents worth of advice for new owners. Go through each preset and write the number down on the ones that catch your ear. Resist the temptation to jam or it will take forever. if you're like me you'll end up with about 50. Then go back to the ones you wrote down and jam and tweak the amps and effects to your liking, saving them to the user area. After a while start experimenting with cabs and advanced parameters. I wanted the FM3 to be plug and play, but there are so many ways to make your presets better.
 
Tonedeaf said:
Here's my two cents worth of advice for new owners. Go through each preset and write the number down on the ones that catch your ear. Resist the temptation to jam or it will take forever. if you're like me you'll end up with about 50. Then go back to the ones you wrote down and jam and tweak the amps and effects to your liking, saving them to the user area. After a while start experimenting with cabs and advanced parameters. I wanted the FM3 to be plug and play, but there are so many ways to make your presets better.
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Absolutely. I would also specify that you check out each individual scene w/i the preset. You may be amazed at how much tonal variation there is. RESIST the urge to jam or you will never get through them. Strum a few chords or play some one note lines, if you are remotely interested make a note of it and move on.

Just about every one of Gnarly-dudr's recommendations have caught my ear. I would add:

Top Boost
Smokey Jazz
Plexpressor
 
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Some presets that I find useable by only using the volume/tone knobs on guitar to adjust tone/eq are:

009 Plexi 100W
021 Solo 100
023 Friedman BE-100
095 EJ Clean

But as written above by Rex, "That depends..."

Just dive in. You will find the tone that you want.
 
There's plenty of good presets, and in your first day, you can just go through them, spend a few minutes on each one and write down your favorites. My issue is usually that I almost never want the effects, but many of them have a "dry" scene, and even if they don't you can always turn individual effects off or on. To get a sense of my taste, I come from an alt rock background in my playing, though over the last 10 years have gotten more into soul and blues. I play 24.75 scale P90 or PAF guitars for the most part, other guitars/pickups (and another individual's playing!) should bring out the qualities of different amps and presets.

Some of my favorites that are "normal" amps (saving crazy effects patches for last):

023 - Friedman BE-100
Sounds fantastic out of box for me, cleans up well with guitar volume. I think I use the 2018 HBE scene most.
028 - Vibrato Deluxe
There's a ton of great Fender stuff to choose from, on the preset menu this one stuck out to me (personally like the 2x10 cab).
035 - Tucana
One of my favorites all around, beautiful clean and plenty of gain (there's a second Tucana preset as well, 098).
040 - Buttery
Made it to my final 4 top cleans in the FM3.
046 - Royale with Cheese
This one is disgusting, sounds like the end of the world, fun stuff.
050 - JTM 45
Go-to Marshall for me, cleans up pretty nice with guitar volume.
071 - Bassman about 2 Explode
As fun as it sounds.
074 - Dizzy VH4
The Diezel preset has a good scene-by-scene step up in gain, and sounds great if you like to play heavy.
085 - Try Axes
Based on Mesa Tri-Axis, sounds good for me with minimal/no tweaks. I like it because it has one of the cleaner clean scenes in a preset that also has a nice higher-gain scene.
226 - Class-A Lineup
If you like Vox-ish sounds (who doesn't), this is a good place to start because it pulls together several of the options from the FM3 that can do that sound, once you pick a favorite you can go to that particular amp's preset, or of course make your own.

Crazy/fun stuff, the higher number presets feature a lot of extreme effects that are worth checking out and studying from a signal routing standpoint to help you learn how to get what you need. Just a couple favorites:

128 - Galaxy Formation FM3
If you like Sigur Ros, this does an awesome job of recreating the bowed guitar with heavy reverb sound from their records. The scene with no dry signal does the best job of this.
154 - Bl@de run liter (EMI)
Come on, this is just pure fun.
168 - Crystal Echoes
One of many shimmering ambient sounds.
187 - Verb->Trem
Very musical and usable for a heavy effect.
192 - Diffused Phaser
Just sounds nice to me.
228 - Synth Lineup
For something completely different.

Also try everything that says "FAS" on it (hint: Fractal Audio Systems, these are their custom amps).
 
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