Clean to Mean Rack Tones 12/27/25

[mentoneman]

well looky what the tone stork dropped off today!

think it might be a few weeks before i can fire up ol’ R2D2. lotsa family stuff going on ( birthdays, memorial service, resurrection Sunday) and i have been waiting to have everything here before starting to solder several XLR<->1/4” cables to length and wire up my pedal tray nicely.

 

[mentoneman]

oh and hurray…..322 more pages of Fractal manuals….

 

[eero]

well looky what the tone stork dropped off today!

View attachment 439999

think it might be a few weeks before i can fire up ol’ R2D2. lotsa family stuff going on ( birthdays, memorial service, resurrection Sunday) and i have been waiting to have everything here before starting to solder several XLR<->1/4” cables to length and wire up my pedal tray nicely.

nice rack!
i had the Rocktron version of the IE4, one of most beautiful clean on channel 1, and I also liked very much channel 4 which had a nice violin like lead, a la Holdsworth...but never bonded with channel 2 and especially channel 3, too midrangey and smooth for my taste

 

[mentoneman]

nice rack!
i had the Rocktron version of the IE4, one of most beautiful clean on channel 1, and I also liked very much channel 4 which had a nice violin like lead, a la Holdsworth...but never bonded with channel 2 and especially channel 3, too midrangey and smooth for my taste

agree ch 1 & 4 rule. i boost ch 3 with a @griff10672 atomic punk overdrive which gives me the eddies, and ch 2 is very weird so i dump the gain and crank the master for a second clean.

fill in the cracks with synergy DS and BE-DLX

 

[mentoneman]

ok brother @Shask, time for fractal rookie/ask the expert hour!

1) i’m intrigued by the X/Y option to switch from a crunch rhythm tone to a lead tone using the same amp but just increasing gain and delay/verb,

and wondered if this could occur while preserving a rhythm recorded in the looper and left unchanged?

2) if yes,
can you do the same thing but switch from one amp in X to another in Y, or even use 2 amps simultaneously and just change amp mix levels, drive and fx parameters?

 

[Shask]

ok brother @Shask, time for fractal rookie/ask the expert hour!

1) i’m intrigued by the X/Y option to switch from a crunch rhythm tone to a lead tone using the same amp but just increasing gain and delay/verb,

and wondered if this could occur while preserving a rhythm recorded in the looper and left unchanged?

2) if yes,
can you do the same thing but switch from one amp in X to another in Y, or even use 2 amps simultaneously and just change amp mix levels, drive and fx parameters?

Honestly, I dont think I have ever used the looper, lol. I am not sure if you can change settings while the looper is running. I would assume you could if you have the looper active in every scene?

Generally to use X/Y you will set up one in a scene and the other in a different scene. You can then change scenes to change the effect. Like, you could have a 2290 delay for X in scene 1, but then switch it to an analog delay for Y in scene 2.

Basically, you will use X/Y and block on/off to switch between scenes within the preset, and use scene modifiers to change the setting of a knob as you change scenes.

If you just want to increase the gain but not switch X/Y, you can use a scene modifier to increase the gain when you switch scenes. Scene modifiers are kind of like automatic expression pedals you can set for 2 settings when you switch scenes.

 

[mentoneman]

Honestly, I dont think I have ever used the looper, lol. I am not sure if you can change settings while the looper is running. I would assume you could if you have the looper active in every scene?

Generally to use X/Y you will set up one in a scene and the other in a different scene. You can then change scenes to change the effect. Like, you could have a 2290 delay for X in scene 1, but then switch it to an analog delay for Y in scene 2.

Basically, you will use X/Y and block on/off to switch between scenes within the preset, and use scene modifiers to change the setting of a knob as you change scenes.

If you just want to increase the gain but not switch X/Y, you can use a scene modifier to increase the gain when you switch scenes. Scene modifiers are kind of like automatic expression pedals you can set for 2 settings when you switch scenes.

thank you sir!
just wanting some idea of what’s in store before i roll up my sleeves and dive into fractalverse

 

[Dave L]

agree ch 1 & 4 rule. i boost ch 3 with a @griff10672 atomic punk overdrive which gives me the eddies, and ch 2 is very weird so i dump the gain and crank the master for a second clean.

fill in the cracks with synergy DS and BE-DLX

I don´t think I´ve been 100% satisfied with any crunch/middle channel on a preamp, or similar multichannel amp. The Soldano X99 probably comes out on top there, it is nice and I´ve used the normal-crunch a ton... probably more than any other amp or channel I´ve had, to be honest... but it is definitely a practical thing as well. Can´t always bring out a NMV amp or break up the work flow with switching in another amp just for a slightly cooler tone.

I guess it´s part wanting to do something that´s not a straight-up Marshall clone, and part the difficulty of capturing that whole chain of compression with the PI and power section.

 

[Shask]

thank you sir!
just wanting some idea of what’s in store before i roll up my sleeves and dive into fractalverse

I think learning Scenes will be the biggest thought pattern change. They are basically presets within presets. If you set up all your scenes, scene modifiers, and X/Y, there is a good chance you will only ever need 1 preset.

 

[mentoneman]

I don´t think I´ve been 100% satisfied with any crunch/middle channel on a preamp, or similar multichannel amp. The Soldano X99 probably comes out on top there, it is nice and I´ve used the normal-crunch a ton... probably more than any other amp or channel I´ve had, to be honest... but it is definitely a practical thing as well. Can´t always bring out a NMV amp or break up the work flow with switching in another amp just for a slightly cooler tone.

I guess it´s part wanting to do something that´s not a straight-up Marshall clone, and part the difficulty of capturing that whole chain of compression with the PI and power section.

that’s an interesting observation. enter, the Synergy solution! and fwiw the triaxis had some flex in the in betweenies…

 

[mentoneman]

I think learning Scenes will be the biggest thought pattern change. They are basically presets within presets. If you set up all your scenes, scene modifiers, and X/Y, there is a good chance you will only ever need 1 preset.

that is precisely where my evening manual reading took me—scenes. a new concept in my fractal lexicon (pun intended)!

 

[eero]

that’s an interesting observation. enter, the Synergy solution! and fwiw the triaxis had some flex in the in betweenies…

and that's exactly why I switched to the modular system, both Egnater and Synergy, after the IE4 preamp experience. No more limitations or unused channels for my tastes...
but on the other hand there is the danger of option paralysis, too many offers to choose from...can be a rabbit hole

 

[Dave L]

that’s an interesting observation. enter, the Synergy solution! and fwiw the triaxis had some flex in the in betweenies…

I´m not sure I ever took my Triaxis off of the 2C+ channel, so you have me there

The newest Synergy stuff that has the full circuit with the PI and some sort of dummy power amp looks very interesting for old school NMV tones. I was into the Randall modular system maybe fifteen years ago and while it was cool it never really got there. Spent most of my time on the original Brahma module, so straight up plexi stuff in a conventional MV format just like many preamp middle channels. Cool and superbly usable, but still not awesome.

Might have been the hardware rather than the modules, though, the Lynchbox head sounded a bit small compared to some other big heads I had at the time. Maybe the RM4 with another power section would have rocked, but I never tried it.

 

[mentoneman]

I´m not sure I ever took my Triaxis off of the 2C+ channel, so you have me there

The newest Synergy stuff that has the full circuit with the PI and some sort of dummy power amp looks very interesting for old school NMV tones. I was into the Randall modular system maybe fifteen years ago and while it was cool it never really got there. Spent most of my time on the original Brahma module, so straight up plexi stuff in a conventional MV format just like many preamp middle channels. Cool and superbly usable, but still not awesome.

Might have been the hardware rather than the modules, though, the Lynchbox head sounded a bit small compared to some other big heads I had at the time. Maybe the RM4 with another power section would have rocked, but I never tried it.

i hear you. the lead II yellow/IIC+ was a doozy. even if it wasn’t nails to the wall identical to the amp, it was great in it’s own way. had they integrated the actual graphic i would have likely kept it around in perpetuity!

and as much as i love my rack tones, i’m very thankful to have the Peacemaker and Mark III to keep me grounded in the girthy/tonal/tactile truth of plugging straight in to a head.

 

[Dave L]

Yeah, that preset graphic just wasn´t cutting it, makes sense Hetfield and Petrucci used outboard EQs with theirs. I could maybe have lived with preset shapes given enough of them, but the fact that the smaller shapes also were mixed almost completely out of the sound made it pretty weird. I want small adjustments, but I want to hear them too. I ditched my Triaxis after a while, had a blue-stripe Coliseum III for a bit but eventually ended up with a no-stripe "III+", as Mike B calls it.

 

[Exo-metal]

No-stripe "III+" Coliseum?

 

[Dave L]

Nope, the III+ is just a normal Simulclass.

 

[Anje]

An old Coliseum is at the top of my wishlist for the Mark series; not sure of what are the actual going prices those days, but they seem to be even higher than most 60's Plexi Marshall

 

[Shask]

i hear you. the lead II yellow/IIC+ was a doozy. even if it wasn’t nails to the wall identical to the amp, it was great in it’s own way. had they integrated the actual graphic i would have likely kept it around in perpetuity!

and as much as i love my rack tones, i’m very thankful to have the Peacemaker and Mark III to keep me grounded in the girthy/tonal/tactile truth of plugging straight in to a head.

I posted 8 ToneX captures tonight you might like of the Synergy SLO II Preamp Only. These are with no poweramp, so they would be used with a real poweramp. I used 2 gain levels with 4 mid settings each.

https://tone.net/tonex/users/shask

 

[Dave L]

i hear you. the lead II yellow/IIC+ was a doozy. even if it wasn’t nails to the wall identical to the amp, it was great in it’s own way. had they integrated the actual graphic i would have likely kept it around in perpetuity!

and as much as i love my rack tones, i’m very thankful to have the Peacemaker and Mark III to keep me grounded in the girthy/tonal/tactile truth of plugging straight in to a head.

In my system preamp+power amp and heads work the same now, everything just goes into a Suhr Reactive Load and a Blubox IR before it hits the FX rack and my DAW. It´s all set up for silent home recording, since I moved to a 1940s townhouse where you can hear the neighbors sneezing, that´s the only way I can use the big boy amps on a regular basis. Listening thru monitors down there in the basement room pretty loud works fine, but that´s obviously just a fraction of what the amps actually sounds like thru a cab.

On the other hand I use and enjoy them every day now, which I don´t think I ever have, so there´s two sides to everything. I can also easily repatch everything to run preamps and line outs from loaded heads thru the rack and into my VHT 2150 and cabs, should circumstances allow me to ditch IRs again.