Fender Tone Master Pro: Episode IV - A New Hope

[Mikael Dez]

No, it is a great reason not to use foot switches as knobs. It is lazy design.

I really enjoy it on my QC - I don’t plan on using it live though and if I do it will be fired from desk modeler duty anyway

 

[Frodebro]

No, it is a great reason not to use foot switches as knobs. It is lazy design.

Honestly, I think it's a brilliant design. Using the switches as encoders and the scribble strips as mini displays for editing parameters allows for a ton of on-unit tweak ability without it becoming intimidatingly cluttered. But that makes durability even more important, and I don't know how robustly specced those components are. Usually with stuff like this the engineers spec out very high quality components, then the corporate bean counters swoop in and cut them off at the knees to reduce production costs and increase margins.

 

[metropolis_4]

Touchscreens are fine, but… there is nothing worse than trying to turn a virtual knob on a touchscreen

Sliders or nothing for me in a touchscreen

 

[cherryblossom]

Touchscreens are fine, but… there is nothing worse than trying to turn a virtual knob on a touchscreen

Sliders or nothing for me in a touchscreen

TMP has footswitches that also work as knobs which is my favorite part of it. So let's say I am in a preset and touch the amp, it zooms into the amp and all of the "footswitch knobs' now are assigned to a control (with value of each parameter showing up on the scribble strip above the knob) so I just dial the physical knob to change any amp parameter. That's how it is for cabs, pedals etc. I only use touch screen to select the pedal/cab/amp that I want to modify (amongst couple of other things), if that makes sense.

 

[KHAAAAAAANNNNNNN!!!!!!!!]

 

[ChordInversion]

I'm starting to sour on my TMP. I can only really use it for quick practice, because the amp selection is spare and the effects are in some ways lacking. Great interface, well made hardware, very functional in those regards. But for lots of sounds I use, I have to go to the FM9. Ironically, there are Fender amps that Fractal has and Fender doesn't. Fender's update cycle (hot fixes notwithstanding) is once every 6 months. So you get a few amps every 6 months. And that's if they don't decide to spend time on bass players. Or on adding a second(!?) Blues Junior. Or on improving models that clearly need it. And they still haven't finished the Vibro-King (it doesn't Vibro or have reverb), nor added second channels to most of their amps.

They're very far behind and not acting like it, in other words.

There's also a lot of "quality takes time" messaging. I get the desire to project that you think your stuff is the best, but...that's not how it's reviewing. They tend to be regarded as comparable to (or in some cases inferior to) the established modeling leaders on any given model. That's certainly my opinion when doing direct comparisons to my FM9. So "patience will pay off with superior sound" is not an assertion that they currently can make.

 

[mikah912]

I'm starting to sour on my TMP. I can only really use it for quick practice, because the amp selection is spare and the effects are in some ways lacking. Great interface, well made hardware, very functional in those regards. But for lots of sounds I use, I have to go to the FM9. Ironically, there are Fender amps that Fractal has and Fender doesn't. Fender's update cycle (hot fixes notwithstanding) is once every 6 months. So you get a few amps every 6 months. And that's if they don't decide to spend time on bass players. Or on adding a second(!?) Blues Junior. Or on improving models that clearly need it. And they still haven't finished the Vibro-King (it doesn't Vibro or have reverb), nor added second channels to most of their amps.

They're very far behind and not acting like it, in other words.

There's also a lot of "quality takes time" messaging. I get the desire to project that you think your stuff is the best, but...that's not how it's reviewing. They tend to be regarded as comparable to (or in some cases inferior to) the established modeling leaders on any given model. That's certainly my opinion when doing direct comparisons to my FM9. So "patience will pay off with superior sound" is not an assertion that they currently can make.

So, then, what would Fender "acting like" they're "very far behind" look like to you?

Because it seems like you just want them to offer the content of an FM9 (where applicable) in the TMP form factor and UI. And I'm pretty sure that's never been their goal and will never be.

To be clear, I'm not saying it's perfect as is, and I'm certainly anticipating and hoping certain types of content will be added soon. But they were pretty clear from the jump that they have the bandwidth to do a new amp model per month and that it's most efficient to bundle those into large impactful releases every six months that incorporate bug fixes as well as new features and additional effect/cab models.

So if they've stayed on that cadence since the very beginning...how are they just now beginning to sour on you?

Also, your last paragraph is dinging them for not bending to "perception", but what does that have to do with how you think it sounds?

 

[laxu]

Called it back when it was released. It's tough to put out a product like this when your competition has a headstart measured in years. The list of stuff people want to have in their modeler of choice is just so damn long at this point.