Which speaker for Bias Head?
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@daniel-goerbing If you're running through a guitar cab, you really need to turn the cab sim off, because the physical cab is already creating a lot of coloration and you don't want to apply any more of that coloration than necessary. Unless you find some magical combination that sounds good to you, I suppose, but 99% of the time combining cab+cabsim will get pretty terrible results. In general though, I'd recommend going FRFR, since in my experience a single guitar cab just isn't optimal when you're wanting to play with a variety of amp types.
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@daniel-goerbing You don't want to run a guitar cab with a cab sim also active. It will apply the processing that would be reserved for a full range speaker (like a studio monitor or a PA speaker) to guitar speaker (which has a vastly different frequency profile). Whether you are plugging into a guitar cab or a passive full range speaker will determine if you should use the Cab Sim or not.
You will also want to take the Parallel and Serial modes under consideration:
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Since this is a case of a picture being worth way more than 1000 words, here is a comparison of white noise, both around and thru my favorite celestion impulse response. Ask yourself "do I want to impose this curve onto something that already roughly looks like this?
Blue is the striaght white noise, red is thru the impulse
So if you did decide to do that, here's what you get. Red is the impulse response, blue is running a creamback through this response.
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FWIW, Celestion announced a speaker designed for modeling that would fit in 12" speaker slots in a traditional cab.
https://celestion.com/product/200/f12x200/
Looks pretty sweet.
If you run it through a spectrum analyzer its not going to be flat but bad news: nothing is. Not even expensive studio monitors. Everything is a matter of degree. Plus your room is always going to affect things.
That said, everyone saying: Don't run IRs through guitar cabs are giving really good advice. It is not worth all the EQing etc it takes at volume.
One strategy that works, get a guitar cab you really like. Shoot an IR of it (or find a commercial IR of the same cab, etc, but the real deal is best). Should be very close to your real cab. Use that IR for direct and studio. Use the cab for non FRFR tones with cabinet simulation disabled on your modeling device.
You give up the versatility of IRs but you get some serious authenticity. :wink: You are no worse off than some dude with a traditional amp and cab except your amp has like, an infinite number of channels, whereas his only has three, tops.
Depends on what you want out of modeling. If you are in a cover band it might not be what you want but if you are just doing original tones, it can be a really cool option.
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NICE!!!!!!!!!!!!! I've been looking for Coax speakers for this purpose, very very cool celestion! Way to keep up with the times!
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This is a great support here. I'm really got ahead with my thoughts. Thank you!
@Elric Your idea sounds really good. Indeed I'm not playing in a cover-band. Most of all I want that the sound out of my cab is the same like on recording or gigging. The other thing is, I like my 4x12 in our band room but I hate too transport it ;-).
So, which passive FRFR box sounds good fo bias (and has the power of a 4x12)?
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@daniel-goerbing said in Which speaker for Bias Head?:
So, which passive FRFR box sounds good fo bias (and has the power of a 4x12)?
The sum of your personal monitor and the power of your PA ;)
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Looking at these graphs, its almost identical to the tone difference between Bias 1 and Bias 2....strange coincidence?
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But which monitor box should it be? Can I take any PA-Monitor? Or are they any recommended especially for guitar?
Has anyone experiences with the Matrix CFR 12? -
Once again; Please tell us about your budget, your playing style and if you are a gigging guitarist and if you like a personal monitor in front of you or a cab behind!
This is one of my reviews and might be helpful somehow (in German, depending on the 10" version)
https://www.musiker-board.de/threads/review-the-box-pro-dsp-110-als-monitor-fuer-e-gitarre.667465/ -
you theoretically can run with any decent monitor, but many cheaper monitors aren't designed to particularly strict standards of tone neutrality and range. Likewise, I'm not personally a fan of separate woofer/horn type arrangements and greatly prefer coaxial setups, but most monitors use separately-mounted drivers. Monitors will get you 70% there, but you'll probably end up wanting to replace the speakers with proper FRFR models.
The Matrix CFR12 uses the Celestion TF1225CX coaxial driver and a custom crossover. Looking at the specs on that driver, it should work pretty darn well if the xover is tuned correctly (and for $750 it darn well better be). You could build your own FRFR cab using that same speaker for less than half of what Matrix is asking, though it might not be tuned quite so well and you'd need to make sure to buy the correct xover. I don't really have the luxury of being able to spend so much on a cabinet, so I built my own by buying a cheap Behringer monitor and replacing the speaker/xover a more FRFR-friendly setup.
You can buy a wedge monitor (or a cabinet for one), a 12" coax FRFR speaker and tweeter to attach to it, and the appropriate crossover for fairly cheap overall.
This was my order when I built my FRFR cab, minus the monitor itself which i bought elsewhere for around $150. I believe there's another brand that makes FRFR cabs which uses this setup in a few of their models.
(Note the capacitor for crossover tuning; i didn't end up using it though) -
If that eminence was coax, why did you also need to buy a horn?
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@pipelineaudio The woofer and tweeter in many coax arrangements are still purchased as separate units; they're just designed so that the tweeter screws directly into the rear of the woofer. it's designed this way so you can select the tweeter/woofer to taste without being locked into a specific combination. The models I ordered were recommended to be used together for FRFR setups, as their frequency responses coalesce quite nicely.
Some people prefer the PSD-2002, which is a heavier tweeter that can be mounted onto the 12CX just like the 1001. That one is considered 'hotter', with an effective high-mid range boost. I would prefer to keep things as neutral as possible though, and handle such things via per preset EQ, so I stuck with the 1001.
Worth noting, the 12CX/1001 is the same combo used in the XiTone FRFR cabs.
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John Griswold is talking in Facebook about different types of windings that guitar speakers often have than PA speakers (I was always happier when throwing away my guitar speakers in my 412's and putting PA speakers in). I wonder which way this eminence and new celestion are wound
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@Ash-Wolford Awesome build man. Are you using it with Cab IRs? I am thinking about building this as well. Also considering building something in a 2x12. I like the feel of a cab behind me. Wondering if I put two of those in a 2x12 and stand it up vertical would it sound really nice with VSTs/Cab Sims
@pipelineaudio chime in please lol. I love your feedback on everything. i also wanna talk to you about this VST host pedal Im thinking about building.
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I have a Fender Mustang that is absolutely AWESOME on the DSP, but due to the need for a silly, crappy, pedal system, its hard to want as a primary unit. However, due to its plethora of ins and outs, it works pretty awesome for plugging an ipad into with Bias. It takes a little bit of weirdness to get it just right so the soundman gets a cab IR for XLR but the main speaker doesn't.
A coax speaker in it would give best of both worlds...if ANYTHING went wrong with the ipad setup, you'd still have the amp for backup tones. Could the crossover and tweeter in this arrangement be switched off so the guitar amp could be used as normal in case anything goes wrong?
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@brian-dress I use it with my BIAS Head, and I use presets with both the built-in cab sims and some IRs I've purchased (Celestion V30 IRs in particular). Of course, this is with the current BIAS Amp firmware, so the cab sims have a bit more presence in the high frequencies which is easy to notice when compared to the IRs.
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@pipelineaudio it should be possible in theory to add a DPDT bypass switch to the cab that cuts the xover/tweeter out of the circuit entirely and connects the jack straight to the LF driver. alternatively, you could probably just use a two-jack setup with the second jack connecting directly to it without going through the xover. That said, I have no idea whether a LF driver designed for hifi/FRFR setups would sound particularly appealing (in guitar cab speaker terms) by itself.
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I bet doguhnuts it sounds better than full range or no speaker at all, and that's good enough for me!
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My apologies for triple-post, but i felt this might be worth the notification since it's kind of really important and I forgot about it in my original reply.
@brian-dress I've read cautionary reports about using 2/4x12 setups with FRFR speakers. Supposedly, having two tweeters in the same enclosure creates a lobing effect where a fair chunk of the frequencies produced cancel each other out and muddy the sound. That on top of the standard comb-filtering effect of having multiple woofers in the same cab. Folks seem to recommend that for multi-speaker setups, either separate the speakers into their own isolated cabinets or only use a single tweeter/horn, typically centered between the woofers (MTM configuration). Of course you lose a little of the single-source benefit of coaxial speakers by doing it this way, but it seems to give the best results.
see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwoofer-tweeter-midwoofer