Trying to find a reason to keep my FRFR

ChainOfThought

Experienced
I bought a 12" passive xitone wedge not too long ago and now I'm struggling to find any reason why I should keep it. I want to put it right at the top here that this has nothing to do with the xitone itself, I think its an insanely awesome cab and I do still sort of want a second one in spite of everything thats about to follow.

I don't play live, so gear load-in/out and minimizing weight and footprint and everything is a 100% non-issue for me. I share a practice space with one other guitarist, I run a 2x12 and he runs a 4x12. The sound in the room is awesome and we record everything direct so thats pretty awesome too. I use studio monitors for the mixing and for checking/tweaking the direct recording tone.

I thought I would enjoy it for not being a directional speaker, the whole thing about 'not having to worry about a sweet spot' and all that...but I've found that sitting in a sweet spot is almost more important for FRFR than it is my cab. Might be due to the small room size or something, I don't really know, I just feel like I have an opposite experience in that regard to what 99% of people say.

I thought I would enjoy it for tweaking the recorded tones, but I'm pretty sure the monitors actually do me better for that task.

I would definitely enjoy a stereo pair for pumping music & stuff through....but thats ridiculous and I'm not investing in the second wedge just for this purpose.

I don't care about having access to IR's for 'authentic' tones and all that...I have access to all that for recording, I don't need it for playing in the room. I pretty much do one or two clean tones, one or two crunches, and a couple high gain tones. I love my cab & I'm 100% OK with it flavoring all of the tones.

So basically, I feel like I'm still missing some key piece to all this and once I figure it out I'll be as much in love with FRFR as everyone else around here...but I also logically just can't see how that would be the case. I just can't figure out any use that I actually have for an FRFR setup, given my specific circumstance.

I think I'm gonna have to sell this xitone, as much as I want to find a reason to keep it. Damn.
 
I bought a 12" passive xitone wedge not too long ago and now I'm struggling to find any reason why I should keep it. I want to put it right at the top here that this has nothing to do with the xitone itself, I think its an insanely awesome cab and I do still sort of want a second one in spite of everything thats about to follow.

I don't play live, so gear load-in/out and minimizing weight and footprint and everything is a 100% non-issue for me. I share a practice space with one other guitarist, I run a 2x12 and he runs a 4x12. The sound in the room is awesome and we record everything direct so thats pretty awesome too. I use studio monitors for the mixing and for checking/tweaking the direct recording tone.

I thought I would enjoy it for not being a directional speaker, the whole thing about 'not having to worry about a sweet spot' and all that...but I've found that sitting in a sweet spot is almost more important for FRFR than it is my cab. Might be due to the small room size or something, I don't really know, I just feel like I have an opposite experience in that regard to what 99% of people say.

I thought I would enjoy it for tweaking the recorded tones, but I'm pretty sure the monitors actually do me better for that task.

I would definitely enjoy a stereo pair for pumping music & stuff through....but thats ridiculous and I'm not investing in the second wedge just for this purpose.

I don't care about having access to IR's for 'authentic' tones and all that...I have access to all that for recording, I don't need it for playing in the room. I pretty much do one or two clean tones, one or two crunches, and a couple high gain tones. I love my cab & I'm 100% OK with it flavoring all of the tones.

So basically, I feel like I'm still missing some key piece to all this and once I figure it out I'll be as much in love with FRFR as everyone else around here...but I also logically just can't see how that would be the case. I just can't figure out any use that I actually have for an FRFR setup, given my specific circumstance.

I think I'm gonna have to sell this xitone, as much as I want to find a reason to keep it. Damn.
If you 1)don't play live, 2)use studio monitors for recording, and 3)love your cab flavoring the 6 or so tones you use, there's probably no benefit you'll get from using an FRFR. You're probably not "missing some key piece to all this," you just don't fit the use case of an FRFR user.

But the sweet spot thing really should be easier with an FRFR. If you put your ears straight in front of the 2x12 cab, it'll be horribly trebly and beamy compared to an FRFR.
 
If you 1)don't play live, 2)use studio monitors for recording, and 3)love your cab flavoring the 6 or so tones you use, there's probably no benefit you'll get from using an FRFR. You're probably not "missing some key piece to all this," you just don't fit the use case of an FRFR user.

But the sweet spot thing really should be easier with an FRFR. If you put your ears straight in front of the 2x12 cab, it'll be horribly trebly and beamy compared to an FRFR.

Thats what I expected, but I swear I was finding the FRFR to be similarly directional just in a different way. I guess to be more accurate, its like for the wedge to sound right, I need it pointing right at me. For my cab to sound right, I just need to be somewhere in the room off-axis. My buddy is a big fan of sitting right in front of a cab with the speakers pointed at his face...I hate that sound, and will take just about any off-axis spot in the room. So for me, my cab doesn't really have any particular "sweet spot" as much as it just has 'you probably don't want to sit here' spot. Being a 2x12 though, even that is pretty minimal since it sits low to the floor. To be fair though, I guess the issue would be that the sound of the 2x12 does change quite a bit more than the wedge depending on your location....its just that I'm a really big fan of 99% of those locations with the cab haha.

I might give it another go next time I'm out at the practice space, see if maybe I was just having a bad day when I decided that the wedge just wasn't sounding right if I wasn't positioned just right. I know the xitones are generally well regarded as having great dispersion & everything, so that part of it I'd probably chalk up more to inexperience on my end coupled with a touch of frustration topped with alcohol.


As to the first part, thats pretty much the conclusion I've come to I just haven't wanted to accept it. I was so damn excited to go down this road haha. Its just not working out for me and I think I should pull the plug now rather than continue trying to sink time and money into it. Oh well, at least the xitone will hopefully sell easily. I'm probably always going to wonder if getting the extra punch & low end from a second wedge would really do the trick for me, but I just can't bring myself to spend more money on finding out.
 
I'm having a similar experience with FRFR. The band I jam with hasn't made time to get together since I've jumped into the Fractal thing, so I haven't had a chance to fully test the waters. I'm bringing my DSL40 just in case it doesn't go over well. I'll run into the FX Loop and will be just fine with that setup. It would be really cool if I could use the Xitone and the combo amp. Because the amp cuts off-axis and fills the room.

I did have a chance to jam with my drummer and had my Xitone pointed between me and him so we could both hear. Like you, I found that you have to have it pointed at you for it punch through. I have a DXR10 I could use to supplement the volume but I'm wondering if that will distract from the tone I'm getting from the Xitone. I doubt anyone but me would know. I did have it set up as a wedge. Thinking back maybe I should set it on the floor or chair/stand like a cab and turn it up all the way to try to make up for the off-axis placement.

Contrary to what Mic tells me, I can't go out and buy 3 or 4 wedges so they hit everyone in the band directionally.
 
Not specifically nor solely related to XiTone, but I found in my pre Fractal days that when using a traditional guitar cab I used open back cabs (i.e something similar to a DSL40) - this means that there is extra 'spread' in the room as compared to most FRFR solutions. This accounts for a lot of the perceived tone and sweetspots (or otherwise) of your guitar.
Beyond that and as already mentioned, lots of guitar cabs are very 'beamy' and would slice the heads off a member of the audience at 40 paces if they were directly in front of the cab....

However, my Matrix Q12 works perfectly for me when playing live as it means I don't bleed all over everybody else and we can set up the monitor mixes so everybody gets what they want at the right volume, and not what they don't want.

To the OP, if you don't play live then maybe you should look at other solutions that fit your requirements more closely and there are lots of options to consider.
 
Not specifically nor solely related to XiTone, but I found in my pre Fractal days that when using a traditional guitar cab I used open back cabs (i.e something similar to a DSL40) - this means that there is extra 'spread' in the room as compared to most FRFR solutions. This accounts for a lot of the perceived tone and sweetspots (or otherwise) of your guitar.
Beyond that and as already mentioned, lots of guitar cabs are very 'beamy' and would slice the heads off a member of the audience at 40 paces if they were directly in front of the cab....

However, my Matrix Q12 works perfectly for me when playing live as it means I don't bleed all over everybody else and we can set up the monitor mixes so everybody gets what they want at the right volume, and not what they don't want.

To the OP, if you don't play live then maybe you should look at other solutions that fit your requirements more closely and there are lots of options to consider.

I've always used closed back cabs, get what you're saying it just doesn't apply to my situation. And in a room thats about 10x20 with only two people, those few spots where where your head might line up with the center of the cone and you get that godawful sound aren't really prevalent. Playing live I would be more concerned about it, but playing live I also wouldn't care as much about tone coming from my cab...I'm 100% on board with the idea of getting the sound right for the audience, and having just what you need on stage for a good performance, be it in-ears or FRFR or whatever.

What it really comes down to is just that I thought I wanted to replace my cab with an FRFR, or at least have one on hand for certain uses in addition to the cab. But I've found in reality that I just don't have any actual use for it. Its just a tool that I've found I don't have a use for it. Its posted on craigslist now but I'll probably post it up here before too long and see if anyone wants it. The 'other solution to fit my requirements' is just to continue using my cab which I love dearly and then do all things recording based via studio monitors. I just have both of our rigs set up so that we can jam in the room like normal and it silently records direct/IR signals in the background. So the monitors are just for picking the IR at the start and then mixing & playback after its recorded. It works really well actually.
 
@ChainOfThought - ever thought we have too many options to consider when we have Fractal at our disposal? I certainly get wrapped up in that now and again.

Either way, if FRFR isn't for you, then your quest goes on so I'm sure you will get to exactly where you want to be tonewise.
(and if truth be told sometimes I too wonder about whether I could mix things up and change cab stuff around a bit but I never seem to find the time to experiment)
 
@ChainOfThought - ever thought we have too many options to consider when we have Fractal at our disposal? I certainly get wrapped up in that now and again.

Either way, if FRFR isn't for you, then your quest goes on so I'm sure you will get to exactly where you want to be tonewise.
(and if truth be told sometimes I too wonder about whether I could mix things up and change cab stuff around a bit but I never seem to find the time to experiment)

Haha yea I know what you mean. I'm just glad that I was able to try out one of the best regarded FRFR cabs at the start. I can be relatively well certain that it's frfr as a concept that isn't going to work for me, rather than wondering if I just need to spend more on a higher quality cab etc. The only doubt I'll really have left about frfr in general is whether a second wedge would bring the feel of it up to where I need it to be... But that'll be a story for another day.

I'm also lucky that I'm 100% in love with my cab. I kind of want to add a Mesa 2x12 to the top of it, but my tone is already everything it needs to be so that would just be for flair hahaha.

I'll probably keep it for sale at a fairly high price locally, if it sells I'll fund some other gear I want... If it doesn't then I might eventually get the extra cash to buy a second and change my mind. We'll just have to see what happens.
 
It seems like those of us who don't gig in a mic'd & monitored environment struggle with FRFR. I'm hoping more spread (as in using my DXR10 in addition to the Xitone) helps fill the room like a guitar cab does. If not, I'll go the FX return route. I plan on keeping my Xitone either way. I like the ability of being able to get a good tone at any volume. Plus I'm convinced some EQ tweaking can get the Xitone to cut once I spend time on it.
 
One thing to note, the Atomic CLR Neo FRFR, have a 90 degree spread (I believe the Xitone are less than that --- 60-75 degrees).

Sounds like I need strategic speaker(s) placement OR inconspicuously run a line out to the PA that we're using for vocals. I don't want the other guitarist to feel like I'm bogarting the mix...lol.
 
If I'm playing just for me then I do love the sound of a real cab

But - and this is a big but - if I'm playing with the band it's more about getting a good balanced sound for the group, a sound that fills venues and blends well with the whole band. For this I struggled with cabs so FRFR, or through a good PA system in real world terms) is the way to go.
 
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