Thoughts on the fractal FM3

Gear
#1

What do you think of the Fractal FM3 in terms of sound quality, and the sound of amps/effects etc? I am considering this as an option for practicing, maybe playing live at some point in the future, and just generally messing with the vast amount of parameters and settings.

Unfortunately, where I am, its difficult to try fractal products before purchasing them, and I previously owned a hx stomp, but disliked how it sounded/felt to play, so I am cautious about buying modellers now.
Although I currently use neural dsp plugins for practice, and I think they sound great although aren’t as tweakable or versatile as the fractal products seem to be.

Do you think the FM3 would be a good option (I am looking to buy used)

Thank you :slight_smile:

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#2

I owned the fm3 and then went for the fm9. I love both. When I had the fm3 I also bought the fc6 foot controller for an extra 6 buttons. You can do quite a lot with the 3 buttons on the fm3 but I played live gigs a lot and wanted the extra. If money and space weren’t an issue, I’d say go for the fm9, but the fm3 is still very solid. Modelers become much more enjoyable once the user accepts that it is a different sound. It is the sound of a mic’d amp in a separate room. Also, really good (and flat response) headphones, monitor, wedge, studio monitors really make quite the difference. You wouldn’t put crappy wheels on your Ferrari.

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#3

Thanks for the response @carranoj25 :slight_smile:

I currently use the Mackie cr5x monitors. Do you reckon these would be good enough to not hold back the FM3?

Thanks again!

#4

Is this how plugins like the neural dsp ones work?

#5

Yes pretty much. I don’t use plugins but I assume fundamentally it’s the same nature. All I’m trying to say is that it’s not the same as a guitar amp and guitar cabinet right near your body. But I like it much better honestly.

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#6

I am not familiar with these. For the record, I don’t have anything super expensive. I have the iLoud Micro monitors which are decent but nothing amazing and they sound good. And I just got the Ollo S5X headphones which are expensive but not crazy expensive, and they sound awesome with the fractal. The more flat of a response you can get the better In my opinion

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#7

If I understand, all of the Fractal products run the same software, but the bigger the unit the more concurrent effects it can run. If you’re not using too many effects, etc., then the FM3 should be fine (and likely indistinguishable from the bigger units).

This might be interesting, you can compare them:

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#8

The Fractal FM3 is great in terms of sound quality and the sound of amps and effects.

But then the HX Stomp also has great sound quality, amps, and effects. I’d give the edge to the Fractal, but they’re surprisingly close in terms of sound quality. Both are really good in terms of picking up playing dynamics and providing a good feel.

Neural DSP Plugins are effectively modelers running on your PC. If you think they sound great, than you’re clearly fine with playing through a modeler versus an amp.

IRs (image responses, which model cabinets and microphones) can be key to getting a sound you like, so the right IR may be the difference between you liking or disliking a particular amp model. Neural has pretty good IRs with their plugins, which is partly why they sound so good. Did you try any 3rd party IRs with the Stomp when you had it?

#9

I’m really interested in that FM3 having previously owned a Kemper which I didn’t like. I’m currently using S-Gear but it’s a bit limited.

How is tone sharing with the Fractal stuff? Do people like Rick Graham share their tones?

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#10

I did try a few (the same ones i tried with the NDSP plugins) and while they sounded great with the plugins, they sounded really fuzzy/muffled compared to the stock cabs in the stomp, and I didn’t really like the sound of the cabs either (this was firmware version 3.5)

#11

I also made the move from Kemper to Fractal and really glad i did. im not crazy about profiles. Tone sharing is easy on the Axe-change (short for axe exchange). But personally, I really enjoy the factory presets and using those as templates to make my own tweaks

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#12

A lot of people get militant about which digital amp is “Best”. The reality is that they’re all remarkably good. Most of it comes down to what sort of workflow you prefer.

I’ve used and preferred a Kemper Profiler for the last 5 years or so. It suits me. I have no doubt a Line6 or Fractal product can get sounds I’d like. People love them.

I’m just not one of them is all.

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#13

Was gonna post this but instead I’ll just quote you to highlight that this, IMO, is crucial. The most “high end” modeler will sound like shit with a bad IR (or one that doesn’t suit your preferences).

#14

I had the FM3 and the PodGo (same tone as the Stomp). I can’t comment on the power amp modeling since I mostly used them as preamps into a real tube power amp & cab.

The FM3 has great tone, the Pod was okay. The Pod has a more intuitive interface but less features.

My gripe with both of them is the channel switching. The Pod has a volume drop thing when switching. The FM3 was horrible at switching, lag and pops, the buttons are awful and if you try to use an external midi pedal instead it works even worse. And with the FM3, if you try to switch between amps models, say a Marshall for high gain to a Fender clean for instance, forget about it, the lag is intense, so despite it having a zillion amp models you can’t actually switch between them live. If you never need to switch channels live, or if your songs are all slow enough to allow slow switching, then maybe they’re worth it to you. The original Axe FX switched channels seamlessly and had a way hotter output before clipping so it’s weird that their newer products are a step backwards in that regard.

I’m quite fed up with the current release-a-half-baked-product-and-update-it-later status quo in the modeler world.

#15

It’s a theme right now and its weird. Fractal has taken a lot of flack (some justified, some not) for FM3/9 issues, the Quad Cortex still isn’t capable of doing a lot of what they said it would.

Headrush Prime? Great idea, but clearly a rushed release.

Software will have issues no matter how much testing you do. That’s expected - to a point. But a lot of this feels like they’re using paying consumers as beta testers in order to say “FIRST!” or “ME TOO”.

#16

Are you sure you didn’t have a faulty unit? Mine never had pops or glitches when switching stuff. There are ways to to decrease the audio gap when switching sounds. The audio gap really isn’t that bad to begin with honestly. Maybe something was wrong with the unit or the way you built your presets? I know the fractal stuff has a deep learning curve

#17

Hmm, maybe mine was faulty. It was not user error, I read the manual, got help on the forum, I tried everything. I’ll say again though, the original had virtually no gap whatsoever.

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#18

Can the FM3 be used similar to an audio interface in that you can connect your computer via USB and your guitar and have your processed guitar signal and computer audio (e.g playing along to a backing track) playing at the same time through the monitors/headphones that the FM3 is connected to?

Thanks again!

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#19

Yes, you just need to
Make sure you get the fm3 headphones version (the first batch of fm3s did not have headphone jack, not sure why but then they changed it).

Also, keep in mind, the fm3 has been out of stock on the fractal site for awhile so it may be worth waiting to see if they come out with a more powerful fm3 soon. Not necessarily a whole new unit, but like the fm3 turbo or something. No official word yet, but there are rumors. You can also just buy a used fm3 since they probably won’t be that much different.

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#20

Thanks for the response!

How would I go about setting it up in order to achieve this?

Thanks again :slight_smile: