Axe Ultra - Feel?

Hi guys, in my opinion, you have have to have speakers running at a certain level to get ANY feel. The response of your guitar wood, strings and pickups need to be triggered by sound travelling through air. That will have an effect on your results when you record, too. Response and feedback - what do these words mean? Yep, you need something the guitar can feed back and respond to. The fuller and louder that signal is, the nicer the response...
 
axel said:
Going off on a little of a tangent here, but relates to one of the statements in this post. When you say it sounds great through your PA gear, what PA gear are you using? This is one thing that confuses me on this forum, as I keep reading "you need quality FRFR" for the Axe Fx to sound good. Are all the PA systems out there that the Axe Fx are being run direct through considered "quality FRFR"? I'm sure all these venues are not supplying Atomic Wedges or QSC speakers. What is the criteria?
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I am running through one of my smaller FOH speakers and one of my larger monitors. The FOH speaker is a Peavey TL series cabinet with a 15" speaker with a horn in it. There is an internal crossover in the cabinet. The monitor that I am using is basically the same speaker load as the FOH speaker I am using. I am pushing these cabinets with a Peavey 10 channel PA head that has 400 watts of power. The Axe sounds really good through the FOH cabinet. I found that the XLR outputs on the Axe have a really hot output on them. I had to pad the two channels that I am running the Axe in on.

I would think that any decent PA gear would be fine for running the Axe through. It is what you are running your vocals everything else through. If it can handle all of the instruments then it is full range. It should be flat response if it is a PA cabinet. I don't believe that any of the manufacturers tweak the responses of the speakers for PA cabinets. However, cabinet shape can affect the tone, as well as cabinet materails.
 
Thanks for the info. I was just curious, because a couple of weeks ago I purchased a PV215 PA cabinet (2 x 15" speakers and a horn), and a Crown 1000 watt PA amp. I was very dissapointed in the results (with cab sims) compared to what I was getting out of my Marshall 4x12's (without cab sims). I spent the better part of a weekend trying different cab sims and patch configurations. Everything coming from the PA cab sounded flat with no "in your face" presence. When I asked for input here on the forum, I was told those speakers were not good enough to get good FR results with the Axe Fx. That is why I asked about your setup.
 
I don't have an Ultra yet, so I can't comment on specific speakers that will sound good with the unit. I have supplied the PA for my band for about 10 years now, so I might be able to give some general guidance.

The PV215A is a very low-end speaker, so it is not that surprising that it doesn't have the sound you want. In general I would recommend a powered speaker rather than a separate speaker and power amp. The main reason is that good powered speakers have separate amps for the lows and highs (biamped), which can get rather costly if you build it with passive speakers and amps. The improvement in sound when going to biamped speakers can be dramatic, and you can be sure that the amps are well-matched to the drivers.

The workhorse speaker that I use with my PA, and plan to try with the Axe-FX, is the Yorkville NX550P. I compensate for variations in frequency response using a dbx Driverack 260 speaker processor, and my 550P's have a nice flat frequency response requiring only modest compensation. Surprisingly, a cheaper speaker that I use for monitors, the RCF ART 310-A, has a very flat response requiring almost no compensation.

I'm hoping one or the other will do the job with the Axe.

You can get some knowledgeable recommendations on the ProSoundWeb Forum, where the sound guys tend to hang out. The link is to the LAB Lounge, which welcomes questions from newbies.
 
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