I hate fooling with different parameters and cabs,

[riffy]

Some days I just want to plug in and play. Some days my ears are just off and I don't like
any of the presets I have made. I switch cabs and adjust the preset to suit that cab and it
seems an hour of my playing time Is gone, just hitting chords and listening to them ring
Out and playing the same lead lines over and over again.

Anyone else with this issue?

 

[SwirlyMaple]

It's normal. Besides their inconsistent feel, modelers also aren't as good as tube amps at self-adjusting for when our ears are off.

Edit:

 

[John Mark Painter]

You know you don’t HAVE to
Pretend you have an amp/cab and a 57

 

[Watt McCo]

This is part of why I prefer using a guitar cab over FRFR. Keeping practice patches stripped down to just amp and light reverb and trying to have a plan for why I'm picking up the guitar (even if it's as open ended as noodle in A minor pentatonic 5th fret box) help keep me focused a lot more on playing when I'm wanting to play guitar.

 

[John Quinn]

Some days I just want to plug in and play. Some days my ears are just off and I don't like
any of the presets I have made. I switch cabs and adjust the preset to suit that cab and it
seems an hour of my playing time Is gone, just hitting chords and listening to them ring
Out and playing the same lead lines over and over again.

Anyone else with this issue?

Not really - I get IRs and Cabs I like - and I just play - with people - it's important that you play with people - it cuts out the doodling time where you go through everything.

 

[RevDrucifer]

Not really, for a couple different reasons-

It doesn’t matter that much to me unless I’m recording something permanent.

It pretty much came to an end when I started finding an IR that was 90% there with the amp knobs at noon then getting the other 10% by turning the knobs.

My living room rig is an FM9 into a 2x12 that pretty much sounds great regardless of what amp I pick. If it doesn’t, just a couple EQ moves and I’m good to go.

When I was teaching myself how to mix I realized how much time I was wasting turning knobs and getting nothing done. I’d mix for a day and then spend another day dialing in AxeFX presets. I like tweaking and it’s not a chore to me, but it IS a massive time killer. So I started differentiating days I’d mix/tweak and days I’d write/record. That helped things a LOT.

 

[thumperjack]

if all your tones sound like garbage stop trying to dial in good tones and try to dial in a garbage tone, it's a lot faster to dial in a garbage tone, and you'll be good at it, and it will be 100% fun. do everything wrong then sit back and bask in the genius of your glorious mess. then save that bish and post the preset

 

[Will Chen]

I used to have those days with real amps too.
Perfect time to just put in some technical work and forget about "tone".

 

[Gasp100]

Some days I just want to plug in and play. Some days my ears are just off and I don't like
any of the presets I have made. I switch cabs and adjust the preset to suit that cab and it
seems an hour of my playing time Is gone, just hitting chords and listening to them ring
Out and playing the same lead lines over and over again.

Anyone else with this issue?

P-R-E-A-C-H!
"it's important that you play with people - it cuts out the doodling time where you with everything out." - agreed. Spent two days (off this week) comparing and contrasting a ton of gear, building gear budgeting spreadsheets, devising plans on incorporating rigs... then went to audition a new drummer with FM3 into my bassists medium quality PA (kind of a Bose L1 knock off) and just played guitar. Sounded pretty good, but not perfect... NEVER PERFECT!

 

[RolandKorg]

With the Kemper, I usually forget that I even can change cabs.

 

[Den]

I've been a Fractal user since the very beginning and have spent many hours over many years dialing up tones. But these days, I too prefer to just plug in and play.

My solution: AustinBuddy's Live Gold presets. He's got great ears and loads of experience building tones on Fractal gear. The day my FM3 (and more recently my FM9) arrived, I loaded up AB's presets and simply ran through one great set of scenes to another. In about an hour, I had about 20 amps selected with 8 scenes each to choose from. Every once in a while, I audition a few more and rearrange my top 20, but never run out of great sounding options.

What's most important to me is that I have not auditioned a single IR or spent even a moment in the deep editing. Although I do change and fine-tune effects now and then, I mostly just plug in, select a preset and enjoy making music.

Thanks to Fractal and AustinBuddy, enjoying almost unlimited great tones is faster and easier than ever before.

 

[cardinal]

Some days I just want to plug in and play. Some days my ears are just off and I don't like
any of the presets I have made. I switch cabs and adjust the preset to suit that cab and it
seems an hour of my playing time Is gone, just hitting chords and listening to them ring
Out and playing the same lead lines over and over again.

Anyone else with this issue?

This happens to me with real amps/cabs too. I just try to recognize that it's one of those days and go do thing else.

 

[Antipodes]

With the Kemper, I usually forget that I even can change cabs.

Yes. I think that it is easy to pick a rig and get to work with the Kemper. You can spend as much time as you like selecting from the multitude of rigs but, when you have some you like, you can just pick one and get busy.

 

[randombastage]

It's normal. Besides their inconsistent feel, modelers also aren't as good as tube amps at self-adjusting for when our ears are off.

I don't disagree with the OP's findings being more common with digital devices but I don't get the "amps self-adjusting for when our ears are off" part. I think with digital the propensity to jump down the parameter choice rabbit hole is adding to the problem where as with an amp you don't have so many options. Changing IR's are easy to do where as changing a speaker in a real amp is not nearly as likely to happen...

I think if you press on and suffer the unwanted difference your perception is 'adjusted'. Whether that is a good or not is up for debate and probably depends on what your goal is. I wouldn't want to try and mix a masterpiece on a 'bad day' but if you are working on scales/modes speed etc. etc. maybe pressing on has no ill effect, at least as far as the goal is concerned.

 

[RevDrucifer]

if all your tones sound like garbage stop trying to dial in good tones and try to dial in a garbage tone, it's a lot faster to dial in a garbage tone, and you'll be good at it, and it will be 100% fun. do everything wrong then sit back and bask in the genius of your glorious mess. then save that bish and post the preset

While it sounds funny, that’s exactly what I did when I tried everything else I could think of when first playing through a Mark IV. Then once I got to the 5-band it was like “Ohhhhhhhh ok. WTF, but ok.”

 

[SwirlyMaple]

I don't disagree with the OP's findings being more common with digital devices but I don't get the "amps self-adjusting for when our ears are off" part. I think with digital the propensity to jump down the parameter choice rabbit hole is adding to the problem where as with an amp you don't have so many options. Changing IR's are easy to do where as changing a speaker in a real amp is not nearly as likely to happen...

I think if you press on and suffer the unwanted difference your perception is 'adjusted'. Whether that is a good or not is up for debate and probably depends on what your goal is. I wouldn't want to try and mix a masterpiece on a 'bad day' but if you are working on scales/modes speed etc. etc. maybe pressing on has no ill effect, at least as far as the goal is concerned.

It was an attempt at humor I was implying that if it sounds great one day and not so great the next, the problem probably isn’t the modeler.

Also, if the OP’s ears are off, he should try reattaching them first. Ok ok I will see myself out now!

 

[Alex Kenivel]

Some days I just want to plug in and play. Some days my ears are just off and I don't like
any of the presets I have made. I switch cabs and adjust the preset to suit that cab and it
seems an hour of my playing time Is gone, just hitting chords and listening to them ring
Out and playing the same lead lines over and over again.

Anyone else with this issue?

I had this issue often when I wasn't settled on "my tone" in Helix land. I'd find happiness, then grow tired of it for some reason, or found greener grass with a different amp model and convince myself the last preset was garbage, tweak the next one to temporary perfection, rinse and repeat.

It wasn't until about last year that I settled on a plug and play preset template that keeps me happy. I still occasionally play with other models in the box when I want to explore, but I carve out time specifically for that.

What probably helped me get over it was tailoring the frequency response into a pleasing curve with EQs and exporting that into an IR so I could get away with not needing extra EQ in the preset. I built up a library of IRs I created out of stacked EQs, and started using the better ones to make presets with.

Then it was down to finding one amp model that could nail the range of clean/gain that I wanted. I never did find one, so I settled on two and never looked back. I had a stroke of luck with timing too - 2020 shutdowns allowed me to sit at home and tweak. No work, no gigs, just time to find my tone and rehearse with the band.

 

[yeky83]

I fooled around and fell in love.

 

[Den]

I fooled around and fell in love.

Why am I not surprised?

 

[feet]

It happens. Sometimes my ears are tired, or shot, or blown out. That's when I turn the volume down, and either use my presets or some of the stock cab options within amp room.

When my ears are virile and fresh, then I can experiment with mic placement and off beat chains, but when I know I don't have it I just turn down and simplify, focusing more on the music than the tone. So keep a few tried and true presets and irs handy, just in case.