Hopefully....I'm going to eat some crow (Fender Tonemaster Pro content)

[mikah912]

I love that this has become the de facto TMP thread on this forum, but I feel like I should put a little punctuation in here as my TMP stint has come to an end (just sold it this past weekend).

To keep this from being a novella-sized diary entry, I'm just going to post bullets:

• This thing got dangerously close to me selling off my FM9 and using it full-time. Like, for real.
• The amp sounds on it are very solid and diverse (even if the selection of amps is comparatively small in number) but like the BOSS GT-1000....you're better off sticking with factory cabs rather than bothering with the weirdo third-party IR implementation where you pair it with a selection of impedance curves. That being said, I truly only need a handful of base tones, and the current amp selection has almost all of them covered. It's made me go "virtual amp shopping" in my FM9 way less.
• Until Stadium drops, it's the best touchscreen in the biz.
• The allotment of convolution reverbs was really nice, and they helped compensate for Fender maybe not having the algorithmic reverb chops to compete with the big boys. The convolution reverbs covered everything from spring to hall to super spacey/freeze pad stuff beautifully. This and the new Hotone Verbera pedal have me excited for the possibility of Line 6 embracing it in the new Stadium hardware.
• The every-six-months firmware update cadence struck me as almost just right. They really packed a good amount of stuff in each one, and it feels like an actively developed platform that Fender is really taking seriously. The ideal frequency would be closer to every four months - or three a year - just to keep the wolves at bay, but not bad....
• No synth was a bummer. Given Jason Stilwel's fondness for esoteric sounds, they'll probably get one at some point down the line, but I grew to miss it during my five months with the unit. Sometimes, that was the only reason I would gig with my FM9. I do do a lot of synth-y noise and pad/swell type stuff, so.....
• Scenes Mode is cluuuuuuunky, especially compared to Helix and Fractal.
• The routing is just I never got over being forced to serialize everything because the parallel routing options were so clunky and limited. It's fine for a dual amp and cab, but setting up more than 1-2 delays or reverbs in parallel was a nightmare and DSP killer all in one.
• The Helix Stadium announcement made me rethink a few things. More than just "oooo new and shiny", I thought about the DSP runway this thing would have, and I wasn't so sure. I ran into greyed-out categories more than a few times when trying to set up all-in-one patches, and it doesn't even have true polyphonic pitch or synth functionality yet. Ultimately, it's a surprisingly good unit, and I could see a ton of use cases why you'd go for this as opposed to any other top-tier competitor. But they had their work cut out for them before Stadium was announced and now even more so (not to mention the threat from below from the Ampero II series). Now, if you grab one used at a very nice deal as I did, it's a great value for the money.

 

[mbenigni]

• The allotment of convolution reverbs was really nice, and they helped compensate for Fender maybe not having the algorithmic reverb chops to compete with the big boys. The convolution reverbs covered everything from spring to hall to super spacey/freeze pad stuff beautifully.

This observation surprises me. Isn't their spring algorithmic (or a hybrid IR/algorithm solution)? I generally think of Fender as being the spring reverb guys, whether real or modeled. Or are you referring more to weird, complex, modulated reverbs here?

Routing is the reason I never gave TMP any serious consideration. I really liked the looks of it otherwise. But I don't see how it can possibly remain competitive with Stadium.

 

[mikah912]

This observation surprises me. Isn't their spring algorithmic (or a hybrid IR/algorithm solution)? I generally think of Fender as being the spring reverb guys, whether real or modeled. Or are you referring more to weird, complex, modulated reverbs here?

Routing is the reason I never gave TMP any serious consideration. I really liked the looks of it otherwise. But I don't see how it can possibly remain competitive with Stadium.

They have both algorithmic and convolution versions of their '63 and '65 spring reverb tanks. The convolution sounds better to my ears.

 

[JiveTurkey]

TBP routing is absolute garbage. Fisher Price and clunk city all at once. Stupid signal chain implementation.

 

[ChordInversion]

I still have mine. I have a different perspective. I think it direly needs more amps, and I find the update cadence and content to be kinda casual and not reflective of being in a dogfight with more established competitors. I also think it needs something else to distinguish it other than a touch screen and skeuomorphic interface.

It's good. I agree that it is a very good choice for a certain type of use case, someone who wants a small range of relatively vanilla sounds. But I can't help but question if the actual substance (sounds and flexibility available) is anywhere close to where it belongs on a high end modeler. And they seem completely relaxed about fleshing it out, trying to do a little bit of everything here and there, content not to stand out or try to be the 'best' in any way. They seem to be treating it like a fully-ready-to-compete product that they'll just tweak and enhance a bit as the years pass. In reality, it's far behind on a lot of function, needing to play catch up, and instead arguably falling further behind.

I could see them doing the NAM punt just to try and stake some sort of distinctive claim. I hope not, as I am not a capture guy, but it would fit with what I've seen so far (see: prioritizing Blues Juniors and Bassbreakers - and no, I'll never stop pointing that out).

I do like it. It is a great "plug in, dial in, and play with a pedal or two" amp replacement for recording or low volume stages or practice (the latter being my primary use). But it's deeply limited, and Fender seems to be completely ok with that.

They also barely promote it. Their team will swear up and down that it's not going anywhere, and I believe them, I just don't know that it will be in their hands. After all, I doubt that they're the ones deciding how little attention it gets from Fender marketing.

 

[jonsguitargarage]

I still have mine. I have a different perspective. I think it direly needs more amps, and I find the update cadence and content to be kinda casual and not reflective of being in a dogfight with more established competitors. I also think it needs something else to distinguish it other than a touch screen and skeuomorphic interface.

It's good. I agree that it is a very good choice for a certain type of use case, someone who wants a small range of relatively vanilla sounds. But I can't help but question if the actual substance (sounds and flexibility available) is anywhere close to where it belongs on a high end modeler. And they seem completely relaxed about fleshing it out, trying to do a little bit of everything here and there, content not to stand out or try to be the 'best' in any way. They seem to be treating it like a fully-ready-to-compete product that they'll just tweak and enhance a bit as the years pass. In reality, it's far behind on a lot of function, needing to play catch up, and instead arguably falling further behind.

I could see them doing the NAM punt just to try and stake some sort of distinctive claim. I hope not, as I am not a capture guy, but it would fit with what I've seen so far (see: prioritizing Blues Juniors and Bassbreakers - and no, I'll never stop pointing that out).

I do like it. It is a great "plug in, dial in, and play with a pedal or two" amp replacement for recording or low volume stages or practice (the latter being my primary use). But it's deeply limited, and Fender seems to be completely ok with that.

They also barely promote it. Their team will swear up and down that it's not going anywhere, and I believe them, I just don't know that it will be in their hands. After all, I doubt that they're the ones deciding how little attention it gets from Fender marketing.

I agree with a lot of what you said, the release cadence is annoying. I'd prefer smaller updates more often just to give owners more confidence in the product. I also agree it needs some more amps and not more variations of the same amp.
I also, like you, hope they don't bother with NAM, I'd prefer they concentrate on modelling so I don't have to trawl tone3000 for sounds.

The only thing I would question is the "range of relatively vanilla sounds", despite its limitations I haven't been stumped yet creating the tones I want. Having said that I'm not into ambient soundscape tones so maybe what I created you consider vanilla

 

[ChordInversion]

I agree with a lot of what you said, the release cadence is annoying. I'd prefer smaller updates more often just to give owners more confidence in the product. I also agree it needs some more amps and not more variations of the same amp.
I also, like you, hope they don't bother with NAM, I'd prefer they concentrate on modelling so I don't have to trawl tone3000 for sounds.

The only thing I would question is the "range of relatively vanilla sounds", despite its limitations I haven't been stumped yet creating the tones I want. Having said that I'm not into ambient soundscape tones so maybe what I created you consider vanilla

I wouldn't call your sounds vanilla, because it depends on the player. If you can get all the sounds you want - with, say, the three Fender black panel amps - that's perfectly fine. No criticism intended. I'm just saying that they still left big ranges of sounds untouched.

For instance, I can't get a lot of sounds I want that are EL84-based, but aren't an AC30. Matchless, Dr. Z - hell, even an AC15. And there are tons of Fender amps that Fender doesn't seem to find interesting themselves. There are only two tweed era Fenders (no tweed Twin or Champ), and only one brown panel (a Princeton). They never even finished the Vibro-King (only 1 channel, no trem or reverb). That's especially head scratchy/funny to me, as including that amp is Fender's only act of saying "hey, we made some cool amps that aren't just the usual suspects," and they've left it incomplete now long after they introduced it. No Hiwatt is a strange omission after almost two years as well.

And yet they have Blues Juniors, Bassbreakers, and a blonde DR that is not a model of anything other than their Tone Master Blonde DR. That is just a DR without the bright cap. The selection just feels both padded with fluff and lacking in real range. Yes, they filled gaps with the Bassman and Tweed Deluxe. But it's been slow. It's still as practice device only for my use.

I think the interface is an advantage, doubly so if they provide the full set of amp controls in the skeuomorphic interface. That should apply to channels, inputs, on board trem and reverb when applicable, and everything. If they ever do that (and I'm not cinvinced thet they will, since they made the Marshall Silver Jubilee three channels three different models), then they'll really stand out (I know others don't do that), IMO. But at the very least, don't do a skeuomorphic interface then just leave knobs off for no stated reason.