Just bought a Fractal FX8

Teetonetal

So going to sell it next week then?

Vaiai

My FX8 has been up for sale here for about 3 weeks and not a sniff! All this Helix talk... lol - Altho - that's what I am selling it for.  Not exactly bothered - the FX8 is fantastic.

Drew_TNBD

Vaiai said:

My FX8 has been up for sale here for about 3 weeks and not a sniff! All this Helix talk... lol - Altho - that's what I am selling it for.  Not exactly bothered - the FX8 is fantastic.

Aye, I keep being tempted by it!!

BintyTwanger77

Teetonetal said:

So going to sell it next week then?

Laugh awarded... no, come on, I've got to give a proper chance, so I'll sell it in two weeks time

BintyTwanger77

Beexter said:

If the FX8 computer editor is similar to the AX8, the noise gates are in the Input section on the left hand side of the grid. Right click in the input block and the noise gate settings should show up. 
With the tap tempo,  tapping the switch should adjust the global tempo - you just need to instruct each effect to use this "global" tempo (which you do in the various effects blocks in the computer editor.)

Excellent, thank you.

Wazmeister

My advice is to forget the presets.

Download the FX8 Edit.

Choose a BLANK preset. (There will be no noise gate then mate)

Plug your guitar into FX8 into amp. Ignore the 4CM at the moment.

Add a reverb - try North or South Church.

Now learn how to change and edit just that one setting.


Then, add a delay. Do the same again.

Then, add a overdrive. 

Slowly, simply is the winner here.

octatonic

+1 to above. ^^^^
I can't think of the last device that had decent presets, I don't bother with them.

Teetonetal

octatonic said:

+1 to above. ^^^^
I can't think of the last device that had decent presets, I don't bother with them.

Damn right.
They always create to show off capability vs sound. Even the good ones are so gear specific that you have tweak.. so just start from scratch.

menamestom

BintyTwanger77 said:

Overall, the sounds are just spectacular. Superb quality of delays and reverbs (Deep Space can get really close to Blackhole on the H9) I've set it up to use F1 and F2 to scroll between presets. Couple of things.

How are you finding the drives?  Particularly interested in the low gain drives.

thomasw88

I've just sold my FX8..  really liked it, but was always fiddling with sounds all the time, and the drives aren't quite there  yet for me.    I'm sure I'll be back into this type of thing but for this year back to pedals anyways!

guitarfishbay

It depends on your tastes really. The SD1 model sounds pretty much the same as my real one, the TS is also quite accurate (though I don't own one currently).

I actually prefer the Big Muff to the real pedal as it's easier to get a sound with the 3 band EQ and mid sweep than it is with just the tone control.

I wish you could get the fuzz face to react to guitar volume like the real thing but no modeller can do that currently as far as I'm aware.

A lot of the other pedals I've not had real ones to know how accurate they are. There's plenty of scope to fine tune though

BintyTwanger77

Drew_TNBD said:

Lots of things are GAS killers...... for a while

I've got the Helix which is fantastic, but I've also got a singles board still and I don't see that changing any time soon!

I do quite fancy an AX8 or FX8 at some point, but really I've got all I "need" ... it aint really about "need" though is it!

You think it's about "need", then you get what you need, but then there's something else you want which you convince yourself you "need". Absolutely isn't about needing.

BintyTwanger77

menamestom said:

BintyTwanger77 said:

Overall, the sounds are just spectacular. Superb quality of delays and reverbs (Deep Space can get really close to Blackhole on the H9) I've set it up to use F1 and F2 to scroll between presets. Couple of things.

How are you finding the drives?  Particularly interested in the low gain drives.

I like the Timmy, TS, Mid Boost and FET Boost and the Rat is alright as well.

BintyTwanger77

The one thing that seems like it will take a lot of getting used to is the DUI. Tweaking on the fly looks like it would be difficult, but that's me, I imagine a lot of you more seasoned FX users find it easier than I do.

kjdowd

BintyTwanger77 said:

The one thing that seems like it will take a lot of getting used to is the DUI. Tweaking on the fly looks like it would be difficult, but that's me, I imagine a lot of you more seasoned FX users find it easier than I do.

You actually get used to it v quickly. Certainly fine for tweaks and I've even set up a patch from scratch with it. 

I have an Ax8 which is totally straightforward for amp tweaks. In some ways easier than Helix (tho the Helix UI outdoes the AX8 in all other ways). 

Jonathanthomas83

BintyTwanger77 said:

menamestom said:

BintyTwanger77 said:

Overall, the sounds are just spectacular. Superb quality of delays and reverbs (Deep Space can get really close to Blackhole on the H9) I've set it up to use F1 and F2 to scroll between presets. Couple of things.

How are you finding the drives?  Particularly interested in the low gain drives.

I like the Timmy, TS, Mid Boost and FET Boost and the Rat is alright as well.

Pretty much my experience too, I like all of them. The FET Boost is a little secret sauce isnt it! 

Beexter

@BintyTwanger77,  With the AX8, I'm 2 button presses away from the stuff I would tweak on my traditional pedals,  eg depth,  gain,  volume,  feedback etc. - One press to choose the pedal and one to bring up the parameters which are then adjustable via the knobs below the screen. 

If it wasn't that easy to do the simple stuff it would have gone back. 

BintyTwanger77

The more I get used to this thing, the more I really like it. Running everything into the front, and using some of the drives as well.

Really impressive. The delays and reverbs are superb, as expected. Easily as good as the Strymons and Eventides. Still need to sort out the global tap tempo thing, but seems to be an easy thing to do that I've missed.

The factory presets in the main haven't done it for me, but I've been able to create some beautiful sounding ones of my own.

Still early days, though, not about to sell off all my pedals, not sure I ever will. The FX8 really is living up to the hype so far.

BintyTwanger77

Beexter said:

@BintyTwanger77,  With the AX8, I'm 2 button presses away from the stuff I would tweak on my traditional pedals,  eg depth,  gain,  volume,  feedback etc. - One press to choose the pedal and one to bring up the parameters which are then adjustable via the knobs below the screen. 

If it wasn't that easy to do the simple stuff it would have gone back. 

This is very good to hear. Getting hugely promising results so far.

BintyTwanger77

I managed to put together a huge Sigur Ros-style preset yesterday, two cavern reverbs at high mix level, diffusion multi-delay... stunning.

I'm going to try it with an external compressor: as good as the comps are on the FX8, the Fairfield one just has something special about it.