Here we go again

[dean701]

 

[metropolis_4]

I wrapped up my first weekend of shows with mine. Everything went really well!

After experimenting with multiple presets and amps I ended up just using a Princeton with some drive pedals on a single preset.

The Bluesbreaker and Klon stack together just how they should and the Maximus is sounding great for the level of high gain distortion I need (which right now is somewhere around ‘90s No Doubt type distortion).

Landed on the Princeton because I have to cover a ton of acoustic strummy strummy stuff in this gig. I forgot how much I love using a Fender amp with a big low end for cleans then turning on a drive that thins it out and boosts mids to pull it more into Brit territory for overdrive tones.

 

[Jarick]

I wrapped up my first weekend of shows with mine. Everything went really well!

After experimenting with multiple presets and amps I ended up just using a Princeton with some drive pedals on a single preset.

The Bluesbreaker and Klon stack together just how they should and the Maximus is sounding great for the level of high gain distortion I need (which right now is somewhere around ‘90s No Doubt type distortion).

Landed on the Princeton because I have to cover a ton of acoustic strummy strummy stuff in this gig. I forgot how much I love using a Fender amp with a big low end for cleans then turning on a drive that thins it out and boosts mids to pull it more into Brit territory for overdrive tones.

How's it treating you after a couple more weeks? What do you think of the effects vs other units you've tried?

 

[metropolis_4]

How's it treating you after a couple more weeks? What do you think of the effects vs other units you've tried?

So far it’s been good! I’ve done 13 shows and 6 rehearsals with it now; it’s done everything I’ve needed and hasn’t given me any real problems.

The effects overall have been good and comparable to what you’d expect from a device like this. Nothing really stands out as amazing, but nothing stands out as bad either.

Spring reverbs still slay everything else out there in the digital modeler world, and I think the drive pedals stack more naturally than Fractal. It could use more modern MIAB type drive pedal options. being geared so much towards “pedal platform” type rigs it’s desperately in need of something like an OCD to fill that tone need.

Modulations are decent across the board if not quite on par with Fractal. I miss the tweakability beyond pedal format here.

I haven’t messed too much with delays, but what I’ve heard is good. Some of them seem to really color the sound which can be good or bad depending on what you’re trying to do.

Some of the compressors tend to pump quite a bit, but I like the character of them in general. I like seeing the knobs in the Dynacomp because I’m so used to what my settings look like on the real pedal it makes it easy to get where I want quickly.

I’ve been primarily using the Vibro-King amp. I like that they have both the 3x10 and 2x12 cabs for it, so I’ve been using it as a stack.

My initial impressions of the amps stand. The Fender models are outstanding. I like the Deluxe Reverb here better than either Fractal or Helix. The Vox and jcm800 are just bad, and everything else is OK but not great. The Plexi and Mark are much improved with recent firmware updates, and the Orange is very good.

The cabs are a mixed bag. The IR loader is super annoying to work with because it resets all your settings when you change IRs, including changing the SIC back to the default setting . It’s insanely frustrating so I just haven’t bothered. It sounds best with its own internal cabs anyway.


They really need to work on the footswitching. Unless you’re in effects mode the right two switches are always footswitch mode and tap/tune and the left two switches are always bank up/down. So all you have to work with are the 6 middle switches which can only be set to presets or “hybrid” of 1 row presets and 1 row effects.

In use It feels like when you watch an old “formatted to fit your TV” movie on a modern wide screen TV.

Luckily everything I’ve had to do so far has been pretty simple effects switching. I’m a little worried about what it will be like to use for more complex gigs.


One little surprisingly useful feature that I really wish Fractal would copy is showing your master volume as a percent! When I’m jumping between different gigs at different venues it’s so useful to remember “for this show I’ve got the master at 45%” and always have the exact same volume level for each show.

 

[OrganicZed]

One little surprisingly useful feature that I really wish Fractal would copy is showing your master volume as a percent! When I’m jumping between different gigs at different venues it’s so useful to remember “for this show I’ve got the master at 45%” and always have the exact same volume level for each show.

Fractal already offers this.

Setup > Utilities> ADC Levels

It shows a digital value for the volume setting of each output.

 

[metropolis_4]

Fractal already offers this.

Setup > Utilities

It shows a digital value for the volume setting of each output.

That’s cool, I didn’t know that. Kind of a bummer that you have to dig through menus to find it instead of it being right there next to the volume knob

 

[la szum]

 

[metropolis_4]

Worst case scenario: Once I get a break in a couple months I sell it and pick up an fm3

 

[OrganicZed]

That’s cool, I didn’t know that. Kind of a bummer that you have to dig through menus to find it instead of it being right there next to the volume knob

I agree. It would be nice to have the option to have the percentage temporarily display on the screen while you are adjusting the knob. I guess we should add that to the never ending UI improvements request log.