Dig it! My Fractal FM9 Thread.

Mark Wein

Mark Wein

Grand Poobah
Staff member
I finally got my waitlist invitation yesterday and placed my order. I got on the waitlist December 21st 2021 when I ordered my FM3 thinking that it would just be a month or so but the world-wide semiconductor shortage kept them from making the unit until they decided to change processors and come out with the FM9 Turbo version as a workaround. As of this post, I just got my "Shipped" notification so I'm hoping to see it by this time next week.

The nice thing is that I can take my existing sounds, import them into this unit and then upscale them to take advantage of the additional processing power.
 
Mmmmm, Turbo.

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I hate this. It's been in the system since Friday and no updates. IIRC my last order from them was like this, too. It arrives on time but looks stuck.

Screen Shot 2022-12-12 at 10.19.55 AM.png
 
It seems like it will be delivered here today. Whether or not someone is here to sign for it will be another question.
 
Gorgon90 said:
Isn't that always the way? Hope this gets to you ok, looking forward to you trying it out.
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Thanks! This timed out pretty well. I have a gig on Friday that requires my "real" amp (the Deluxe Reverb) and then nothing until next Friday. The Friday gig is at my local bar down the street from my house so it's the perfect gig to try a new piece of gear...low stress and literally less than a mile from my front door.
 
I did spend a little time with it yesterday. For whatever reason just loading my FM3 presets into the FM9 wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. A little tweaking and it sounds great, though. I also built a couple of patches with other amps like the brown tolex super and the JTM45 and I almost feel like I should just rebuild everything new. For some reason everything sounds better although it seems like it should just sound the same between the two units.
 
So I spent a bunch of time yesterday and Saturday trying to dial in a better "medium crunch" sound. I've spent a ton of time listening to rock and "guitar pop" songs from the 70's and 80's and there is a sound that is essentially a Marshall amp cranked up but not super distorted.







This could be a Vox or a Marshall but it's in the same ballpark:



Guitars alternate between a cranked twin and a low gain Marshall sound:




For me, these end up being the hardest sounds to get right. And if you listen to live versions of these songs, they are usually more distorted.

I've tried the amps that they would have had available (Marshall JTM45, Plexi, JCM800 and 2204) and the model in the fractal that I keep coming back to is the "Brit Studio 20", which is the fractal version of this relatively new amp: https://marshall.com/amps/products/amps/studio/sv20h

I even bought a few IR packs with speakers that would be more period correct from York Audio ("black back" Celestions: https://www.yorkaudio.co/product-page/mrsh-412-blackjack) and G12-65 speakers from Celestion in 4x12 cabs. I actually like the black back Celestions a bunch, and I was combining them a bit with some Creamback IR's that I had from before but after a couple of days of playing with this stuff I fired up my original preset that I had ported over from the FM3 and tweaked a bit on the FM9 and discovered that it wasn't any better than what I had.

Preset navigation is a little easier on the FM9 so I might have my two "RAWK" and "NOT RAWK" presets that I developed on the FM3 but I might also do some more amp-specific presets that I can grab on the fly now, too.

Also, I discovered the Carol-Ann Tucana Lead model last week and it is now my favorite lead sound: https://wiki.fractalaudio.com/wiki/index.php?title=Amplifier_models_list#CAROL-ANN_TUCANA_LEAD

I have to work the next few days at the school but I have a gig on Friday so I hope to have my working sounds figured out by the end of the week and maybe do a. video after Christmas during the break.
 
So I spent some time yesterday working on stuff and just decided to nuke all of the factory presets. Its neat to hear some of the features in context of a famous song or guitarist but they end up just being distractions now and I never use any of them. If there is a preset on the device at this point it will either be one that I've built or maybe the Austin Buddy Live Gold pack once they get updated for the current FM.

I'm going to tweak a little more today and maybe (since I'm home sick and have nothing better to do) I might do a video.
 
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