Thoughts on my first day with a Matrix Q12a

guitarjim

guitarjim

Experienced
After having it for two days, I had the Axe unit sounding pretty sweet on my basic gig patches with a Fryette 2/90/2 and Bruno 2-12. I was really digging the sound and responsiveness - definitely heads-and-shoulders over my HD500. My Q12a arrived today so it was time to dive into FRFR, and what a dive it was. At first, like everyone says, after plugging in and turning cab modelling back on, everything sounded bad. Every frequency was pretty much level and there was no shape or thickness to the tone at all. After a quick sculpting of the global eq settings (pretty much setting it as an inverted soft C), the sounds were passable. After that, it was going into every patch and playing around with the EQ. After one pass, most of tones were pretty good. I have to say that playing through an FRFR setup is unlike anything I've experienced. A guitar has never felt so alive in my hands. The clarity of every note is almost overpowering, and the pick attack is so clear it's scary. The pickups on my PRS Custom seem like they have woken up from a coma. If I tap on the guitar, it comes through the speaker like a drum. At one point, I repositioned the guitar and my straplocks made a small squeal and even that came roaring through. I'm Of course the downside for a mediocre guitar player like myself is that there is absolutely no place to hide with this setup. Even the tiniest of mistakes ring through like a knife in the eye socket. I'm also blown away at the amount of tone control I have now with my guitar knobs - the tone range is ridiculous. It is absolutely an amazing rig and, while I'm still afraid of it a bit, I know I'm going to love this thing.

I'm still struggling with a couple of things, however. First, I'm finding that my patches are overdriving MUCH, MUCH more than they did with the head and cab, even to the point that I'm having trouble keeping some of my clean patches clean as my guitar volume approaches 10. Is this normal when switching to FRFR?

Second, I'm still having a hard time thickening up some of my patches. I'm guessing that I just need to keep tweaking the EQ and playing around with different cabs, but if anyone has advice on that, I'd certainly appreciate it.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone who helped me get to this point. You guys made an overwhelming rig makeover possible in only two days.
 
Just a couple things that come to mind. High cut and low cut in the cab block are worth a look. A regular guitar speaker has much narrower range than a frfr.

Did you turn power amp modeling back on?
 
+1 on this. If you used amp modeling with the tubes, it will change a lot. And if you just turned on amp mod, it will add gain. In particular with high master settings. :)

Please write a reveiw in a couple of weeks. When you have used this setup for a while. I`m interested ;)
 
there is a major difference between using conventional cabs and FRFR

with conventional cabs you obviously turn the sim off...
so you don't actually have anything to do cab wise...
kinda seems obvious, but your cab does it all for you..

with FRFR, you turn the cab sim on..
that opens you up to a whole new thing..
it's like adding another side to your Rubik Cube..
cos now you have to choose cabs...
a killer part of getting the tone working right is:
- choosing the amp / cab combaintion you think works best
- choosing the mic type [which includes type = none]
- if you have a mic, setting the proximity
-- close proximity brightens the tones and thins the bottom end
-- far proximity smears the high end and thickens the low end

nailing the above is the difference between tones that suck or are passable, great or jaw-dropping
 
guitarjim said:
After having it for two days, I had the Axe unit sounding pretty sweet on my basic gig patches with a Fryette 2/90/2 and Bruno 2-12. I was really digging the sound and responsiveness - definitely heads-and-shoulders over my HD500. My Q12a arrived today so it was time to dive into FRFR, and what a dive it was. At first, like everyone says, after plugging in and turning cab modelling back on, everything sounded bad. Every frequency was pretty much level and there was no shape or thickness to the tone at all. After a quick sculpting of the global eq settings (pretty much setting it as an inverted soft C), the sounds were passable. After that, it was going into every patch and playing around with the EQ. After one pass, most of tones were pretty good. I have to say that playing through an FRFR setup is unlike anything I've experienced. A guitar has never felt so alive in my hands. The clarity of every note is almost overpowering, and the pick attack is so clear it's scary. The pickups on my PRS Custom seem like they have woken up from a coma. If I tap on the guitar, it comes through the speaker like a drum. At one point, I repositioned the guitar and my straplocks made a small squeal and even that came roaring through. I'm Of course the downside for a mediocre guitar player like myself is that there is absolutely no place to hide with this setup. Even the tiniest of mistakes ring through like a knife in the eye socket. I'm also blown away at the amount of tone control I have now with my guitar knobs - the tone range is ridiculous. It is absolutely an amazing rig and, while I'm still afraid of it a bit, I know I'm going to love this thing.

I'm still struggling with a couple of things, however. First, I'm finding that my patches are overdriving MUCH, MUCH more than they did with the head and cab, even to the point that I'm having trouble keeping some of my clean patches clean as my guitar volume approaches 10. Is this normal when switching to FRFR?

Second, I'm still having a hard time thickening up some of my patches. I'm guessing that I just need to keep tweaking the EQ and playing around with different cabs, but if anyone has advice on that, I'd certainly appreciate it.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone who helped me get to this point. You guys made an overwhelming rig makeover possible in only two days.
Click to expand...

Make sure you turned power amp modeling back on also :)
 
I have noticed with my Q12a that I can get natural guitar feedback waaaaay easier than before, did you?
Not sure why.....butI like it ;)
 
teddis said:
I have noticed with my Q12a that I can get natural guitar feedback waaaaay easier than before, did you?
Not sure why.....butI like it ;)
Click to expand...

Absolutely agree. It's just such a night and day difference. I spent another 3 hours with it today and I'm still amazed at how responsive the guitar is with this unit. I can affect the sound so much more with my hands than I was able to do with the G System or HD500. Vibrato is more reactive, sustain is tons better, feedback at will, much more responsive to pick attack, and the list goes on. It's really great.

Thanks for all the advice. I do have amp/cab modelling turned on and I'll start messing with the cabs & mics.
 
Do you have the feeling you are playing through a guitar cab with all the 'pressure' that's coming from it or is the sound hifi-ish like listening to a record?
 
Thanks in advance!
I'm really interested in your opinion with the Q12a since I miss the pressure when gigging with the Axe and monitoring through my 2 QSC K12. If the Q12a delivers real guitar cab punch I might sell the QSCs and go for the Q12a.
 
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