Bad News For Clean Jeans: Fractal Is Readying The Release of The FM10 With Touchscreen And Enough SHARC Power To Ruin Guitar Forums

If you have ever watched a grown man explain amp modeling with the haunted intensity of a submarine commander, please move all absorbent fabric at least 10 feet away from his computer. Fractal Audio is about to release the FM10, a successor to the FM9 that keeps the same nine onboard footswitches, adds a full-color touchscreen, and gives guitar forums the kind of DSP numbers that usually require a towel.

Yeah. There are going to be incidents.

The new floor unit appears to follow the FM9 Mark II Turbo’s basic body plan: wide black chassis, protective side rails, three upper switches, six lower switches, color LED rings, scribble strips, input/status lights, and enough top-panel labels to make a worship guitarist feel like he has been hired by Lockheed Martin. The major change is a large touchscreen in the main display area, allowing players to drag amp blocks, cabs, delays, modifiers, scene controllers, and shame around the grid with their fingers.

According to early materials reviewed by men who have already typed local pickup only under seven boutique pedals, the FM10 is built around a newer SHARC+ platform in the same general class as Analog Devices’ current ADSP-SC59x and ADSP-2159x audio processors. Those parts can reach 1 GHz, include dual SHARC+ DSP cores in the higher-end packages, and carry the kind of on-chip SRAM, FIR/IIR acceleration, and floating-point language that makes a 47-year-old say headroom like he is asking for a divorce.

Fractal has not confirmed the exact chips, which is wise, because the first person to identify the package markings will immediately become too powerful for Reverb’s return policy.

“We wanted the FM10 to feel immediate,” said Fractal product director Nolan Pierce, wiping fingerprints off a prototype with the same microfiber cloth he once used on a vintage Mesa faceplate. “If a player wants to move a Plexi into a stereo cab path, split it into a shimmer delay, assign it to Scene 4, and then realize the problem was actually his picking hand, the hardware should never be the thing slowing him down.”

Damn. Brutal, but technically a feature.

The unit reportedly supports larger presets, denser cab routing, faster navigation, gapless scene switching, USB audio, and enough CPU margin for the third delay block every guitarist adds while insisting it is “just for width.” It also keeps the nine-switch layout from the FM9.

Most controversial is the touchscreen, a feature Fractal users have requested for years while also insisting that touchscreens are for Line 6 owners, Tesla dads, and men who say workflow out loud. The FM10 keeps the physical knobs and navigation buttons for emergency tactile purity, but the screen handles the grid, block editing, cabinet browsing, preset management, and a new panic gesture that instantly switches to a tuner when your wife asks why Sweetwater just called.

The expression pedal, however, is not built into the chassis, as is tradition. Fractal is expected to sell a matching external expression pedal separately, giving players the option to add wah, volume, whammy, pitch dives, or one more black object on the floor that their family is not allowed to touch. The company has reportedly described the accessory as optional, which in guitar language means “you will buy it, then explain that it completes the system.”

Oof. Brother, she knows.

Retail pricing has not been confirmed, though industry observers expect it to land somewhere between “expensive but justifiable” and “I guess we are not fixing the retaining wall this year.” The current FM9 Mark II Turbo sells for $1,799.99, and the new touchscreen model is expected to carry the kind of premium that makes a man describe debt as tone investment.

Online reaction has already been measured in the sense that a basement flood can technically be measured. Within minutes of the alleged announcement, several users posted that they were perfectly happy with the FM9, then edited their signatures to include FM10 waitlist pending and a Bible verse about temptation. One Facebook Marketplace listing included 11 overdrives, a wedding ring, and a gravel bike under the heading funding unrelated purchase.

One thing is certain: if the touchscreen works, the SHARC chips are as muscular as the spec-sheet people think they are, and the first firmware update adds even one more Dumble variant, the nation’s cargo shorts are in serious danger.