A little bit mixed about the Fillmore 50

[Bertone]

Hello, I'm new to the Boogie forum but I'm a long time owner. The Fillmore 50 is my 4th Boogie starting with a Mark III (that I still wish I'd kept), a Nomad 45 4X10, & an F-30 as a backup amp. This amp has some great tones for sure and I'm certain that I will love it as much or more than the others but, honestly, it's not one of those amps that sound good on any setting or can very quickly be dialed in. Neither was the Nomad. (I owned the Nomad for a solid year before I was completely comfortable with my tone settings! After that, I loved it and kept it for 18 years.) Back to the Fillmore: I have never seen tone controls so sensitive. That's both good and bad. You can make the Fillmore sound downright obnoxious especially by turning the mids up too high. I usually approach an unfamiliar amp with everything at 12:00 then add and subtract from there. It's friendlier towards single coils it seems, or at least easier to dial in. But with my Les Paul Custom I'm having trouble getting it to completely clean up on channel 1 (that beast is hard to tame on any amp) and I'm just not finding the right crunch sound on Ch. 2. There is glorious gain to be had on Ch3 for sure! Any tweaking suggestions?

 

[golfnut]

I've had my fillmore for a little over a month now. For a bit there I was a little concerned that it didn't have quite enough clean headroom or volume. The band I play with we do pretty much all big events, mostly outdoor. I find my self getting a little buried on stage. I'm always mic'd so whats coming out front is perfectly in the mix. I have a maximum I'll set the amp at to maintain the clean that I need. I dime the master and the gain I will not set any higher than noon, maybe near 1 oclock. The amps sings pretty sweet there. Not fender twin clean but then I never play perfectly clean. I use an always on Kingsley page set to slight break up when I use my clean fender amp (pro reverb) So with the fillmore 50 I just have to dial back the gain on the page a little. I was very tempted to trade back in the fillmore 50 for the 100 for more headroom\volume on stage before my 30 day eval ended. But I though no. The fillmore 50 is the perfect amount of clean headroom and volume. My bands problem is we're too dam loud on stage and we're going to have to do something about that. One thing we're looking at is going to in ear monitors.
Now getting to your concern "hard to dial in", I find the fillmore 50 pretty easy to dial in. If you don't like too much mids, don't dial in too much mids. On channel 1 that I set clean I like the mid around 10-11. Depending on the room sometimes maybe a little higher. I lean more towards a scooped mid\blackface sound for clean so I dial the mids down. I fine the amp a little harder to tame on the bass side. Especially when I've got the master dimed and the gain at noon or higher. For me it was a bit of a trick working the the treble and presence. So yes the amp was a little trickier to dial in compared to my pro reverb or a deluxe reverb. But compared to some Mesa's its pretty easy.
All my guitars are single coil. I haven't tried humbuckers on mine.

 

[Bertone]

Thanks Nut! Yes, the Deluxe is wonderfully simple with only 2 tone knobs to worry about. I have a '68 Custom deluxe that I love but I know the Fillmore can do much more. My Nomad had WAAAAY too many knobs. The Fillmore is somewhere between those two in terms of tone complexity. You nailed it with the Treble/Presence balance. That's where the difficulty lies for me also. After posting last night I tweaked some more & got better results. First by lowering the bridge pickup of the LP a smidge. With that and the gain at about 9:00 I get good cleans. It seems like a change of mindset is necessary for me as on other amps I have usually run bass and treble above noon. The Fillmore seems to sound better dialed back. Thanks again for your input. I am still open to any suggestions on settings from anyone though.

 

[Boogie Chillen]

I would suggest reading the manual, it's very informative.

 

[Nerd]

The Fillmore seems to sound better dialed back.

100% agree. I'm fairly generous with EQ on clean settings with only midrange dialled back but drive is whole different story. "Normal" amp would be a dull station with my settings but for some reason it totally works with Fillmore.

Regarding clean headroom - try 4ohm out into 4ohm cab. Both with my now gone 4x12 Marshall and now with two 2x12 Fillmore cabs I have **** load of clean headroom and volume, amp get tighter with solid springy bass content. It's like loving this amazing amp once again

 

[Billy Hiwatt]

Long time 50 combo & 100 head owner here. I keep the left channel on clean, with mid and bass set low. Think of the 10 o'clock position as "noon". Start at 10 and go up or down from there. The right channel I also set on clean, but with the gain set much higher for heavier tones. It retains the bass and warmth that drive and hi lack. I rarely use the drive and hi modes...just not my cup o' tea. I use a Keeley compressor, Mesa Grid Slammer or mini Timmy for leads when on the left channel. Also, the 50 feels more like about 40 watts, and the 100 about 75, due to the lighter transformers. All in all, I love these amps!