DLC86
Fractal Fanatic
I've been using for more than 3 years a pair of Atomic CLRs, they are great when playing in our treated rehearsal room or in largish venues, but I find that when playing in small pubs (90% of the gigs I do these days) they just don't cut thru as I wish, especially since there's lots of ambience reflections in those situations and it seems my guitar doesn't "glue" with the other unmic'd instruments.
So I decided to buy again a traditional cab and a power amp and today these were delivered at my door.
Just tried them for a couple hours and I have to say I'm blown away by this Fender BB212 cab (despite being powered by the cheapest power amp I could find - Harley Benton GPA-400), it's really versatile, it seems the (what fender calls) semi-open back configuration handles both low gain and high gain tones quite well. I'm also surprised by how good my presets created for FRFR translate to this setup.
But most importantly, I'm blown away by the difference in feel between a real cab and the CLRs+IRs.
I've always struggled to get a nice round attack and sustain (especially on clean tones) with FRFRs, speaker comp has helped in that department but when I fine-tuned it for ovedriven tones there wasn't enough compression for cleans, and viceversa when tuned for cleans, distorted tones had too much compression. This also seemed to vary with volume too, probably cuz the speakers in the CLRs compress too.
With this cab I instantly got the feel I love, just the right amount of compression and sustain at any volume and any gain. It also allows me to lower the gain without losing this feel and this is a good thing, me thinks.
Maybe it's just the honeymoon for the new purchase, maybe I just missed the "amp in the room" after 4 years, but I think I'll always carry this cab with me from now on, and maybe I'll blend it with IRs thru CLRs for a killer best-of-both-world setup.
What do you all think about this subject? Do you experience any difference in feel between the two?
PS: just to be clear, I'm not talking about the difference in the frequency response of "amp in the room" vs mic'd sounds, I'm speaking of dynamics, what you feel under your fingers and the reaction of the tone to your picking hand.
So I decided to buy again a traditional cab and a power amp and today these were delivered at my door.
Just tried them for a couple hours and I have to say I'm blown away by this Fender BB212 cab (despite being powered by the cheapest power amp I could find - Harley Benton GPA-400), it's really versatile, it seems the (what fender calls) semi-open back configuration handles both low gain and high gain tones quite well. I'm also surprised by how good my presets created for FRFR translate to this setup.
But most importantly, I'm blown away by the difference in feel between a real cab and the CLRs+IRs.
I've always struggled to get a nice round attack and sustain (especially on clean tones) with FRFRs, speaker comp has helped in that department but when I fine-tuned it for ovedriven tones there wasn't enough compression for cleans, and viceversa when tuned for cleans, distorted tones had too much compression. This also seemed to vary with volume too, probably cuz the speakers in the CLRs compress too.
With this cab I instantly got the feel I love, just the right amount of compression and sustain at any volume and any gain. It also allows me to lower the gain without losing this feel and this is a good thing, me thinks.
Maybe it's just the honeymoon for the new purchase, maybe I just missed the "amp in the room" after 4 years, but I think I'll always carry this cab with me from now on, and maybe I'll blend it with IRs thru CLRs for a killer best-of-both-world setup.
What do you all think about this subject? Do you experience any difference in feel between the two?
PS: just to be clear, I'm not talking about the difference in the frequency response of "amp in the room" vs mic'd sounds, I'm speaking of dynamics, what you feel under your fingers and the reaction of the tone to your picking hand.
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