Fractal Talk

[yek]

I wonder what gave it away Drew must be a huge Jennifer Batten fan

 

[Mongillo19]

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Yeah I was being sarcastic (hard to convey over internet)

 

[timbuck3]

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nice spot...

 

[Warmart]

whos rig am i?

It's definitely not Jennifer Vacuum!

 

[norminal]

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Oh, that’s a power strip. For a second I thought it was the power supply for the HX Stomp XL.

 

[unix-guy]

Which button? I'd love to be able to do this on the front panel!

I thought it was Enter.

 

[State of Epicicity]

I thought it was Enter.

Cool. I'll try that next time I'm playing.

 

[SwirlyMaple]

Sadly my FM9 has gone kaput

When I first got it, after being powered for a while, the screen went black a couple times, but it only happened when I had it connected via USB. Because of this I thought it was something with my laptop causing it to crash.

But it happened 7 or 8 more times after that, and today it did it without being connected to my laptop at all. This time, it also had persistent issues with being unable to boot, and noise patterns on the screen, which I got on video and emailed to Fractal support earlier this evening.

I finally got it to boot and decided to leave it on for a while, and the screen eventually went black again. But now, no matter how many times I power cycle it, I can't get it to boot. The screen goes full black (with the backlight on), and all of the scribble strips and LEDs stay dark. (Except for one boot attempt, where the screen started cycling through white, green, blue, red, white, green, blue, red like a test pattern. That can't be good.)

Earlier this week I installed FW5.01 hoping it might fix the intermittent issue somehow, but nope. Same thing. I also tried booting it into the diagnostic menu and ran the memory test, which it passed. But sadly for now, it seems well and truly dead.

I'm sure Fractal will take care of me but man... this sucks. I was really enjoying it and now it'll be a weekend without it. Time to put my rock-solid reliable Helix back into its place, for now.

 

[laxu]

Sadly my FM9 has gone kaput

When I first got it, after being powered for a while, the screen went black a couple times, but it only happened when I had it connected via USB. Because of this I thought it was something with my laptop causing it to crash.

But it happened 7 or 8 more times after that, and today it did it without being connected to my laptop at all. This time, it also had persistent issues with being unable to boot, and noise patterns on the screen, which I got on video and emailed to Fractal support earlier this evening.

I finally got it to boot and decided to leave it on for a while, and the screen eventually went black again. But now, no matter how many times I power cycle it, I can't get it to boot. The screen goes full black (with the backlight on), and all of the scribble strips and LEDs stay dark. (Except for one boot attempt, where the screen started cycling through white, green, blue, red, white, green, blue, red like a test pattern. That can't be good.)

Earlier this week I installed FW5.01 hoping it might fix the intermittent issue somehow, but nope. Same thing. I also tried booting it into the diagnostic menu and ran the memory test, which it passed. But sadly for now, it seems well and truly dead.

I'm sure Fractal will take care of me but man... this sucks. I was really enjoying it and now it'll be a weekend without it. Time to put my rock-solid reliable Helix back into its place, for now.

If you are willing to crack it open, you could try reseating any cables there and see if that fixes the problem. Definitely sucks though, why can't gear fail on a Monday?

 

[fazer]

If you are willing to crack it open, you could try reseating any cables there and see if that fixes the problem. Definitely sucks though, why can't gear fail on a Monday?

Wouldn’t you invalidate any guarantee/warranty opening it up though? I wouldn’t risk it, personally.

 

[State of Epicicity]

Wouldn’t you invalidate any guarantee/warranty opening it up though? I wouldn’t risk it, personally.

I'm pretty sure support has had people reseat cables inside modeling units themselves. I know they did this with me for me FC12, and it was no big deal. But support has always responded very quickly to any case I've opened, so there's no harm in just waiting to see what they say. At least with the FC12, basically if you can operate a screwdriver, you can do a lot of the servicing yourself!

 

[laxu]

Wouldn’t you invalidate any guarantee/warranty opening it up though? I wouldn’t risk it, personally.

Most likely no, but it's certainly worth confirming from Fractal that it's ok.

It has happened before that some cable has become slightly loose in transport and causes issues like this. I don't know how hard the FM9 is to open though, the Axe-Fx 3 is dead easy.

 

[Stone]

I had to open up my Helix to fix the expression pedal was not hard at all
Im sure if you reach out to Fractal they can maybe even guide you how to do it

 

[State of Epicicity]

I thought it was Enter.

I just tried it, but it just takes you to the modifier page, as if you only pressed Enter once. Thanks for the suggestion though!

 

[yeky83]

Wouldn’t you invalidate any guarantee/warranty opening it up though? I wouldn’t risk it, personally.

That’s illegal according to the FTC. Open away (if you know what you’re doing… if you don’t, yeah you might void warranty.)

 

[SwirlyMaple]

If you are willing to crack it open, you could try reseating any cables there and see if that fixes the problem. Definitely sucks though, why can't gear fail on a Monday?

Thanks, yep, after it completely stopped booting, I actually did take the chassis screws out and slightly separated the case halves to have a peek inside. (You can’t open it very far due to the short lengths of the ribbon cables connecting the upper and lower PCBs.) Visually, all of the ribbon cables/connectors were fully seated and staked with glue.

Since it’s only a few weeks old, that’s all the farther I was willing to go.

I did finally manage to get it to boot again last night, after a couple of hours and many power cycles. Seems to be an intermittent issue, possibly related to heat soak (e.g. a cold solder joint?), but I’ve had enough experience with intermittent electronics failures that I’m hoping Fractal will just swap it for a new unit. With problems that fix themselves and then reappear, I can never fully trust stuff again (unless the fault was glaringly obvious and the fix is a certainty, which rarely happens with intermittent failures).

 

[OrganicZed]

Fractal customer service will take care of you. My experiences with them have been very positive and I'm sure they'll get you back up and running in very short order.

 

[James Freeman]

Please wish me luck, I've literally waited years.

 

[JiveTurkey]

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Please wish me luck, I've literally waited years.

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You'll get hypnotized by the FAS lava lamp for the first few days. Look past it to the light Please do some tone matches during your stay as well

 

[hemmelight]

Congrats!!