Impending speaker selection advice. Live/metal/heavy input especially welcomed.

C

CityDrivenHarm

Member
I apologize in advance, because I know this is going to seem like a well paved topic to some. Believe me, I know. I've exhausted the search buttons on the forum, youtube, and google. :) Just the same, the major purchase/GAS jitters are getting to me and I feel the need to ask specifically.

Within the next few days, I will be purchasing a power and speaker solution. Short of some amazing revelation, I am positive my power choice will be the GT1000. Speaker choice is where it gets tricky. I've had my Axe since shortly after release, but have not had anything beyond sporadic bedroom use for it since, sadly. I've got the itch to call myself a musician again and want to change that. Play more, write more, record more, and most importantly get back into the band/shows thing. At home, I have and play through my Audio Technica headphones (most of the time, for convenience), my Equator D5s (sometimes, they sit flat on my desk and my room is odd. Love the speakers, but not always happy playing through them), and my EV LiveX 112 (fine enough, but has never really put that smile on my face, ya know?).

I've decided I want a 212 and my obvious choices are: NL212, FR212, XiTone 212. I have no doubt all of these are quality, but large amounts of money, shipping, and inability to try before I buy makes it a bit of a conundrum. Choices, choices...

NL212: Appeals to me because I wonder if maybe I am missing the cab/amp in the room feel. I am not digital/modeler adverse. I embrace it openly. Truth be told, I want FRFR/cab IRs to be it for me, just not sure. So maybe that little bit of magic I am missing is this? Also being the cheapest, makes it a strong consideration. Could still enjoy FRFR through monitors, and FOH at shows.

FR212: A couple of impressive youtube videos(looking at you, John Hardman in a hotel room shredding some EVH) and forum praise has me really intrigued. Skeptical of price and committing to FRFR, though. Was hoping to hear more about it from the Dutch Axe Fest.

XiTone: See FR212. Seems comparable, slightly cheaper, state side, kick stand on 212 cab is a nice feature. Haven't seen anyone say a negative thing about them.

So the practical question for anyone with experience is how do these compare and feel live? I haven't been in a band in 5+ years, so I'm out of touch here. If you made me give examples of "Be in any kind of band you want," I would say SikTh (particularly Trees...), Protest the Hero (particularly Kezia), Coheed and Cambria, and Chiodos. I like heavy, but I like melody and well written songs and variety as well. So I'm obviously concerned about this in a backline, band practice sort of sense, as well as putting that smile on my face that makes me want to practice at home.

Sorry for the big post, sorry for retreading existing topics. I just haven't seen anyone talk about exactly what I want to know and thought I would fish for it before throwing a couple grand in power and speakers out into the economy. Thanks for understanding, sorry if you don't! :) I'm really just looking for experience and encouragement. It's been a long time since I've had to worry about this stuff.

Brett
 
Just curious why you want a 2x12 with FRFR? I think from what I have been reading, most people would probably recommend 2 1x12s... I think it's not the same as with a traditional guitar cab, and 2 1x12s would allow you more use options.

Anyway, just thought I would throw that out at you.
 
I had definitely considered two 1x12s, but decided against it for a few reasons. One being that I am not dead set on FRFR, two being that I have a (perhaps incorrect) perception that a 2x12 will be slightly better for heavier music, and a third being that two equivalent 1x12s are more expensive than a single 2x12. The XiTone wedges are 500 a piece while a 212 is 900, for example. Small, but it is a consideration.

The advantages of two separate speakers are not lost on me, I have just decided against it. At least for the moment. Thanks for contributing to my decision making, though. :)

Brett
 
I'm using 2 1x12 speakers. Stereo is a must for me, love it. I've got 1x CFR (FRFR) and one NL12, best of both worlds. If I had to choose one it would be the NL12, I can not use FRFR alone, well I can but it is not my preference.
 
I think you should first spend a small amount of money first and get your studio monitors set up properly - IE get them isolated from desk surface interference and any adverse room characteristics. You'd then be in a somewhat better position to judge FRFR playing if you get things tuned for quite high db playing this way. Get a backing soundtrack eq'ed and sounding good through the monitors first then play along and mix yourself in. I think headphones are not really a fair comparison to speakers + air/room + dbs.

Doing above first will give you a pretty near experience of setting up the Axe for FRFR - IE the all important Cab IR choice. However when then moving up to 12 inch speakers at playing live volume you'll be tweaking again to suit.

If you're going to experiment further, then the powered FRFR 12 inch cabs out there might be the choice to go for ..... if you don't get on with them then you've only one unit to return or resell. I say this because if you're coming from a traditional tube amp/conventional cab experience then the SS amp is quite a departure and all the 'non controllable - it's the sound of this amp' characteristics of a tube power section are gone and you are expected to tweak the Axe to replace or manipulate that ....... and sometimes it's hard to trust your own ears when you've what seems like all the choice in the world in the things you can tweak!

I have both tube (Mesa 50/50) and SS (Matrix GT1000) power amp set ups - both using conventional cabs for now, but looking at trying FRFR cabs (probably the passive Matrix offerings due to my location).

The Mesa set up is easy - that amp colours the sound so power amp and cabs are off on the Axe leaving just the 'preamp' settings to tweak ..... impressive tones but not using half the features available in the Axe - and the modelled amps' power sections are part of their sound so (psychologically at least) I'm losing out on that.

The Matrix set up is a bit more difficult as I use the power amp settings in the Axe ..... it just maybe takes a few tweaks in some eq bands and a few other places really .... but it's changable from amp model to amp model .... what sounds good in one model might not carry over to the next .... so it's back in for a tweak. I start to get impatient with too much tweaking ... some people love it and seem to understand the correct places to go straight away - but I have a shorter fuse I'm afraid.

Once the complete FRFR package is all there, then there's the new addition of Cab IR choice/tweaking ...... I'm really in 2 minds if yet more tweaking is what I want to be doing! (Though having been on the AxeFX journey from Ultra to Axe2 the base amp presets have come a long way in cutting down the need for any extensive tweaking)

To get back to what I was saying, in addition to the return/resell convenience, the powered FRFR cabs are tuned and ported to give a good response/resonance for what components they contain .... in theory, they should remove at least some of the power amp to speaker tweaking and might be the best option to try to cut down on some 'am I tweaking the right things?' decisions.

That's the way I'm thinking I would go if I was in your position with the benefit of hindsight ...
 
I went FRFR for a bit, but it didn't work for me for bedroom practice or band rehearsals where the other guitar and bass used traditional cabs. It meant that my sound was 'recorded' compared to their 'live' sound, and it showed despite tweaking.

I went back to cabs (an Orange PPC212) and suddenly... awesome again. Tone in your face.

However, for gigs with a full PA on hand, using FRFR straight to the desk worked very well indeed. That's because the other guitar was miced up so we were then on a level playing field again, and my tone was killer!

As a result, I would advise you to consider whether most of the time you are going through a full PA or not, or it would just be your speakers handling it.
 
Mewcenary makes some great points.
I've gone both routes and prefer the tube power amp -> real 2X12 sound. You don't get 100% of the flexibility of
the SS power amp and Cab IRs but you get the "real" feel and response of a tube power amp with the Axe Fx Preamps.
"Recorded" vs "Live" is quite different, against another guitarist using a real rig it will really jump out at you.
I like going FRFR out of output 1 and into a real power amp -> cab(s) from output 2.
Recently I picked up another 2X12 and have mixed my recto cab and my marshall 1936 and it sounds really,really good, especially when blending it in
with the FRFR from output 1 , I get the best of both worlds :)
 
Wow guys, thanks for all of the awesome responses. I appreciate you all taking the time and sharing your thoughts. Definitely some good ideas and even a few things I hadn't thought of before. I hadn't really considered one FRFR and one traditional cab before. While I'm not sure I will do that, it is a new consideration and there's a lot of pluses there.

maxdown, thanks for taking the time with the huge response. A lot of good input. I have, fortunately, gotten to play on my exact monitors at a friends house who has a better room and setup, and it is more pleasurable to play there. He is also pretty happy with it. So I at least have that idea. I feel exactly where you're coming from with the tweaking. Like FRFR, it's something I *want* to like and want to be proficient with, but I currently am not. My background is a no nonsense Mesa Triple Rec, dry. Had a digitech whammy I never used and had a brief love affair with a BBE sonic maximizer, but most of my play time is clocked on a dry triple rec and I loved that thing. So all these variables, as much as I want to love them, are indeed daunting and I don't know where to start half the time. That is a part of this adventure, though. I do feel like I need to get that experience and give full FRFR a go before I turn my back on a lot of the premium flexibility of the Axe, so I may just have to live and learn here. Thanks so much for the advice.

Mew and kmanick, what you both describe is where I fear I may end up, hehe. I can't help that a large part of me wants to give FRFR an honest try first, though. It will be easy to fall back to a traditional cab and even tubes if I wanted (I don't--half the appeal is never dealing with tubes again, hehe), but jumping back into traditional cab and tube power would probably make reluctant to ever switch to the FRFR unknown again. Also, even though the Axe sounds fantastic and has many other great features that I love, if I plugged it into a tube power amp and traditional cab, there would be this little nagging voice asking me why I ever sold my Triple Rec if that's what I was going to do, lol.

I think giving the FR212 a shot may just be what I need to do to check the experiment off my list. I appreciate all the help and discourse here and in some PMs, truly. It's helped a lot, given me some things to think about, and lead me to a decision and plan B. Thanks everyone! :) Have loved this forum for years.

Don't think you shouldn't chime in if someone else has something to add, either.

Brett
 
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