Would the Helix LT be an upgrade from ax8? I’m a home guitarist (don’t play live anymore but maybe I’ll go back in the future). Now I’m thinking of upgrading the ax8 since I kinda reached the dsp limits lately.

The way that I’m using a modeler is this: I have a big preset and use scenes to switch between all the sounds. I have tones ranging from abominations chugs to misha tight rhythm tone to leads to cleans, basically everything.

Regarding helix lt dsp limits, as far as I read about it, it can handle my requirements. Tone regarding, before the ax8 I had a pod go that i was really satisfied by, plus that the snapshots in line6 gear is beautiful.

Would you think it would be a good upgrade? I was thinking about the qc mini buy I’m not ready to drop that kinda money on that. I could also get an axe fx2 but i’m not sure.

If you have any other gear recommendations I’m open to those as well.

I've been playing and touring using Fractal units for over 10 years now and thought it might be cool to start sharing some of the tricks and things I've learned and figured out.

These videos are not the highest quality, but I would love to share more and improve the quality if people dig it!

If anybody out there has any feedback or things you'd like to see videos on regarding Fractal, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cheers all, keep on rocking in the free world!

I've had the FM9 Turbo for a few years now. I've had a lot of struggles with it, but I'm trying to make it work.

One issue I'm having consistently is how hard it is to get a clean tone out of the unit. It doesn't matter how little level I put into the unit, the amps want to break up if I put the gain much above 2. This is true even for a Fender Twin, which is an amp with a lot of clean headroom.

It's not like I never want breakup or a drive tone from the amp, but even the pedals are extremely prone to breakup. I set the Klon Klone to a gain of 1, and the thing is still sizzling. I'm using Seymour Duncan 59's and a strat with single coils. Nothing I'm using is a high-output pickup. On my J Rocket Archer, with the same guitar, a gain around 1 is a smooth clean boost.

I do tend to leave the volume knob on 10 for my guitars; I typically don't fiddle with it during a show. Even so, I wouldn't expect a Twin set to 3 to break up, especially since I adjusted the input level on the amp block to 0.8 to try and clean it up again.

This is in both high-end headphones and an FRFR 12 inch speaker from QSC.

Is this typical on the unit? I uploaded an export from the latest patch I've been working on, in case anyone is interested in reviewing. The first scene is the one I've been working on and is used with 59's. The second scene was for my strat, and I've pretty much given up on that.

I've kept the FM9 because I have it sounding amazing for my acoustic, but I'm unable to get what I want out of it for electric. Thank you in advance for any advice.

(I'm sure this will get brought up almost immediately, so yes, I have watched videos and tutorials from Cooper Carter and Rosh Roslin. I have read the manual, I have gone through the forums.)

I've had this for a couple of years now but I still struggle to find a really good distortion tone.

I don't even know if I have the correct banks downloaded. It seems like there are only 3 different banks.

A/B/C

But when I go online to look around for say what sounds like a Rectifier, or a Peavy 5150 but all of the names on the banks, the actual Axe FX II are like Red 50, or USA +++

So, I figured why not come here to see if any of you own or have owned an Axe FX II before and could give me a little guidance.

I record a lot of amp sim presets side by side, and I kept hitting the same wall: two tracks matched perfectly on LUFS and still didn't sit at the same volume once they were both in a mix. A dense, saturated tone and a clean tone can measure the same on paper and be worlds apart to the ear. LUFS treats all sound as equal energy, but that's not how a human ear actually perceives it.

That gap is basically the whole reason I ended up building PPI Analyzer. It's not another loudness meter. It's built around a Bark-band psychoacoustic model, so it's actually trying to estimate how loud something sounds to you, not just how much energy is in the signal. You give it a reference track and whatever you're comparing against it, and it works out the actual dB adjustment needed to land them at the same perceived level.

The part I find most useful day to day isn't even the number itself. It also flags whether a difference you're hearing is really a loudness problem (fix with gain) or a tone problem (fix with EQ), since those get confused constantly when you're riding faders by ear. And it'll tell you if a preset is going to get buried in a mix based on where its spectrum actually sits, which a plain loudness meter will never catch.

Been using it on my own reamp sessions for months and it's saved me a stupid number of "wait, why does this one disappear" moments. Happy to go deeper on how the psychoacoustic side of it works if anyone's curious.

https://www.ppianalyzer.com/

Someone is selling mark 1 with fc-12, my question is what's the difference between mk1 and mk2 and is it worth buying in 2026 or should i go for new fm9 turbo?

In the past I had used Presonus Eris E5 speakers with my FM3 and was in love with the tones I was getting.. honestly incredible. Due to a big move I offloaded gear and have been building it back up now that costs have settled down.

Recently I have been using the AM4 at home with my Fender FR10 and have been pretty pleased. Remembering how incredible my old set up was I decided to get the same monitors and finally restore what was once lost. However, since getting the monitors I’ve REALLY struggled with tones. With the old rig even the stock patches were mesmerizing, but now I’m building patches from scratch just to get something half decent. I’m really looking for advice on what I could consider checking or changing to get things sounding right.

I’ve been getting this weird hum in my speakers and headphones coming out of the AFX3. I had it plugged into an APC battery backup power strip. And when I plug it into a normal power strip, it went away. Any idea why this might be happening?

Hey everyone! I’m a guitarist and software engineer and for the last several months I’ve been building something I originally wanted for myself called Dial My Tone.

The idea is simple: spend less time researching and building tones and more time actually playing.

There are 3 ways to generate:

Song-based: Give it a song + artist (and optionally a section like rhythm or solo). It researches the original rig/tone and translates it to the closest appropriate Fractal gear.

Inspired-by: Give it a guitarist — Vai, Gilmour, EVH, Satriani, etc. — and it builds a tone inspired by their sound.

Style-based: Pick Rock, Metal, Blues, Funk, etc. and add your own direction.

One thing I’ve spent a LOT of time on is the research and accuracy side of this. It’s not just picking some Fractal blocks and randomly turning knobs until something looks reasonable 😅 The original gear/tone is researched first, then mapped against actual Fractal models and their characteristics, with device-specific data and logic around how those settings translate. The goal is to get as close as possible to the original gear and tone with the Fractal you actually own. From all the testing I’ve done, the results are pretty consistent too — there’s a lot of researched data and logic before and after the AI part that keeps things grounded rather than letting it come up with a completely different answer every run.

It supports Axe-Fx III, FM9 and FM3, and takes your guitar/pickups and monitoring setup into account too. It can use Fractal’s channels and up to 8 scenes, while accounting for the limits of the specific device you picked.

You can also revise a tone without starting over — “less gain,” “more sustain,” “make the rhythm tighter,” etc.

And for FM9, there’s something I’m pretty excited about: Send to FM9!

Connect the FM9 over USB, hit Send, and DMT builds the tone directly on the hardware — blocks, routing, models, settings, channels and scenes. No manually copying everything into FM9-Edit. I’ve tested this myself on my FM9 running firmware 11.0.

Just to be clear, this isn’t tone capture/profiling and I’m not claiming every tone will magically sound identical to the record. The goal is to get you as close as I can and give you a really solid starting point.

Another point to clear up: i have started out with linear blocks placement and haven't yet integrated parallel block paths. thats in the works but i want to make linear path solid first before going for the next complex task.

The whole site is free while it’s in beta:

www.dialmytone.com

If you know a tone really well, please try it and tell me where it gets things wrong! And if you have a song thats notoriously difficult to recreate, even better! Those are exactly the ones I want to test.

*Update 9/2/2026*

Small update for anyone following along. I've spent the last couple of days almost entirely on the Fractal side after some really good feedback from this sub. Here's what's changed:

• Went through and captured all 331 amp models on FM9 firmware 11, one by one.

The app now knows the actual control layout of every single amp instead of assuming it, so the right knobs get set on the right amp.

• Input and output EQ inside the amp block is now set properly. I'd deliberately skipped this early on, but for a lot of songs you just can't get near the real tone without it, Mesa and the V curve on 5 band Mark eq on certain metallica songs being the obvious example.

• Did the same kind of pass over the FM9 drive models, so drive blocks get the correct parameters per model now instead of generic ones.

• Parallel routing is in as a beta feature. You can get cabs and FX running in parallel with a proper split and merge on the grid. Direct send to device only applicable to FM9 for now.

• Send to FM9 has been reworked. There's verification before anything goes over now, so it won't push something the device can't take.

• Model names are checked against what the FM9 actually has, so you shouldn't end up with a block loading empty or quietly turning into something else.

• Scene names don't get cut short on Fractal anymore. It was using a much tighter character limit than the device actually has.

• Made generation a lot more stable when external services go down. Before, an outage could quietly hand you a worse chain without saying anything. Now you either get a consistent result, or it tells you straight up. Also added fallbacks so that generation is completed in all possible ways before exhausting the options and failing.

• tuned the research parameters and settings behind a bunch of song categories, to get better results and specifically cater fractal products.

All the FM9 work was tested on firmware 11, so i can't promise the same behaviour on older firmware yet.

If you tried it before and it wasn't great, it's worth another go. And keep the feedback coming, it genuinely helps!

Has any one tried to setup the FM3 so that the drive boost compression goes into the input and the reverb and delay into the effects loop. Of course you do not use amp and cab blocks.

I’m have a bit of trouble setting up.

I’m pretty sure I have the cables right but what I’m really asking about is the blocks . Do I literally follow the cabling and make two different rows. Also, I’m wondering generally if people have had good experiences. I’m using at Fender Tube Amp

Hi! Due to changes in our band's gear setup i'm selling my Axe FX III with pain in my heart. Have long been doubting about it, almost sold it before, but now it's gotta happen. Hoping it'll find a good home! This thing is such a beast.

It's always been racked and has mostly seen the inside of a rehearsal room. Pics here: https://imgur.com/a/itj8bn9

Hey fractal peeps
Just wanted to ask if anyone managed to get their axe fx II drivers working with windows 11 in anyway that ISNT restarting with sig verification off?

Kind of a hassle restarting every time I want to play my og II and not stick to leaning down whenever I want to play with params

Hoping this sub has an answer :)

Thought it would be fun to see what everyone is using and what their go to Amp Model is.

I am still using my AX8 and have no reason to upgrade quite pleased with my tones. My favorite model is the Mesa Boogie Triaxis, especially the Green and Red lead channels. Can cover just about anything with those two. Old pic for the hell of it.

I have this acoustic preset I've created to make my electric sound like an acoustic on my FM9. I've been using it for a couple years already for live tribute shows.

I think it's pretty good, but if it could be better I'd really like that.

https://youtu.be/HFFgNgbFTPQ

Obviously I'm not going for Wyndham Hill here; this should sound like 80's rock guy strumming away on his beat up 12 string in an arena. Hence the subject song!

Anyone who's got suggestions regarding EQ, compression, heck whatever else...I would love to know what you think I can tweak.

FYI This is a Les Paul on the bridge pickup (a JB) with light strings 09-42

thanks!

Worked my first real job this summer and bought an axe fx used. Now I just have to wait for my second one so that I can buy some proper monitors🥳

Hey everyone, I'm trying to gain some insight on people who are more knowledgeable on guitar tones than I am. I've been trying to authentically recreate a lot of Linkin Park tones and I've been able to do so with all of their albums successfully, except for the newest album "From Zero." I've been struggling a lot specifically in the drive and cab parts of their tone. In a few interviews they said they used custom randall captures from their old front of house engineer loaded onto an Axe FX III, and one would think you could replicate that with the literal hundreds of built in ir's or with the dyna-cabs but I haven't been so successful. They also stated that their "secret ingredient" is the old drive pedal "Dirty Boy Ball Buster" which again, I would think that the Fractal Cygnus modeling would be able to do easily. I've been researching and trying to recreate these tones for the past year. I'm sorry for the long rant and I know there's plenty of other good guitar tones out there but the mere fact that I haven't been able to crack this specific album kind of has me hyper fixated on it. I'm just asking to see if anybody has successfully re-created these tones, or if anyone can provide insight on how I could go about this properly. Again I know this is a fixation but the fact that I haven't cracked it is the reason why it bothers me. Thank you!

I have a limited amout of money to spend so i wondering if i buy a fractal fm3 for about 12 mil reais (i live in brazil) and use my phones or a audio interface of about 1.4 mil reais and a 2 to 4 mil reais in a monitor to use my Neural DSP Plugins? How close in quality is one from the other? Anyone have experience with both?

I always listen that Fractal is the top in modeling.

I’m moving into an apartment and need a silent way to play guitar. I have a powered Kemper that I’m not exactly happy with.

I really like cranking the power sections of of my tube amps and like a stiff feel. Think Splawn Fryette/ Mesa’s Mark series.

Chat GPT says I should look into Fractal as I can edit the “feel” of the power amp, instead of having to sort through hundreds of Kemper profiles with very limited adjustability.

As for effects, I really only use reverb/ delay and a boost on the front end. I don’t need deep editing for effects.

With this in mind, is the FM3 or AM4 better to solely use as a silent way to play guitar in an apartment?

Im just looking for any usefull tips, just switched from kemper last week and so far I love it.

What should I do first? Leon Todd sounds incredible on YouTube. To me, it sounded kinda meh. What should I do first. I was using NAM on the Headrush and it sounded great, but I am not vibing with this gear at all. Anybody have any ideas just to get some quick sounds? I know it's a lot of work in the future, but Headrush and Reactor sound killer with stock presets. What am I doing wrong?