jellodog
Rock Star
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Yeah, you're totally right about my tastes.
I like the vintage tones and don't do high gain. Pushed cleans through EOB to crunch. That's as far as I go. Thanks!
Fender Tone Master FR-10 and FR-12 "FRFR" cabs
- Thread starter Lysander
- Start date
Yeah, you're totally right about my tastes.
I like the vintage tones and don't do high gain. Pushed cleans through EOB to crunch. That's as far as I go. Thanks!
Baba
Shredder
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My reports are pretty to the point these daysIn short; fat tones and nice sounds. But for the tones I like; needs a bit of a buildout around it I just didn't feel like the juice would be worth the squeeze for me vs. the FM with all the routing and my enjoyment of the JVMs. Knowing your tone preferences as far as Marshall stuff; it is a great pedal and would be a great centerpiece for your pedal based rig if you are looking for something to scratch that itch \m/
It's funny, with both online demos and my limited testing so far, while the IR-D is lower gain than say, the IR-X, it still reaches into high gain pretty easily, but definitely goes from clean to mean, and all points in between.Yeah, you're totally right about my tastes.
I like the vintage tones and don't do high gain. Pushed cleans through EOB to crunch. That's as far as I go. Thanks!
I think I like the guitar volume cleanup on the IR-D more than the IR-X, which is what I wanted, and makes sense, due to the nature of those two different amps, etc.
JiveTurkey
Goatlord
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Agreed. It has a more "vintage" vibe to my ears though. Even if you set it to stun.
Jarick
Rock Star
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Mine has a date of July 2024 and has extremely low self-noise so I would assume everything on the shelf today unless it's very old should be fixed.
Jarick
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Couple more hours in, still feel quite positive about the FR-12.
For clean tones only, the Orange 1x12 is very workable. But the FR-12 seems to sound more "nautral" once you dial in the bass and tweeter levels.
I suspect you're going to get a lot of the Fender FR-12 "flavor" in the sound, which is partially why it can make a direct tone with an IR sound more amp like. But I don't think the point of the FR-12 is to be a perfect "FRFR", it's to be something between that and a real amp & cab. Which is probably very close to the Friedman ASC-12 (although that is more that twice the cost and very heavy).
Anyways I can also report that the FR-12 sounds really nice with effects. I was worried at first they may be over pronounced but it actually sounds quite nice.
Now I haven't spent a lot of time with higher gain tones on it. I tried a few and those sound generally nice but I've been fighting a really bad cold (possibly Covid) for the last week so my brain and body haven't had much energy. Hoping to dig into that more this week.
For clean tones only, the Orange 1x12 is very workable. But the FR-12 seems to sound more "nautral" once you dial in the bass and tweeter levels.
I suspect you're going to get a lot of the Fender FR-12 "flavor" in the sound, which is partially why it can make a direct tone with an IR sound more amp like. But I don't think the point of the FR-12 is to be a perfect "FRFR", it's to be something between that and a real amp & cab. Which is probably very close to the Friedman ASC-12 (although that is more that twice the cost and very heavy).
Anyways I can also report that the FR-12 sounds really nice with effects. I was worried at first they may be over pronounced but it actually sounds quite nice.
Now I haven't spent a lot of time with higher gain tones on it. I tried a few and those sound generally nice but I've been fighting a really bad cold (possibly Covid) for the last week so my brain and body haven't had much energy. Hoping to dig into that more this week.
jellodog
Rock Star
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@JiveTurkey Well...
The usual GAS / buying pattern repeated itself. I _nearly_ bought the IR-D, as I do most weeks.
After listening to a few demos I ended up jumping to a couple of Friedman Plex demos which sounded (unsuprisingly) better.
From there, I thought, "I wonder if I can get close to the Plex with my goto 50w 6CA7 patch", so fired up the AF3. Changed to the bright cap to match that switch position on the Plex (100pf) which is better for bright strat pickups, and spent the next couple of hours enjoying delicious and comparible tones.
Once again, the AF3 prevented me from buying more gear!
[ Insert happy / sad emoji ].
The usual GAS / buying pattern repeated itself. I _nearly_ bought the IR-D, as I do most weeks.
After listening to a few demos I ended up jumping to a couple of Friedman Plex demos which sounded (unsuprisingly) better.
From there, I thought, "I wonder if I can get close to the Plex with my goto 50w 6CA7 patch", so fired up the AF3. Changed to the bright cap to match that switch position on the Plex (100pf) which is better for bright strat pickups, and spent the next couple of hours enjoying delicious and comparible tones.
Once again, the AF3 prevented me from buying more gear!
[ Insert happy / sad emoji ].
JiveTurkey
Goatlord
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ucnick
Roadie
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- 157
UPDATE: used the FR-10 at band rehearsal last night, classic rock covers band.
For most of the night the band was very loud, like in earplug territory. I ran my FM3 out 2 (+4 dBu, ran at about 2 o'clock on the FP OUT2 control) into the FR-10 and needed to set FR-10 volume to a little over 2 o'clock to keep up with the band when using quieter presets (I really really need to go through them and level them better with the FR-10!) but keep up it did. When the band finally turned down around 3/4 of the way through rehearsal it became way too loud, dialed it back under noon and ran down the FM3 out2 level down to noonish as well.
No shortage of low end, in fact it was quite boomy at first, needed to turn down the bass level to around 10 o'clock, it was really resonating with the stage floor. And again, I don't have any noticeable hiss out of the unit. Very impressed. And bandmates were also impressed.
Looking forward to using it at our next gig. This thing is going to give my Quilter TB202/BlockDock 12HD a run for it's money, lemme tell ya...
UPDATE UPDATE Used it 2 weekends ago (12/21/24, I became ill a few days later so didn't post) and it worked really well IMHO. Xmas party in mid-sized club/restaurant (Little Lou's in Campbell CA), we had the usual full house, audience 100 plus/minus a few, and people standing in the doorway.
I ran FM9T out 1 (+4dBu setting) into the amp (xlr to xlr) and the FM9 level was at about 1 o'clock. Amp was between 1 and 2 o'clock. I was monitoring the band levels using an old Android tablet and an app, which is not terribly accurate (I need to do a comparison, I do have a pro-level meter around here somewhere) but we worked to keep levels down, stage volume was between 95 and 100 dB, the app recorded a 103 dB peak. It's not scientific, I didn't measure distances or anything just use it for relative levels, anyway had no problem keeping up with the band except for one or two of my presets which are kinda low (and which I need to adjust). The levels were pretty good, for once my ears weren't ringing afterwards.
One item of note: LOTS of bottom end, and the amp was actually resonating somewhat with the stage , whenever I was doing anything on the low E string it was very boomy, really had to run the bass down to reduce the boominess, I think ended up around 9 o'clock.
Last edited:
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Nice review, glad it held up! I see 1 (or 2) in my future.UPDATE: used the FR-10 at band rehearsal last night, classic rock covers band.
For most of the night the band was very loud, like in earplug territory. I ran my FM3 out 2 (+4 dBu, ran at about 2 o'clock on the FP OUT2 control) into the FR-10 and needed to set FR-10 volume to a little over 2 o'clock to keep up with the band when using quieter presets (I really really need to go through them and level them better with the FR-10!) but keep up it did. When the band finally turned down around 3/4 of the way through rehearsal it became way too loud, dialed it back under noon and ran down the FM3 out2 level down to noonish as well.
No shortage of low end, in fact it was quite boomy at first, needed to turn down the bass level to around 10 o'clock, it was really resonating with the stage floor. And again, I don't have any noticeable hiss out of the unit. Very impressed. And bandmates were also impressed.
Looking forward to using it at our next gig. This thing is going to give my Quilter TB202/BlockDock 12HD a run for it's money, lemme tell ya...
Jarick
Rock Star
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That's a great update @ucnick!
I would guess the big difference between the 10 and 12 would be the volume more than the overall tone. But these seem really capable of high volumes.
It's hard to describe how an "FRFR" can sound so much like a real amp while using a cab but that must be part of whatever design they did. Maybe the cab design it self. It really does remind me of my old band (25 years ago at this point!) where both guitarists had Fender Hot Rod Devilles. Big loud clean tube amps with big speaker cabs.
I would guess the big difference between the 10 and 12 would be the volume more than the overall tone. But these seem really capable of high volumes.
It's hard to describe how an "FRFR" can sound so much like a real amp while using a cab but that must be part of whatever design they did. Maybe the cab design it self. It really does remind me of my old band (25 years ago at this point!) where both guitarists had Fender Hot Rod Devilles. Big loud clean tube amps with big speaker cabs.
Frodebro
Shredder
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My first test drive was with presets I already had dialed in, which was both 2x12s and 4x12s. There are no rules!
deadpool_25
Roadie
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2x12 or 4x12 IRs for me. I almost never use 1x12 IRs.
Baba
Shredder
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This.
You don't have to stick to a 1x12 IR, just because the FR-12, (or any solution), has just one 12" speaker, if that's what you're getting at.
EOengineer
Shredder
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Curious to get your take on this. I’ve been eyeing them up but have been neck deep in my tube amps of late.
Let us know how it goes!
ucnick
Roadie
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- 157
Volume levels are very similar, as far as I can tell. I haven't yet run them side by side, as the 12 is at band rehearsal studio and the 10 is here at home for grab 'n go usage.
