Fractal Talk

[dean701]

its like 1.5 or 2% , so Fm series maybe a bit higher but when you think of what it does it is actually saving your cpu in the end
now you can have presets for clean, crunch , higan , lead and each on is like 75% CPU you just switch presets and not worry about having to fit everything in one

true. if it works well there won't be the need for dual amps sitting in reserve as well as dual EQs, two redundant delay blocks and such. I could sacrifice a few of these blocks. Fingers crossed for the FM9 implementation.

 

[TubeStack]

… the average “I‘m an amp guy” dialing one in.

I feel called out.

 

[0XI0]

Yet, those guys and their most iconic tones are/were all Friedman-free, no??

yeah Friedman sounds good but there's so much gd filtering the sound comes out the end like cake icing, creamy is great but those iconic tones were each their own version of creamy, od's and EQs and parallel amps, Friedman is all pre rolled creamy, I can't do anything with pre rolled creamy except turn the volume up

 

[James Freeman]

Gapless switching is a huge deal, one step closer to complex multi amp rigs of the past or even multi axefx rigs a lot of pros use, now all with just one axefx, very cool.

 

[timbuck3]

Gapless switching is a huge deal, one step closer to complex multi amp rigs of the past or even multi axefx rigs a lot of pros use, now all with just one axefx, very cool.

as are gapless teeth..yes?

 

[James Freeman]

Friedman sounds good but there's so much gd filtering

Friedman needs to take it easy with the plate bypass caps, guitarists want that brightness, not everything has so be modernized/polished/"sm57 ready".

 

[la szum]

Just rediscovered how awesome the Atomica is in the Fractal. Modded Marshall vibes, but while still retaining some
of that rawness and rudeness of a Marshall. Paired with the Edwards LP it brings the smiles.

 

[Bruce]

Some say the new Cyngus "ruined" the Friedman amps in the fractal. Do you have any opinion?

Cygnus has that overly talked about rocks grinding together sound in the high gain. In my opinion this unified the modeling overall and gave fractal its own sound. Whether or not that is a good thing in a modeler is up to the user but I was initially against it. Now I’m just used to it. I dont think it ruined the Friedmans tho. Or anything else.

 

[Bruce]

Been lusting after Knaggs for a long time. This IS NOT helping matters.

Oh man, Knaggs all day long and twice on Sunday. Buy with confidence. Great amazing guitars built by artisans.

 

[iaresee]

I am guessing Dave will not be willing to provide Steve Stevens schematics

IIRC Dave gave Cliff the Friedmans and schematics for them that are in there now.

 

[dean701]

Just rediscovered how awesome the Atomica is in the Fractal. Modded Marshall vibes, but while still retaining some
of that rawness and rudeness of a Marshall. Paired with the Edwards LP it brings the smiles.

it's been one of my fav amp models ever since Steve Stevens posted this preset using it. (Rebel Yell)

Artist Preset Series – Fractal Audio Systems

www.fractalaudio.com

I use my own cab but his cab works well for me too.

 

[timbuck3]

Oh man, Knaggs all day long and twice on Sunday. Buy with confidence. Great amazing guitars built by artisans.

wow do they make a p90 version?

 

[Bruce]

wow do they make a p90 version?

I have a beautiful Kenai Jr with 1 p90. I’ve seen other models with them too.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

I'll keep going after the Marshalls, Bogners, and Diezels when chasing Jerry Cantrell and Adam Jones tones.

I would lose my shit if Fractal added a Friedman Naked (or 2 as there has been different versions made over the years). I like the Fractal Uberschall but it doesn’t really sound or behave much like my real amp (in the way other models do). I wouldn’t mind another version of that in there, most other emulations (STL/Line 6/NDSP) get quite similar to my amp so it should be possible to get close with.

Super Leads cover the AJ Marshall close enough IMO, but it’s kind of odd how overlooked stock Super Bass models are in modellers.

Recto is a massive part of AJ’s tone (especially on the earlier albums), I believe he uses the orange channel. I reckon he must have been one of the first guitarists to use a Rectifier on any recording.

Pretty sure 5150’s have made quite a few of Cantrell’s album blends.

Newer AJ tones seem to use stuff like Rivera, Uberschall, VTM120 (mentioned in interviews).

 

[laxu]

That said I do picture Cliff while hearing Dave say “there is this high end roll off”…

While I don't agree with Dave's "one dimensional comment", there's always the possibility that he is right about it being darker and then Fractal finds some esoteric detail that fixes that in fw 24, making things brighter. Then we find out everyone could have just turned their treble knobs to 5.5 instead of 5.0 on fw 23 to solve the problem.

To my ears QC captures do sound pretty close to the real amp captured so I'd agree on that front, but there's nothing on it that I can't get out of Fractal too.

We just don't know what the setup, fw version etc is that Friedman has tried last as these move rapidly on Fractal and if you don't regularly use one, you are not testing out the latest and greatest and base your opinion on an older one.

We put a lot of faith in our favorite modeler manufacturers making accurate models, but can't verify it ourselves since we can't access their reference amps. Best we can do is try to match our real amp of the same make and model, but that won't be 100% equal so due to component tolerances. Maybe we need to put treble on 5.5 on Fractal to match our real amp at 5.0, and thus think that the difference is due to component variance.

All I know is that I have been able to get the Axe-Fx 3 to match the sound and feel of the tube amps I had, even though those amps were not directly modeled by it. So for me all is good since I was able to verify that it's a comparable product.

Not saying it was always easy tho. Things like the right speaker impedance curve modeling was the last thing that nailed the feel for me for example and even that was a lot of trial and error. Of course the Axe sounded great at various other settings, just not identical to the amps I used as reference until I nailed the fine details. It's cool it's able to do that even for amps that it doesn't directly model, just by using the closest equivalent models.

The only reason I have a rig built around the BluGuitar Amp 1 + pedals + real cabs is because it's the opposite experience from Fractal - knobs for almost everything, experimentation over programming. The BluGuitar was chosen because I was able to get it to sound as good as the Bogner I had.

 

[Stone]

So in looking forward to the next FW update for myself will be these, the Gold Plate Reverb,Improved Tape Chorus (Tape Flanger) algorithm, Improved Tape Delay algorithm
and also if these do improve anything, Improved Amp block triode algorithm, smoothing parameter to cabinet block

 

[saarangnarayan]

Some say the new Cyngus "ruined" the Friedman amps in the fractal. Do you have any opinion?

I'm one of those people who've always jumped in to state how they don't like the Cygnus Friedman amps. To me, there was an upper-mid kick that older firmware versions had that was replaced by a bloated lower-mid, making the HBEs quite hard to use for modern metal stuff. I spent almost a year trying to dial in a sound I liked but moved on to other models. No matter what deeper parameter I changed, I could not get the same attack on any of the Friedman models as the pre-Cygnus HBE 2018 C45 (which was my go-to amp for a lot of stuff).

I did get to A/B the Cygnus Friedman models with the IR-X recently, and tbh, the IR-X had that bit of bloatiness in certain settings, too. Now I don't know how close an IR-X is to the bigger BE circuit(s), but it sounded more like the Cygnus models than the Ares model. I therefore think that perhaps the older Friedman models were "inaccurate" and had a tone that was more awesome (to my ears) than the more "accurate" ones. IOW, I don't like Friedman amps, I guess. (I do like the IR-X for some reason , but I dial it in very differently than the Fractal). The JVM OD1 and OD2 Orange and the CCV 2C models do that pre-Cygnus Friedman thing for me quite well, tho, so I'm a happy camper; and their tones only get better with each new update to the amp modelling!

 

[laxu]

I did get to A/B the Cygnus Friedman models with the IR-X recently, and tbh, the IR-X had that bit of bloatiness in certain settings, too. Now I don't know how close an IR-X is to the bigger BE circuit(s), but it sounded more like the Cygnus models than the Ares model. I therefore think that perhaps the older Friedman models were "inaccurate" and had a tone that was more awesome (to my ears) than the more "accurate" ones. IOW, I don't like Friedman amps, I guess. (I do like the IR-X for some reason , but I dial it in very differently than the Fractal). The JVM OD1 and OD2 Orange and the CCV 2C models do that pre-Cygnus Friedman thing for me quite well, tho, so I'm a happy camper; and their tones only get better with each new update to the amp modelling!

Yeah it's always a possibility that the less authentic option works out better. I like for example the Strymon Iridium Fender model because it doesn't get all woofy in the lows like a cranked Deluxe Reverb does.

One of the reasons I didn't like the real Friedman BE50 Deluxe was that I felt the low end was too thumpy and big. I found that hard to dial out when I tried one in a store, into I think a Friedman 2x12 with V30s.

 

[saarangnarayan]

One of the reasons I didn't like the real Friedman BE50 Deluxe was that I felt the low end was too thumpy and big.

Yet I see folks (including Dave himself) turn that bass knob up to 3-4 o' clock!

 

[Jarick]

He specifies the Neural with the right capture, then says Helix is good to go with just the modeling. Shots fired, I guess? I love models on all of those platforms, and I do not hear a "cocked wah" tonality on Fractal models at all.

But he's selling a product, and poop-talking is his preferred method.

Fractal is opposed of cocked wah to me, it tends to be a bit scooped with extended high end. Guessing Dave is thinking of Kemper and lumping all modelers together.

I like Friedmans amps and enjoy hearing his opinions. Doesn’t mean I agree with them all but he has had a cool career in the industry and worked on most of my favourite guitarists amps (from a tone standpoint). His own taste in guitar sounds is from a different era to what I like, but he’s had his hands in enough amps and has a good ear for dialling in tones.

Cantrell, Adam Jones, Billy Howerdell=

Dave isn’t a digital guy, I wouldn’t get too charged up about anything he really says. It’s just his opinion based on his experiences. He doesn’t need to rely on digital at all, that’s just not really in his world and doesn’t need to be (besides building the occasional live rig with them),

Completely agree. Dave is an excellent amp builder and his Tone Talk series has been really good to document a lot of music tech history.

I would be interested to know how much time Dave has spent working with modelers, but I'm guessing not a lot. He knows and loves the tube amp and guitar cab circuit.

I do think the IR-X he just released nails the Friedman tone and does it if not better at least with way less fuss than amp modelers.

I'm one of those people who've always jumped in to state how they don't like the Cygnus Friedman amps. To me, there was an upper-mid kick that older firmware versions had that was replaced by a bloated lower-mid, making the HBEs quite hard to use for modern metal stuff. I spent almost a year trying to dial in a sound I liked but moved on to other models. No matter what deeper parameter I changed, I could not get the same attack on any of the Friedman models as the pre-Cygnus HBE 2018 C45 (which was my go-to amp for a lot of stuff).

I did get to A/B the Cygnus Friedman models with the IR-X recently, and tbh, the IR-X had that bit of bloatiness in certain settings, too. Now I don't know how close an IR-X is to the bigger BE circuit(s), but it sounded more like the Cygnus models than the Ares model. I therefore think that perhaps the older Friedman models were "inaccurate" and had a tone that was more awesome (to my ears) than the more "accurate" ones. IOW, I don't like Friedman amps, I guess. (I do like the IR-X for some reason , but I dial it in very differently than the Fractal). The JVM OD1 and OD2 Orange and the CCV 2C models do that pre-Cygnus Friedman thing for me quite well, tho, so I'm a happy camper; and their tones only get better with each new update to the amp modelling!

To my ears the current Friedman models in Fractal have a slight dip in the mids and a slight push in the highs. I find they need the presence and depth reduced slightly to match up with the IR-X, although I still prefer the IR-X when A/B-ing the amps. I think I generally like other amps such as 5153, Atomica, JVM, CCV, etc better.

I tried to tone match the Fractal to the IR-X and what it came back with was a roll off in the highs and lows, with a bump deep in the bass. I think that may be a mismatch in the speaker impedance curve more than anything.