If you can’t get great tones with this. It’s you. Best by far of the offerings

That interface is amazing. The ability to adjust the amp settings by twisting the switches, the colorful touch screen showing the chain, everything. If they can fix that digital sound this would be a winner.

I have it and love it. I don’t have that harsh fuzzy issue. Mine sounds really good

Looks like you installed the v1.1.100 firmware, but you didn't do a factory reset which would have given you the latest factory presets that are all optimized and volume normalized.

Same with Helix and Boss.Building a preset from scratch is what it is about. The UI on here looks great. I usually lo-cut from 80 to 108 and hi-cut anything from 4.5kHz to 5-8kHz. It is entirely dependent on song.

Well done Rhett ! Finally someone speaks (focus on) about the sounds of this unit rather than "friendly user interface", "processing power", etc (or the most I heard was "sounds good..." ?!!!). Excellent review ! Regarding the price, I find it excessively expensive if you look at it as a most probably arm based micro computer. May be it's due to high quality components inside (as Fender's people said), the market, whatever. Again, chapeau for this one !

Thank you! You are the first reviewer to mention the digital artifacts ai heard right away on every preset

6:00 I saw another review on this unit where they split the chain, chose a bright cab on one side and deep cab on the other. then when the signal comes back together it automatically gives you a little mixer that lets you really balance your sound without having to eq much. I was amazed how much the sound improved. seemed like it took all the digital harshness away.

Thanks for being so honest about the sound because it's nice to hear that a pro like yourself isn't crazy about it , especially because I feel the same way after hearing so many video demos. I've joined the digital realm however, I think that it is quite possible that many of us (me included) have forgotten what a real tube amp sounds like. lol. it's nice to see your selection of amps behind you. I'm in the market for a tube amp that has high headroom . if anyone has any suggestions let me know.- please no Mesa Boogie suggestions. Keep up the great work!!!

Aw, I liked the shimmer 🙂 Great video, Rhett, hours of fun and inspiration could be had playing with that gear 👍🎸🔊🎵🎶

I think Fender should send one of those units with the FRFR Cab to me too. What the heck why not, every kid and his pet monkey globally is getting one. LOL

With fender I always worry about longevity of support. The upper management at fender doesnt have my confidence to support things, especially software for an extended amount of time.

A $200 strat is $2000, so a $300 modeler is $1700. Sounds about right. You go get'em Fender!!!! Can't wait for the Squier version ;)

Good point on the Hi Cut , the first thing I do with my multi effects units is turn the Hi Cut and Lo Cut off . It greatly improves the tone .

You are the first one that mentioned the top end harshness. Yes!!!

Thank you for your honesty and your integrity Rhett

I became an Amp modeler guy 20 years ago and haven't looked back. I'm so impressed with how close these Amp modeling units imitate the real sound of the amps. Many gearheads can't tell the difference in blind sound tests. I have found for myself the best unit for myself for the money...The Line 6 POD HD500X ($400 brand new) but shamefully these units are no longer made because the more expensive Helix units are the rave. For me, I can get the sounds of thousands of dollars of amps and effects for a fraction of the price with Amp modelers plus taking up a fraction of the space needed on stage, transporting and storage. It's a win win for me!!

I’ve watched you for years and learned you are a traditionalist. Stomp boxes and tube amps. To me, you came predisposed to not liking it from the outset and that never seemed to wane.

Ive watched multiple people review this and none of them had this harshness issue. Ill be buying one soon.

I listened but wasn’t watching. Did you try lowering the input gain? Are you possibly clipping the input stage slightly? Also could your headphones be giving you a hyped top end that the audience won’t hear through a PA in a busy mix? Last Q: could that sizzle be solved by plugging into the FRFR? Thx

Hi, With other modelers, you have to tweak the low cut to 80 hz and the hi cut to 8 Khz. That removes that hi noise on the mics or amps/cabs. (now I see you did that later in the video :D)

Frankly the best modeled amp sound I"ve heard , thanks to you Rhett , is the Neural DSP Imperial MK II plugin. So if you don't GIg and have a descent PC or Mac and a good interface , best headphone solution for sure

Don’t have time to watch the whole thing, but should be way more aggressive on the EQ to see if anything you do helps. No dainty moves and sitting there shrugging - crank some knobs quickly to extremes, find the harshness quickly. If no extreme moves at any freq bands help, need something else. My guess is it’s aliasing distortion and you need to put high cuts in before drive is applied.

I've heard that type of fizz in every modeler I've tried. That in itself isn't a dealbreaker in most cases. It needs to be dealt with in the cab/IR blocks with mic, placement and LP filtering - like you did with the Deluxe. I haven't had good results with global EQ. I think it lies in the fact that in creating IRs, the "standard" is to use an ultra- clean amp that doesn't necessarily have the high end limited on the amp side in the same way a medium gain guitar amp does. In general, amps (real ones) are designed with a certain speaker in mind to compensate for the resonant/impedance bumps that every speaker will impart on the amp, and also shape the high freq response to work with the natural high roll-off of each speaker. You don't have those interactions taken into account in the modeling world. A second point is that when played isolated (not in a mix), modelers (before going through a backline or FRFR speaker) put us in a virtual listening position that a lot of players have never experienced before - your ear is now (virtually) positioned an inch from the speaker. Stuff can sound pretty gnarly there even when you put a real 57 on a real speaker. All that said, I'm still not a big fan of this unit, at least at this price. I'll stick with my Helix. I've learned how to deal with the fizzies on it. And yes, I've heard the same high artifacts on every review of this unit - although on the paid reviews, they don't talk about it much.

Mynoersonal experience with modellers take time to dial in to your specific needs and ears including your output set up . For the listeners/audience it all sounds just fine.

I have to say that I am listening to this through my studio monitors and the sound you talking about is not coming through.

I go way back with the Modelers and have owned Digi Design 11 box, actually bought it twice as I could not believe how bad it was the first time. They are close to or have arrived in this technology. I owned Helix Rack, Kemper Power rack and just bought the Fender, I think they are getting better and better along with all the different software. Its a beautiful World

Good points and video. The fizz you talk about is present in all these devices. Some are more successful as having a nice top end but you still have to tame them. As for the highs I think the high cut at 11k is not enough. First of all it is far above the frequency range of the guitar to be able to do anything. I tend to favor cutting between 5k down to 3.15k depending on how much of that fizz is present. I prefer to do this by assigning a parametric eq after the preamp where I would also tame down the highs. This can be done in the global eq but I like working on each specific amp as there are some nuances that require specific attention.

heres a tip any digital /daw derived preset look at the output level its often plus 7 and more db . set it to 0 and then play with the settings on the amp

Appreciate the sincere review.

I feel the QC suffers that same harsh distortion on top of the distortion. But in other demo / reviews of the tone master pro that ive seen i didnt think it was as big of an issue as it seem to be in your demo? I wonder if the pickups in the guitar are a little hot and if there is a trim / pad / meter on the tone master input to tell if its getting pushed a bit too much? There is in the QC

Not sure if I have posted this before (apologies if I have), but the Mission SP1-TMP (co branded and custom paint) unlocks things like volume control, wah and a lot of cool creativity/control. Fender also made it reeeeally easy to set up the expression and the toe switch. Control up to 5 parameters at once and use the toe switch to turn off one or all effects. Be great to see a video covering this :-)

I just watched this whole thing. One question got asked SO many times and I think you might have missed it each time or were just not responding on purpose but...Did you do a factory reset after the firmware update? So many people people kept saying that fender said the factory reset was imperative!

At 13:11, I believe you need to activate the outputs on the global eq (bottom right). Your adjustment was not coming through the audio.

The “digital fizz” is called aliasing. All digital saturation fx have aliasing aka foldback distortion. The only way to get rid of it is to hard cut the high end or run the audio at 192khz to push the nyquist frequency out of the audible range which takes a lot more cpu power.

As always you make it sound good- better than some of the other testers

What I like about modeling is that every day is like entering an amp and pedal store and choosing a different one and spending hours playing, it's fun. It's like going to Disneyland every day hahaha. But when things get serious and you have concerts coming up, you have to work on the sounds, shape them and get what you need, and modeling is perfect for that. Modeling is another world, we are used to turning on an amp and having it sound with little effort but modeling is another concept, you can do many more things and it is lighter but it forces you to understand how sound works and not everyone is suitable for it.

For 400$ less you get a headrush pedal board with a bigger screen, bigger unit, wah pedal, reamp built in ect. As far as sound quality goes it sounds just as good as Kemper, helix ect imo.

To me the crucial thing with amp modelers is the cab. In my experience any kind of harshness/digital sound usually comes from a "bad" cab-sim. A real cab does something to the sound after all the shaping and amplification of the amp/effects that only a cab can do. And digital cabs usually don't have that dialed in out of the box. I use a dedicated cab-sim unit (with IR) and using the lowpass filter there instead of directly in the signal chain for example is a big difference. But amp sims sounds best if they are played into a real cab and I feel that's how most people use it anyway...

Rhett, when the helix came out we had a million channels telling us what to do because the amp models wasn’t great. Move the mic, change the mic, roll off the top end. It went on and on. The fender comes out and the first stock preset gets ripped! Something’s going on here. I hear a very good sound and you say “meh”. Just what I’m perceiving. You’re a great player man but I think you had your mind made up before you took it out the box. I haven’t heard better presets sounds on any other modeler. I think fender has a winner.

This makes me think of the Boss literature. Boss explains the presets are built based on using a guitar amp speaker. If you use the Boss gear on studio monitors or FR/FR, they recommend high cut at 6k to get guitar amp sounds out of a monitor or FR/FR and kill the annoying highs that a guitar amp speaker doesn’t reproduce well.

I like the Fender Tone Master Pro and the HX Stomp. I hooked the Ibanez QX527PB to TMP I forgot all about single coil noise.

From what I can see the build of it is excellent as is the size of the display to do and see your edits. It think it’s very new and updates will bring it up to speed. It’s funny because I just sold my QC last month because I still use my Kemper Stage far more. QC still not having the desktop editor was also a big reason I sold (and yes I know it's suppose to be out this month) and it’s really good and smart Fender came out with the editor right away with the product. For me unless something really blows away the Kemper (or ToneX as I have that as well) I’m just good where I am. QC was smart to drop the price asap once this was released. QC sounds excellent but Fender has a lot of money to throw at development so it will be interesting to see where it’s at 6 months to a year from now. Appreciate your honest review and look forward to you doing a follow up when you have more time to mess with it. 👍🏻

I ran my AxeFx ii through an old analog mixer and it makes a hell lot of difference.

Nice! Thanks, brother. Been wondering about this one after abandoning an old Boss ME50 😂❤💯

After owning a plethora of these modelers since the DigiTech 21 legend pro rack mount system. Ive owned line 6 Helix floor the Kemper profiler amp several fractal units and this one is by far my favorite as a modeler. If you're somebody with a wall of boutique amps then this is probably not the unit for you. But if you're a gigging musician and you just want something that's easy to adjust on the fly and it sounds pretty damn good this is definitely the unit.

I appreciate your honest opinion on this!!!

I wonder if just getting a higher end frfr is a better option and using the modelers you already have.

Hello First of all, thank you for another excellent review. I am interested in the following. Since I have a Mustang GTX 100 and am a studio producer, is it worth buying Tone Master Pro just for sounds? Does Tone master really have that much better presets and sounds if I record directly in DAW from XLR or USB? Thank you.

42:00 The problem with what Rhett is saying is that taking a deep dive into the tones by changing the global EQ, tweaking the effects and placement and types of microphones etc. on the TMP is very simple and takes little effort or time whereas taking a deep dive into the Fractal or other modelers takes a lot of time and is confusing. In my opinion, Rhett has not given the Fender TMP a fair shake. The TMP is a fantastic piece of gear.

Any chance you'd be up for a follow up Quad Cortex video showing some of your presets? I agree the stock ones are a bit meh...but I get option paralysis when dialing in my own

From what little I have heard from the Fender Tonemaster video's till now, Amps don't sound distantly different, they just some like it's one sound with different EQ's, whereas on something like the Helix the Amps sound distantly different , Helix also sounds more organic, for me Helix beats this for now.

You know I bought a boss gt1 about 2 years ago and I use it going straight into a pa. Once I started to accept that it’s not an amp and really worked on developing the sound of the pre-amps in the unit, I really came to appreciate what the unit can do. The gt1 continues to serve me well. I think the secret to these units is to accept them for what they are and to spend time perfecting what they can do.

Thanks RS. I found exact or similar “top end” issues with mustang gtx amp which has close to the same interface but way less features. It’s ALWAYS the high end of frequency spectrum I struggle with on almost all digital stuff.

Could this be an impedance pick up problem? Or possibly digital distortion? I wonder if there’s a way to set your levels that would help eliminate that certain sizzle that you’re getting. Just a thought.

Don't know what's going on, but I've watched every English speaking YT video on the FTMP and hate to say it, but the tones you were getting were the worst by a large margin. Got one of these a few days ago and I'm running it into the amp in on the back of two Boss Katana MKII 100 watt 2/12 and it sounds great. I've got a QC, Helix, HeadRush Prime/Core to compare........Fender did a good job on these and in future updates will only get better. The QC with the boxes with squiggly lines in them or circles or squares. I can't remember which squiggly line was what......a tube screamer or a DS-1 or a Klon.......and the footswitches don't line up with what's going on up on the screen.

The global volumen is at 100 % that's why you have that harsh digital sound. Also, maybe the ground of the electrical system is not good and filter that digital noise.

I tend to wonder if this is balanced more toward live performance and they are counting on the speaker included to round off the lacking tonal response you would get direct in for recording.

If you press the footswitches doesn't it cause the volume level to move since the switches are also knobs?

I generally find that on the Kemper, Helix, AX8 and others that the high cut in the speaker or output needs to be down around 6.5 khz to get rid of that fizz. All of the ones you looked at had full 20 khz high cut. That might work well for the new FRFR Fender cabs but I think you may have better results dropping the high cut way down. Most speakers aren't giving you anything above that range anyway.

Im so glad you were honest about this unit, as it is. The basic ground work is IN PLACE..the OS, the visibilty of sounds (very WYSIWYG)...but certain things..quite far from ready. I hope Fender gets to work on an upgrade.

I had a similar issue with distorting . I reinstalled the firmware and didn’t factory reset after. It sounds great now. Sadly I contacted fender support and will have to apologise when they get back to me.

That digital sound you are hearing is Aliasing. Honestly the only way to get around that is to have modellers running at very high sample rates. I've had surprisingly good results using things like Amplitube 5 but running at 192k.

Rhett, I really would have liked to see your opinion of this going into Fender’s new FRFR 1x12 cab with an SM57 set up in your usual way. I really wonder how that lack of a real speaker is impacting the impression here. That said I can understand your apples to apples comparison with other modelers directly into the interface. I just wonder how it’d sound to you in the room, vs. the other Fender digital amps that you said you’ve liked.

I got one of these and I feel like we are the beta testers... Devices like this seem to follow the live service model which some people might really dislike, mixed feelings myself as I appreciate being able to get hands on and see the differences after the first firmware update which was very well implemented. I think it will be interesting to see where Fender is in one year with this product, once they have a few solid firmware updates I feel it will be a much better apples vs. apples comparison to other units such as the QC / HELIX / FM / HEADRUSH etc. but they all do something a little bit different so one you argue that its never a "fair" comparison and perhaps it comes down to the player themselves, like....what can you as a player get from these type of units that you might not get from an actual amp? For me testing this next to the real amps has been interesting, they are very close in terms of just the amps but the default mic choices for the cabinets were picked from a guy / gal who REALLY likes the Sm7 lol....

I love the GUI on this but from all the demos I've heard the modelling just isn't up to par even against cheap £400 modellers

I heard the main designer of the Helix jumped ship and designed this unit for Fender. I like the interface and it seems a little more professional (road worthy). It has a normal power cord because the unit has the power supply internal, not some cheap or bulky power adapter like some other units have. Sounds pretty awesome to me. I wish fractal would make a interface like this, But hopefully Fender will support this unit like the other modeling companies do their products. I still prefer my tube amps for the best tone (I own modelers for their convenience). My new Bad Cat amps sound killer.

I picked one of these up on launch day. Some of the factory presets sound great but I haven’t been able to dial out the harsh frequencies. Using third party IRs helped, but I’m on the verge of returning it. They have a long way to go to catch up with the other units. I had an Axe FX 3 and the Fender is not even in the same league but costs almost as much.

Capture ? "just grab a sound and go" that's the ticket

Keep in mind this is fenders first firmware version of this unit, as the other top modelers have several updated firmware versions.

the harsh top end? aliasing, i’d reckon. whats the sample rate and bit depth of the _actual processing models_ used? on what hardware? or, the converters at the end? someone get Dan Worrall on the case!!

I hear the harshness as well, and noticed it on other guitar DI amp sims I've tried. I wonder if its more of a cab sim/IR issue, as in the speaker sim isnt rolling off or rounding out the clipping the way a real speaker would. When I run my DSM SImplifier (which can have a bit of that harshness) into an amp cabinet it definitely sounds better. Maybe a similar thing here?

I'm considering a Tone Master and FR10 cab. I like the layout and relatively intuitive controls and touch screen. I'm old, I need simple to use. Hard to buy in on the first-generation run with most technology for me. I appreciate the review and insights. Thanks, Rhett

With Fender, it might pay to wait a couple years and see if this is a line that they will continue with support and updates....?

Im halfway through and what I’m taking away is that there’s a quite a bit of EQ and other tweaking required to get a good initial tone. I suggest manufacturers start with a “guitar amp” global EQ default setting and allow the user to adjust to full frequency if desired. At $1700 this should sound great out of the box.

Most of the Modelers have useable Cleansounds, but as soon as the sound is a little distorted, all of these modelers sound unnaturel. There is to much compression in the upper mids you cannot get rid of. I often tryed to use them for recording, but mostly I take an amp and a microfon and the sound I want is immediately there.

Glad that you highlighted the issues with the driven sounds. Most other demos have not addressed that but I think most of the stock overdriven sounds are kinda awful. I have to wonder if custom IRS would help

Hey Rhett, great review. But what I would like to see is a blindfold comparison whether you can hear the difference between the real amps and the fender tone master pro.

Rhett, amp modeling only how does the Tone Master Pro compare to the Tonex?

Fender is sending it to you at no cost and is sending us the bill... What a world !

yes you got it Rhett, x is horizontal, y is vertical 👍

About time someone has the balls to be honest and upfront. In Anderton's review trashed the Helix with zero attempt to dial it in and proverbially sucked off Fender the whole time lol

Are these ideal for only running thru a mixing board live? I’m assuming it wouldn’t make sense to run this thru a tube amp?

For a fraction of the price you can plug into a Blues Junior- with a couple of pedals ( wampler pinnacle and boss delay in my case) and achieve some very good tones without all the faff or digital harshness.

Looks like the interface in garageband, would like to see a comparison with just the stock sounds there. For the price you can buy a macbook and soundcard instead. whats the difference? Is there any upside like less latency with a unit like this?

27:48 fixes it by dialing in a high cut, says "that's better", immediately exits without saving and it reverts to the 15khz high cut and undoes the fix.

The harshness, do you think it has anything to do with the fact that you have the Master on the unit @ 100%? Which controls the overall volume for the outputs. I tend to have mine set to 50-60%. No harshness like you are getting.

What you are hearing is called "aliasing" and is caused by floating point rounding errors in series being compounded. It is hard to EQ out. It 100% can be fixed with a firmware update to fix the mixing with some smoothing before mixing in the next effect. It is like pixelization in an image, which is visual aliasing. Once it is there it just gets worse the more of it that is mixed together. That is why just amp and one effect sounds ok, but the more effects make it worse and worse. More bits in the sampling fixes this as well. Fuzz is basically analogue aliasing on purpose, it makes the implicit aliasing in the system even more pronounced.

Did you update firmware AND reset it?

Hiss is usually poor ground or input too high. Considering your using a separate audio interface, I would say it may be the input set too high somewhere along the line. Can just roll back to 9 or so and stop it usually if input level is the issue.

How is the tone compared to the Helix. I used the headrush and within days ordered another Helix. I really love the tonal possibilites and quality of it.

How does the headphone Jack sound? Same 8kHz digital harshness you hear through your headphones and interface?

"The amp itself actually isn't that bad" isn't a real motivator for spending $1700 IMHO.

I'm enjoying mine so far, but I've yet to justify the price tag. I do feel like the clean amps sound much better than my HX Stomp, but I haven't been able to dial in a good lead tone quite yet.

dude ive been gigging with fender gtx 100. the fender tone app is SSOOOOO easy to use. This one is similar, and it's even better. If you think it's too expensive, dude, i can't recommend going with gtx 50/100 with the app first. It's pretty awesome. This tonemaster pro requires me to get a loan to get it and it better be worth it.

I wonder if they will bring a light version out for that money am buying an amp or a guitar lol .look forward to what you and Zak have got to say about it on dipped. Cheers man

The digital fizz thing has been there since the start. It was the same discussions in the old Pod 2.0 chats nearly 20 years ago. I remember talking to Neil Diamond’s guitarist, Hadley Hockensmith, and he developed a passive filter box called a “Harmonic Converger” that basically lessened the troubled areas. He needed a modeler as ND demanded a quiet stage. He ended up becoming a Fractal endorsee. But yeah, it was literally the exact same conversation.

I really like the User Interface.. thats really important for me

I love your channel its amazing its the best thing ive found in KZfaq 🌞⭐⭐🌟🌟🌞🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸

wonder if there is an issue with the pairing of this device with your interface...You also have to do a factory reset after the firmware update. I am going to listen to the majority of other independent reviewers who say that this modeller sounds great. Leon Todd for instance has made some great presets...