I Gotta Wonder About Fractal's, er, "Perception"

[Ed DeGenaro]

I mean.... if even Jay Postones (drummer from Tesseract) has to work a day gig whilst doing world tours.... I think the distinction is becoming more and more meaningless.

This is your takeaway?

I had to look it up since i have mostly no clue about current bands. They are UK band with 11 dates in Europe over a month. Thats hardly a world tour.

But the point is that without a day gig they sure don’t get the shiny new toy until they learn to BS themselves into free shit.

And spare me with the “such and such doesn’t do freebies”…manufacturers lie.

 

[Jarick]

I think any of the complex modelers will be a headscratcher for people who have never used something like this. You have to learn about micing cabs, scenes, presets, figuring out what output systems to use and a whole lot of other stuff that you don't deal with in a real world rig. Configuring Fractal's footswitching alone is quite complex compared to a pre-chewed system like what Helix offers.

What is often not said is that Axe-Edit is genuinely good in many ways. I built a preset completely from scratch yesterday, and the Quick Build feature made it really easy to get all the blocks I wanted in there in no time. By comparison, it took me all day to wire up my complex pedalboard. Scene Manager is another good tool for quickly making sure you have the right channels in all your blocks in each scene.

But there's still a lot of stuff that are not easy to understand even for seasoned Fractal users and require referring to the blocks guide or wiki. Some fx params not even in the advanced menus will be very foreign to people used to pedals or even other multifx. Overall the whole Controllers section is stuff that synth players would be comfortable using, but 95% of guitarists will ignore and never use.

All that combined with the onboard UI does give Fractal a reputation as being more difficult than the competition, even though that isn't necessarily true for the overall user experience - which is Axe-Edit for most. It generally takes me less time to get good results out of Dyna-Cabs than from Helix's cab sims and the Amp block "authentic" view makes it easy to use.

I hope Fractal can turn that reputation around with whatever they make for next gen.

I didn’t bother reading most of the thread but there’s a few purely UXUI items fractal could improve,

first better ability to quickly drill in and out from the grid into blocks and back, or ideally have both side by side. After years I have the edit button and layout zoom and all that but it’s still nowhere near as nice as others. This would require new hardware though.

second as you said just better ways to edit, I think about moving a block…you have to page right until the function is move left and then I think scroll to change direction and then click enter to execute? On QC you simply touch the block and drag where you want it. Again that requires new hardware.

third is just optimizing starting points or easily recalling block presets. That’s available on axe edit although it could be even easier. This is especially key with the cabs.

 

[Jarick]

Person #3 - old fat dude who just watches Skyrim playthroughs. (me)

Dunno if I have that attention span but I loved watching super Metroid and hollow knight speedruns.

 

[Achilles]

And spare me with the “such and such doesn’t do freebies”…manufacturers lie.

A free unit given away, that through its exposure generates a number of subsequent retail sales, is easily written off at tax time as a Sales & Marketing expense. So technically some can SAY they don't do freebies......



Ed, was just thinking about the whole 'time flies' thing. How many years has it been since you and I talked on the phone about the Univalve I got from you when you were at THD? Seems like a freaking lifetime ago!

 

[Bruce]

This is your takeaway?

I had to look it up since i have mostly no clue about current bands. They are UK band with 11 dates in Europe over a month. Thats hardly a world tour.

But the point is that without a day gig they sure don’t get the shiny new toy until they learn to BS themselves into free shit.

And spare me with the “such and such doesn’t do freebies”…manufacturers lie.

Legend has it Keith Richards couldn’t get an amp out of Mesa, way back when. Make of that what you will.

Found the source https://www.vintageguitar.com/55906/keith-richards-1977-mesa-boogie-mark-i/

 

[Stratzrus]

I still think this is purposely done for the old school Fender amp guys. Imagine you're 60 and not very tech savvy and it's your first fully digital solution.

That's the situation I was in, I stopped using my Super Reverb and started using an Axe FX Ultra. I never had a problem with the GUI and to this day a decade later I still use the GUI exclusively. Us old farts, even the ones like me who aren't tech savvy, can still get great tones out of the Fractal gear.

 

[Achilles]

That's the situation I was in, I stopped using my Super Reverb and started using an Axe FX Ultra.

Where's that picture of your living/game/music room with the large screen TV, sig Hot Rod Deluxe, monster stereo monitor rig, and if I remember right, the Sheets of Sound music book?

Outlier!!!!

 

[Orvillain]

This is your takeaway?

It seemed relevant given you were trying to draw a distinction between people who need day gigs to afford shiny new gear, and presumably people who don't need day gigs to afford shiny gear?

The point is - most younger musicians and bands still have to work when on tour. The days of the Rolling Stones and Black Sabbath lounging around doing coke and destroying hotel rooms are just utterly utterly gone.

I had to look it up since i have mostly no clue about current bands. They are UK band with 11 dates in Europe over a month. Thats hardly a world tour.

But the point is that without a day gig they sure don’t get the shiny new toy until they learn to BS themselves into free shit.

And spare me with the “such and such doesn’t do freebies”…manufacturers lie.

"While I was on tour in the US for Sonder, I was also running a huge graphics and formatting project for a Scottish Ferry company - oh my god, so sexy! I'd wake up at 5am/6am every day, open my laptop and run through a huge pile of requests, right up to sound-check. Then after sound-check, I'd go back to the bus and carry on working until 30 minutes before our stage time. I'd work after the show if I needed to."

The point to me is - professional touring musicians still have to work jobs, regardless of whether they get free gear or not.

 

[Bruce]

It seemed relevant given you were trying to draw a distinction between people who need day gigs to afford shiny new gear, and presumably people who don't need day gigs to afford shiny gear?

The point is - most younger musicians and bands still have to work when on tour. The days of the Rolling Stones and Black Sabbath lounging around doing coke and destroy hotel rooms are just utterly utterly gone.

View attachment 16810






The point to me is - professional touring musicians still have to work jobs, regardless of whether they get free gear or not.

No truer words. I worked 23 years of my life at a job I didnt want to go to in order to soon be able to afford being a “full time musician”. Everyones perception of “making it” is different, but in my opinion you haven’t made anything in the USA until you can afford to save for retirement, pay for health insurance and be cash flow positive every month. IOW, if you aren’t breaking close to 100k in a major metropolitan area in 2023, I’m not sure how well anyone is making it. Lunch around here is 20 bucks. Parking alone for a night out is 50. How is anyone doing that on 50k a year, which is what I HOPE to make in full time performance in 2024 and on. Thank god for my pension. I can SAY I’m a full time musician then, but that isn’t really the truth.
I dont want to teach. Tried it and it killed my soul.

 

[Stratzrus]

Where's that picture of your living/game/music room with the large screen TV, sig Hot Rod Deluxe, monster stereo monitor rig, and if I remember right, the Sheets of Sound music book?

Outlier!!!!

Good memory!

At that point I'd been a Fractal user for a couple of years. The Axe FX in the photo is a II.

But when I switched to the Ultra from the Super Reverb I was a typical early adopter who had no idea what I was getting into. The learning curve was steep but the problem wasn't the GUI, it was learning how to use parameters that the vintage Fenders didn't have.

 

[Achilles]

Good memory!

To be honest, the thing that most impressed me the first time I saw that photo was Zucker's book. That's some serious shit! Remembered everything else by association.

 

[TSJMajesty]

A free unit given away, that through its exposure generates a number of subsequent retail sales, is easily written off at tax time as a Sales & Marketing expense. So technically some can SAY they don't do freebies......

Not quite.

A company would already have deducted the expenses of the parts and labor to produce it. They can't "write it off" again, and call it a 'marketing expense.' It doesn't work that way.

 

[Achilles]

It doesn't work that way.

It can and it most surely does. I've been personally involved in it through the years from the giving side of things.

 

[TSJMajesty]

It can and it most surely does. I've been personally involved in it through the years from the giving side of things.

Well then you're just getting away with it, because you can't deduct something twice like that.

 

[Achilles]

Well then you're just getting away with it.

I'd insert a Captain Obvious picture but I'm trying to be nice in 2024.

 

[gdhi11]

What the heck are you talking about?

I'm talking about feature set and mindset that drives how the gear functions in terms of who it's supposed to serve Vs who is actually buying said gear and whether attaching a 'pro' label to something actually makes it professionally usable. (looking at you Fender)

Along these lines, it's a bit of a culture shock for a lot of people to hear this, but most of the 'pro level gear' is firmly marketed towards worship stuff. Talk to your local guitar shop about clientele these days. Houses of worship have always been big bucks for the industry, but today, they are spending more than ever. Silent stages drive a huge portion of this market, and there's no more common place to find that than in a house of worship.

To be clear, being pro-level doesn't make something better. Actually on the contrary it can make it way harder to use and chock-full of stuff you might never actually need. There are features I use in the fractal stuff that literally NONE of the other devices do, and it's the only one of them that I've owned where I legit felt like I was programming my sounds into it rather than just sort of dialing things in. I'm glad it can do all I need, but I'm also cursed with having to dial it in

QC is interested in being a company that has a little something for everyone more than it is catering to clientele that needs all the bells and whistles and finite control over what they are doing. That was all I was getting at.

to that end, I see Neural being more in alignment with Line 6 than Fractal.

Hell even Kemper seems to be reaching for that mid-level now with the Player.

 

[texhex]

It seemed relevant given you were trying to draw a distinction between people who need day gigs to afford shiny new gear, and presumably people who don't need day gigs to afford shiny gear?

The point is - most younger musicians and bands still have to work when on tour. The days of the Rolling Stones and Black Sabbath lounging around doing coke and destroying hotel rooms are just utterly utterly gone.

View attachment 16810






The point to me is - professional touring musicians still have to work jobs, regardless of whether they get free gear or not.

Holy crap! That much travel would KILL ME!

 

[Axe]

I'm just glad that because Ariel's Attic is an American business entity in my name and I pay taxes on the income along with the other businesses we used to own (down to one now and AA) I can deduct the cost my shiny new toys

But the industry in no pays for them

 

[gdhi11]

Here's a thought. New UI idea. Let's make it like the good old days. How about dialing it in is just 5 knobs 6 tube slots and a couple of patch cables in the back. And by changing those up and or combining them it changes your sound in different and potentially unexpected ways so we can all just trade tubes and patch cables and stuff because some of them have mystical tone voodoo that'll never even understand what they do.

I mean, that's how it used to work right? We'd just follow these dogmatic ideas on what would make something sound better and try different things until we got it the way we wanted it. I feel like this is the most analog way of working with a digital guitar device...

(and yes, that was totally sarcastic)

but seriously, old ways aren't always best. Maybe having a list of parameters on sliders isn't such a bad thing.

 

[Achilles]

Along these lines, it's a bit of a culture shock for a lot of people to hear this, but most of the 'pro level gear' is firmly marketed towards worship stuff. Talk to your local guitar shop about clientele these days. Houses of worship have always been big bucks for the industry, but today, they are spending more than ever. Silent stages drive a huge portion of this market, and there's no more common place to find that than in a house of worship.

I was in the consumer electronics industry from 1986 till 2020. When the market and banks crashed in 2007-2008 the entire CES industry went almost completely crickets for a while. Saw tons of layoffs and massive cutbacks in all areas of the market - professional, commercial, marine, consumer, automotive, etc. all took huge hits from the brands working on new lines all the way to the dealers making their livings off of sales of the brands.

EXCEPT!!!!!!!!

The Praise & Worship sector NEVER slowed down a blink and when the smoke had cleared by the turn of the decade some would say P&W saved a good portion of the Commercial and MI markets and everything associated with them.

GOOD LORD!!!! The number of P&W meets AVI magazines that started popping up around that time....

I see a few are still going strong.