So I ordered an FBT Verve 12ma after reading so many positive reviews of the unit. It arrived on Thursday and I played my first gig through it on Saturday. I currently own a QSC HPR122i as well as an RCF ART310A and have never been fully happy with either of the other 2 in particular in how my sound translates to both FOH and recording direct both of which needed a lot of tweaking to get results that I was happy with. Just so you know where I am coming from with my setup I am looking for great mic’d up amp tones that sound the same (or as close as possible) on stage, front of house and direct into my DAW. If you are looking for the much sought after “amp in the room” sound that is mentioned so much here then I’m afraid I cannot help.
Here is a very brief IMHO comparison of the three broken down into the two factors the matter to me.
Size/Weight/Construction
RCF – It’s the lightest of the bunch and is very portable and compact since it’s made from a composite material and has a 10” speaker. It’s very well put together and as such pretty much ticks all of the boxes in this category.
QSC – The heaviest of the three by some way, this is a beast. It is big and cumbersome and a combination of these two factors made me soon tired of lugging it to rehearsal and gigs. Construction-wise it’s very well put together and I have no complaints here.
FBT – I have to say that I was very surprised when the box turned up and I unpacked it, I was expecting something similar in size to the QSC but it is actually much closer to the size of the RCF, big tick here. The FBT is pretty much in the middle of the QSC and RCF weight-wise but due to the much smaller dimensions is much more portable that the QSC and easy to carry one handed, another big tick. The FBT is similar in construction to the QSC and is a quality unit, three from three!
Tone/Feel/Musicality
RCF – This is a great little speaker, tone-wise it’s pretty solid, however the low end can get loose if you’re not careful, I found myself over compensating for this and my tones were getting really thin. The biggest problem for me with the RCF was going from a decent sounding preset into front of house/direct DAW. It just didn’t translate. High mids and low end seemed so far out of whack and I couldn’t get a sound that worked for both backline and FOH.
QSC – This speaker is very solid sounding but I found it a little sterile (for want of a better word) The top end (maybe upper mids too) seemed harsh and dialling things out ended up making things dull before they sounded better. The low end was great and packed a serious punch but it was hard to dial in across the whole frequency range and once I got as close as I could the sound wasn’t so good out front. My final gripe with the QSC is probably the hardest to describe, it is with regards to feel of the tones that come out of the speaker. No matter how much feel you put in you got the same ‘stiff’ sound out, trying very hard of ways to describe this it was like the amp/speaker couldn’t breathe, like the speaker movement was restricted, don’t know if that makes sense....
FBT – I plugged in and loaded up a few presets, my first impressions were that it had a lot less low end than the QSC but it was way more natural than the RCF. I tweaked a few of the presets and restored some of the low end that I had previously chopped out and the tones filled out very nicely. I then looked at the top end and noticed that there was a lot of it, it wasn’t harsh it was just more pronounced. I dialled it back down a little and my rough base patches (amp, cab + rev) were sounding great! Created a couple of new patches with amp defaults and was loving what I heard and felt from the speaker, it was more like dialling in a real amp instead of completely re-working everything with eq’s etc... I switched the cables over into my DAW and checked on my monitors (KRK Rokit G8’s) and it sounded very similar to what I heard from the FBT, great start. I created a base set of 6 patches (Fender Clean, AC30, Plexi, High Gain JCM800, Euro2 and Recto Orange) all of which were now using in built cabs (previously redwirez) for my gig on Saturday and dialled them in over Fri/Sat setup my IAs etc.. and packed everything up. Arrived at the gig and setup had a quick play and all was well the patches were still sounding great. We didn’t get time to sound check so we did a quick level check and off we went. My patches fit right in with the band mix and inspired me to play well all gig (like I said IMHO
notes were jumping out and breathing like I would expect. I went out front a couple of times and everything sounded fantastic there too, after the gig a number of people commented on how great my guitar sounded, the rest of the band also commented on how good it sounded, I was so happy. For me the 12ma not only sounds and feels great but because it works so well (for me) it has allowed me to create better patches on my AxeFX that translate between stage, FOH and recording.
To me this is the start of a new journey with my AxeFX, I’ve gone back to stock cabs (from Redwirez) which sound great now, I’ve gone back to check out the stock presets and these are sounding great and giving me new ideas to start building my new tones. I am really glad that I decided to try the 12ma and I think it will be with me for a long time to come. I am all too familiar with the honeymoon period effect so I’ll update after a couple of months to see if I still feel the same way, but thanks for reading and I hope this helps someone out there ? As for my QSC that has been resigned to vocal foldback for the band and the RCF looks destined for ebay
Spence
Here is a very brief IMHO comparison of the three broken down into the two factors the matter to me.
Size/Weight/Construction
RCF – It’s the lightest of the bunch and is very portable and compact since it’s made from a composite material and has a 10” speaker. It’s very well put together and as such pretty much ticks all of the boxes in this category.
QSC – The heaviest of the three by some way, this is a beast. It is big and cumbersome and a combination of these two factors made me soon tired of lugging it to rehearsal and gigs. Construction-wise it’s very well put together and I have no complaints here.
FBT – I have to say that I was very surprised when the box turned up and I unpacked it, I was expecting something similar in size to the QSC but it is actually much closer to the size of the RCF, big tick here. The FBT is pretty much in the middle of the QSC and RCF weight-wise but due to the much smaller dimensions is much more portable that the QSC and easy to carry one handed, another big tick. The FBT is similar in construction to the QSC and is a quality unit, three from three!
Tone/Feel/Musicality
RCF – This is a great little speaker, tone-wise it’s pretty solid, however the low end can get loose if you’re not careful, I found myself over compensating for this and my tones were getting really thin. The biggest problem for me with the RCF was going from a decent sounding preset into front of house/direct DAW. It just didn’t translate. High mids and low end seemed so far out of whack and I couldn’t get a sound that worked for both backline and FOH.
QSC – This speaker is very solid sounding but I found it a little sterile (for want of a better word) The top end (maybe upper mids too) seemed harsh and dialling things out ended up making things dull before they sounded better. The low end was great and packed a serious punch but it was hard to dial in across the whole frequency range and once I got as close as I could the sound wasn’t so good out front. My final gripe with the QSC is probably the hardest to describe, it is with regards to feel of the tones that come out of the speaker. No matter how much feel you put in you got the same ‘stiff’ sound out, trying very hard of ways to describe this it was like the amp/speaker couldn’t breathe, like the speaker movement was restricted, don’t know if that makes sense....
FBT – I plugged in and loaded up a few presets, my first impressions were that it had a lot less low end than the QSC but it was way more natural than the RCF. I tweaked a few of the presets and restored some of the low end that I had previously chopped out and the tones filled out very nicely. I then looked at the top end and noticed that there was a lot of it, it wasn’t harsh it was just more pronounced. I dialled it back down a little and my rough base patches (amp, cab + rev) were sounding great! Created a couple of new patches with amp defaults and was loving what I heard and felt from the speaker, it was more like dialling in a real amp instead of completely re-working everything with eq’s etc... I switched the cables over into my DAW and checked on my monitors (KRK Rokit G8’s) and it sounded very similar to what I heard from the FBT, great start. I created a base set of 6 patches (Fender Clean, AC30, Plexi, High Gain JCM800, Euro2 and Recto Orange) all of which were now using in built cabs (previously redwirez) for my gig on Saturday and dialled them in over Fri/Sat setup my IAs etc.. and packed everything up. Arrived at the gig and setup had a quick play and all was well the patches were still sounding great. We didn’t get time to sound check so we did a quick level check and off we went. My patches fit right in with the band mix and inspired me to play well all gig (like I said IMHO
notes were jumping out and breathing like I would expect. I went out front a couple of times and everything sounded fantastic there too, after the gig a number of people commented on how great my guitar sounded, the rest of the band also commented on how good it sounded, I was so happy. For me the 12ma not only sounds and feels great but because it works so well (for me) it has allowed me to create better patches on my AxeFX that translate between stage, FOH and recording.To me this is the start of a new journey with my AxeFX, I’ve gone back to stock cabs (from Redwirez) which sound great now, I’ve gone back to check out the stock presets and these are sounding great and giving me new ideas to start building my new tones. I am really glad that I decided to try the 12ma and I think it will be with me for a long time to come. I am all too familiar with the honeymoon period effect so I’ll update after a couple of months to see if I still feel the same way, but thanks for reading and I hope this helps someone out there ? As for my QSC that has been resigned to vocal foldback for the band and the RCF looks destined for ebay
Spence
