ChordInversion
Roadie
- Messages
- 460
There are a few threads involving it, but no general talk thread about the Fender Tone Master Pro. I have a love/hate relationship with mine. I've talked about selling it, but maybe a robust conversation would help me discover a long term place for it in my playing.
To me, it's the 'basic' high end modeler. Basic need not be bad, and I don't use the term as an insult. It's straightforward, easy to learn most things, and visually friendly. I really wonder if they left scenes off to start because they were embracing 'basic,' then bowed to pressure when performers were flabbergasted by its absence. But sometimes it feels like a poor value for anyone who isn't brand new to modelers but somehow wanting to spend $1679 on one.
There's a lot of love for the interface, and while I find touch screens massively overrated, I can absolutely appreciate the interface myself. I have said many times that it's about as easy as you can get in terms of emulating an amp like plug in, dial in experience. I don't think it's as revolutionary and head-and-shoulders-above as some of the die hards, though. Sometimes I think that they might have overdone it on reducing buttons and traditional knobs. In particular, I find the skeuomorphic graphics utility slightly diminished by the physical knobs not being directly under the virtual ones. Having to glance around the switches to know which one to grab, then back to the screen to follow with my eyes, is the one thing that slows me down when dialing in.
Noting a horse I've beaten stone dead, I find the sound selection to be lacking, and the pace of fill in to be frustratingly slow, particularly because they seem dead set on making tiny incremental progress across the entirety of electric guitar- and bass-dom, rather thanb focusing on and excelling at some subset first. Their approach could take so long that we'll be on yet another, post-Stadium generation of Helix before the Tone Master catches up.
That said, I do think it sounds very good. The Tweed Deluxe in the most recent update was definitely a welcome addition, as was the JTM45, though to my ears the execution of the latter is not as good - just as I still find the AC30 not bad, but a bit lacking.
How many TMP people do we have here? How are you using it? What do you want to see Fender add to it next?
To me, it's the 'basic' high end modeler. Basic need not be bad, and I don't use the term as an insult. It's straightforward, easy to learn most things, and visually friendly. I really wonder if they left scenes off to start because they were embracing 'basic,' then bowed to pressure when performers were flabbergasted by its absence. But sometimes it feels like a poor value for anyone who isn't brand new to modelers but somehow wanting to spend $1679 on one.
There's a lot of love for the interface, and while I find touch screens massively overrated, I can absolutely appreciate the interface myself. I have said many times that it's about as easy as you can get in terms of emulating an amp like plug in, dial in experience. I don't think it's as revolutionary and head-and-shoulders-above as some of the die hards, though. Sometimes I think that they might have overdone it on reducing buttons and traditional knobs. In particular, I find the skeuomorphic graphics utility slightly diminished by the physical knobs not being directly under the virtual ones. Having to glance around the switches to know which one to grab, then back to the screen to follow with my eyes, is the one thing that slows me down when dialing in.
Noting a horse I've beaten stone dead, I find the sound selection to be lacking, and the pace of fill in to be frustratingly slow, particularly because they seem dead set on making tiny incremental progress across the entirety of electric guitar- and bass-dom, rather thanb focusing on and excelling at some subset first. Their approach could take so long that we'll be on yet another, post-Stadium generation of Helix before the Tone Master catches up.
That said, I do think it sounds very good. The Tweed Deluxe in the most recent update was definitely a welcome addition, as was the JTM45, though to my ears the execution of the latter is not as good - just as I still find the AC30 not bad, but a bit lacking.
How many TMP people do we have here? How are you using it? What do you want to see Fender add to it next?
