ChainOfThought
Experienced
This turned out to be a pretty long-winded reply to another thread, so I’m making my own thread for a little FRFR/cab comparison + XiTone initial impression review. I’ve been running my axefx2 through a Vader 2x12, its loaded with the stock eminence legends that were custom to the Vader brand, powered by a Matrix GT1000FX. I ordered a XiTone passive wedge for my first dive into the FRFR rabbit hole (not counting playing through studio monitors for the better part of a few years) and thought I would try and give the type of comparison that I had a really hard time finding while I was considering what to buy. Probably nothing new, but I’m throwing my $.02 out there anyways.
So I got my XiTone yesterday just in time to rip it out of the box and take it to practice (practice for me is myself and another guitarist, so none of what I have to say applies to keeping up with a drummer or bass). Also right at the front here, I want to take a line to mention how awesome Mick was to deal with. We had set up a time for me to trek out to his location to demo a pair of wedges, but I ended up having to cancel last minute and went ahead and ordered sight unseen instead. Super nice guy, definitely recommend doing business with him if you’re ever in the market for this sort of stuff.
As far as the XiTone itself, it seems extremely well built, super easy to carry around, fit & finish is flawless, there’s absolutely nothing to complain about with it. The bulk of this thread is going to be about FRFR as a concept vs Cab in the room as a concept.
Prior to receiving it I had done my best to set up a preset or two with a good sound through studio monitors, hoping that it would be plug & play from there into the XiTone. Overall that turned out to be successful, but I pretty much immediately started looking for a better IR than what I had picked anyways.
I set up the preset so that Out1-L went to input A on the Matrix & Out1-R went to Input B on the matrix. Left side bypassed the cab block and right side used the cab block—used separate rows on the grid and the output mixer to hard to pan the outputs. This way I could just spin the volume knobs on the Matrix to quickly A/B the XiTone vs my Vader 2x12.
Right off the top, the XiTone in no way compared to the punch, immediacy, and room-filling balls of the Vader. I tried a few different placements for the XiTone, spent most of the night with it sitting on top of the Vader in wedge position, but right at the end decided it sounded better on the floor, a little further from the wall & in the vertical position. I did get a lot more of the low-end response that way, but by that time we were also pretty drunk & tired.
Now, with that said, the XiTone is definitely no slouch. I look at it this way...its a single 12” speaker in a relatively small enclosure...it pretty much sounds & feels like a single 12” speaker in a relatively small enclosure. I have Orange 1x12’s at the house that I haven’t yet had the chance to directly compare it to, but based on memory it would seem to pretty directly compare to that. When I have one of the oranges, its not all that great & doesn’t have all the balls...when I set up both of them right next to each other or stacked, its that bone crushing heavy you love. So, I’m eventually going to grab a second XiTone and hope for the same sort of result. By the end of the night, after searching through some IR’s, finding a good placement and sort of ‘getting used to it’ it was already a good bit better than the very initial impression...so I’m imagining when I go back there by myself in the next few days and really start getting into tweaking a tone out of it, a lot of what I’m saying here might be deemed irrelevant/incorrect, FWIW (and I’ll update the thread accordingly if it is).
As far as tone, its definitely different than playing through a cab, but with the right IR’s, for high-gain (the only tone I tested) its not anything so jarring or unusual that it feels strange or anything like that. If you’ve ever played through headphones/studio/monitors/etc just imagine that tone, louder and with more oomph behind it. There is sort of this strange character to it, the “immediacy” I mentioned earlier, thats noticeably different than a cab. It’s hard to describe though. It’s like playing through a cab, the tone jumps out of the grill ready to punch you in the face, but playing through an FRFR it feels a little more lazy? I don’t think thats a XiTone thing, I think its just the nature of playing an FRFR tone and is probably a LARGE portion of the ‘cab in the room’ dragon that everyone is chasing.
So, for a guy playing death metal with another guitarist who is running a tube amp through a 4x12 in a small practice space...FRFR seems like its going to be feasible, but it remains to be seen if it’ll ever be my go-to rig or if I’ll continue using my cab and have the FRFR as an available utility. I think the XiTone as a speaker is pretty incredible and I’ll be reinforcing that impression over the next few weeks as I really figure out how to dial in an FRFR tone, but I also think I’m definitely going to need a second before it can really compete with our cabs for that punch & power. I’m not talking about volume there, they do get loud, but at similar volumes, the 2x12 just has that kick to it and the single wedge does not. I’m certain that if we got into an all out volume battle the 4x12 would obviously win, but we keep things pretty reasonable anyways so the volume isn’t a big deal.
As a slight caveat to that last paragraph, I DID start to notice towards the end of the night that A) The placement, and B) the IR were making huge differences in how much punch I got out of the wedge. I know this should seem obvious, but in the excitement of initial impressions & everything, its easy to forget. So its entirely possible that I’ll be able to bridge the gap between FRFR & cab to be a lot closer than I have it so far, but I STILL think to realllly get there I’ll need that second XiTone, its just a matter of physics I think.
Hopefully this helps someone. When I was searching for reviews/comparisons it seems like there was always a lot of emphasis on the versatility, convenience, size/weight, and sound of an FRFR. I could never really find a whole lot on keeping up with traditional cabs, how much punch/power they have compared to a cab, or other things of that nature. I’m a guy that doesn’t gig, doesn’t play top40 covers & need tons of different tones, and isn’t terribly worried if my rig weighs 40 pounds or 400 pounds. I play metal with another guitarist in a practice space, sometimes we play to a drum track, & thats about the extent of it for me. I had no real need to go FRFR, but I was dying to know what its really like & whether or not its the next step in my rig progression. So far it seems like its not necessarily the “next” step, but its definitely an awesome addition to the palette I have & will be a great tool to have on hand. As time goes by, as I learn to coax better tones out of it, and especially when I can add that second wedge, my opinion on that may change.
With that, I’ll stop rambling, thanks for reading this ridiculously long thing.
So I got my XiTone yesterday just in time to rip it out of the box and take it to practice (practice for me is myself and another guitarist, so none of what I have to say applies to keeping up with a drummer or bass). Also right at the front here, I want to take a line to mention how awesome Mick was to deal with. We had set up a time for me to trek out to his location to demo a pair of wedges, but I ended up having to cancel last minute and went ahead and ordered sight unseen instead. Super nice guy, definitely recommend doing business with him if you’re ever in the market for this sort of stuff.
As far as the XiTone itself, it seems extremely well built, super easy to carry around, fit & finish is flawless, there’s absolutely nothing to complain about with it. The bulk of this thread is going to be about FRFR as a concept vs Cab in the room as a concept.
Prior to receiving it I had done my best to set up a preset or two with a good sound through studio monitors, hoping that it would be plug & play from there into the XiTone. Overall that turned out to be successful, but I pretty much immediately started looking for a better IR than what I had picked anyways.
I set up the preset so that Out1-L went to input A on the Matrix & Out1-R went to Input B on the matrix. Left side bypassed the cab block and right side used the cab block—used separate rows on the grid and the output mixer to hard to pan the outputs. This way I could just spin the volume knobs on the Matrix to quickly A/B the XiTone vs my Vader 2x12.
Right off the top, the XiTone in no way compared to the punch, immediacy, and room-filling balls of the Vader. I tried a few different placements for the XiTone, spent most of the night with it sitting on top of the Vader in wedge position, but right at the end decided it sounded better on the floor, a little further from the wall & in the vertical position. I did get a lot more of the low-end response that way, but by that time we were also pretty drunk & tired.
Now, with that said, the XiTone is definitely no slouch. I look at it this way...its a single 12” speaker in a relatively small enclosure...it pretty much sounds & feels like a single 12” speaker in a relatively small enclosure. I have Orange 1x12’s at the house that I haven’t yet had the chance to directly compare it to, but based on memory it would seem to pretty directly compare to that. When I have one of the oranges, its not all that great & doesn’t have all the balls...when I set up both of them right next to each other or stacked, its that bone crushing heavy you love. So, I’m eventually going to grab a second XiTone and hope for the same sort of result. By the end of the night, after searching through some IR’s, finding a good placement and sort of ‘getting used to it’ it was already a good bit better than the very initial impression...so I’m imagining when I go back there by myself in the next few days and really start getting into tweaking a tone out of it, a lot of what I’m saying here might be deemed irrelevant/incorrect, FWIW (and I’ll update the thread accordingly if it is).
As far as tone, its definitely different than playing through a cab, but with the right IR’s, for high-gain (the only tone I tested) its not anything so jarring or unusual that it feels strange or anything like that. If you’ve ever played through headphones/studio/monitors/etc just imagine that tone, louder and with more oomph behind it. There is sort of this strange character to it, the “immediacy” I mentioned earlier, thats noticeably different than a cab. It’s hard to describe though. It’s like playing through a cab, the tone jumps out of the grill ready to punch you in the face, but playing through an FRFR it feels a little more lazy? I don’t think thats a XiTone thing, I think its just the nature of playing an FRFR tone and is probably a LARGE portion of the ‘cab in the room’ dragon that everyone is chasing.
So, for a guy playing death metal with another guitarist who is running a tube amp through a 4x12 in a small practice space...FRFR seems like its going to be feasible, but it remains to be seen if it’ll ever be my go-to rig or if I’ll continue using my cab and have the FRFR as an available utility. I think the XiTone as a speaker is pretty incredible and I’ll be reinforcing that impression over the next few weeks as I really figure out how to dial in an FRFR tone, but I also think I’m definitely going to need a second before it can really compete with our cabs for that punch & power. I’m not talking about volume there, they do get loud, but at similar volumes, the 2x12 just has that kick to it and the single wedge does not. I’m certain that if we got into an all out volume battle the 4x12 would obviously win, but we keep things pretty reasonable anyways so the volume isn’t a big deal.
As a slight caveat to that last paragraph, I DID start to notice towards the end of the night that A) The placement, and B) the IR were making huge differences in how much punch I got out of the wedge. I know this should seem obvious, but in the excitement of initial impressions & everything, its easy to forget. So its entirely possible that I’ll be able to bridge the gap between FRFR & cab to be a lot closer than I have it so far, but I STILL think to realllly get there I’ll need that second XiTone, its just a matter of physics I think.
Hopefully this helps someone. When I was searching for reviews/comparisons it seems like there was always a lot of emphasis on the versatility, convenience, size/weight, and sound of an FRFR. I could never really find a whole lot on keeping up with traditional cabs, how much punch/power they have compared to a cab, or other things of that nature. I’m a guy that doesn’t gig, doesn’t play top40 covers & need tons of different tones, and isn’t terribly worried if my rig weighs 40 pounds or 400 pounds. I play metal with another guitarist in a practice space, sometimes we play to a drum track, & thats about the extent of it for me. I had no real need to go FRFR, but I was dying to know what its really like & whether or not its the next step in my rig progression. So far it seems like its not necessarily the “next” step, but its definitely an awesome addition to the palette I have & will be a great tool to have on hand. As time goes by, as I learn to coax better tones out of it, and especially when I can add that second wedge, my opinion on that may change.
With that, I’ll stop rambling, thanks for reading this ridiculously long thing.
