FRFR in live sound from stage scenario?

stm113

Power User
Hi all. Has anyone been into a situation where you’re playing gigs where the guitar sound to the crowd will be from the stage?

In the past with these types of gigs my sound has come from either a 4x12 or 2x12 cab pushed by my Axe FXII running into the fx return of a tube amp.

I am thinking of moving to a solely direct rig with a FRFR option. What I am concerned with is the gigs where we’ll only be running vocals and maybe kick through a PA. Is there anyone here that maybe regularly play these types of gigs? If so what’s your experiences and what tips do you have? Something I have been thinking is that I may want to go with a Seymour Duncan Powerstage and a passive cab. That way I could do the direct FRFR thing or the standard cab thing
 
When doing the FRFR thing in a pub for the first time it felt different (2 pcs 1x12 open back cab until then, now 2x Matrix Q12As) and so I initially rated it as not as good as before. But people in the audience, my family and even the techs told me the guitar sounded great and was always audible.

I guess it's because of the narrow dispersion pattern of guitar cabs. You can aim that beam more or less towards your ears and so you as the player get exactly the right amount of highs and you feel good and you think everything is alright. But that's wrong. Everybody else gets a worse spot of that beam and don't gets the highs the same as you.

The FRFR has no such beam and no matter where you move to with your ears, moving around will not fix the highs for you, so you don't get to that sweet spot where a wrong sound starts to sound good only because you moved your head. You got to live with the sound right how it comes out of the FRFRs and if you want to fix something you need to make changes to the settings.
So you might get the impression that it's worse than before. But that just isn't true. By fixing the sound via tweaking you fix it for the whole audience. Moving your head in a beam never fixed anything for the audience, right?
 
So how did you set your last up. 1 pointed at you and one towards the audience?

Are you playing in a full band setting?
 
Yes, if I'm playing a situation where the PA is only handling vocals and I need to throw sound from the stage into the crowd, I actually put my FRFR cab behind me, like a traditional guitar cabinet. Works great and you can either put it in wedge mode or on it's side like a traditional guitar amp.

I'm using an RCF-NX12sma

300964460_10166384304350417_13094752969673026_n.jpg
 
One of the challenges might be that the beam from the FRFR box (I use the Matrix FR12) only hits the audience directly in front of the box, so people to the left and right of the stage (and bandmates, too) hear a different guitar sound. The solution I'm working with is the Deeflex system. You might want to give it a try:

https://www.hoovi.at/deeflexx/

1662491997470.png
(illustration from the deeflex website - see above)
 
So how did you set your last up. 1 pointed at you and one towards the audience?

Are you playing in a full band setting?
Guitar, Keys, Bass, Drums and Singers.
(With 2 guitars I wouldn't go FRFR when the other player isn't!)
Both Q12As right and left from me pointing a bit to me but more straight to the audience. That worked with them on chairs, tables or angled on the ground. I boosted the lows some, that's ok in small pubs because the max volume is limited there and you don't crack the speakers.
 
Something I have been thinking about is possibly an option where I could get a pedalboard poweramp like the Seymour Duncan Power Stage, or ISP products so I could use them to power either a standard guitar cab OR a passive FRFR.

One thing I have been curious or concerned about is many of the popular active FRFR cabs out there seem to be between 400-1,000 watts, but those portable pedalboard style amps are putting out 170-200 watts. I know headroom is a concern but if I look to go that way, I was thinking of 2 passive wedges, something for me to hear onstage and something for the crowd (if needed). But based on the difference in wattage between the pedalboard amps and the active wedges, would that be a viable option?
 
Something I have been thinking about is possibly an option where I could get a pedalboard poweramp like the Seymour Duncan Power Stage, or ISP products so I could use them to power either a standard guitar cab OR a passive FRFR.

One thing I have been curious or concerned about is many of the popular active FRFR cabs out there seem to be between 400-1,000 watts, but those portable pedalboard style amps are putting out 170-200 watts. I know headroom is a concern but if I look to go that way, I was thinking of 2 passive wedges, something for me to hear onstage and something for the crowd (if needed). But based on the difference in wattage between the pedalboard amps and the active wedges, would that be a viable option?

How loud it can get depends on the sensitivity of the speaker and how much lows you have in your signal.
The sensitivity of most of the guitar speakers is very high, so they get loud with little power. The celestion f12 x200 also is among the louder ones, eben though it's a 2 way system.
A passive Matrix Q12 cab needs some more power than the f12-x200, but is still among the louder stuff.
With the SD power stage you need to choose well, what speaker you drive with it, so it is loud enough for the audience.
 
For these scenarios I use powered PA speakers (the same ones I use for rehearsals where we're not using IEMs and don't want guitar in the PA). In my case Yorkville E10Ps, but if I weren't in Canada I'd probably use something like QSC K10s.
 
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