Which speaker for Bias Head?
-
@ash-wolford what are your thoughts on the Accugroove ones? http://www.accugroovellc.com/frfr
-
@brian-dress i'm not an expert by any means, but I've seen a few different schools of thought when it comes to FRFR cab design -- those who favor coaxial for the purpose of eliminating off-axis effects (Matrix, XiTone, Mission Engineering, Atomic) and those who seem to say 'hell with it, just throw speakers wherever'. This appears to be the latter, but I honestly can't say how much of a difference it really makes. They use a pair of soft dome tweeters placed very close together to try and remove some of the HF 'beaminess', but in general they place the MF/HF drivers a fair distance away from the LF drivers, which seems to me like it would cause off-axis weirdness. I'd definitely check and see if there are some reviews from people who know their stuff better than I.
-
@sascha-ballweg Hey Sascha, I read your review about the dsp 110. Very informative! Have you ever tested a passive box?
My budget is about 500€. My plan is to sell my mesa thiele box and get a frfr monitor for home and small stages. We don't play many gigs a year - maybe 5. We play alternative rock. I use many crunch & slightly overdriven sounds, not much hi-gain. I'm the only guitar-player in the band. So I don't have to compete with another guitar sound. I like a round sound, warm but punchy and with enough bass. Before I bought the bias I used a Mesa Boogie Stiletto Combo. I loved it for the crunch channel! Sometimes I used it behind me, sometimes as a monitor in front, that depended of the rooms we played. -
@daniel-goerbing said in Which speaker for Bias Head?:
@sascha-ballweg Hey Sascha, I read your review about the dsp 110. Very informative! Have you ever tested a passive box?
My budget is about 500€. My plan is to sell my mesa thiele box and get a frfr monitor for home and small stages. We don't play many gigs a year - maybe 5. We play alternative rock. I use many crunch & slightly overdriven sounds, not much hi-gain. I'm the only guitar-player in the band. So I don't have to compete with another guitar sound. I like a round sound, warm but punchy and with enough bass. Before I bought the bias I used a Mesa Boogie Stiletto Combo. I loved it for the crunch channel! Sometimes I used it behind me, sometimes as a monitor in front, that depended of the rooms we played.Yes, I was gigging with a 212 Orange (closed back) driven by a Rocktron Velocity. But as times go by I decided to go FRFR completely and never had regret that. With a modeler you have all possibilities and the tones you dial in are more simular to that, was is going to FOH.
What's your goal about going passive? I only would choose a passive cab, if I would have a really awesome 19" powerstage and/or a rack-mounted modeler.
-
@sascha-ballweg I have the powered bias rack. I thought that this was a good deal to use my old passive guitar boxes like the 4x12 and the thiele cab.
-
i went with the powered Head as well, if only so i would have the option to use a guitar cab if i wanted.
-
If I had a powered head, I'd go try and borrow the cheap crappy passive PA speakers my friends had laying around and see if I liked the general feel.
Going to a "better" box may may make some of the parameters slightly (most likely) or much much (rarely) better, but it will give you a very good general idea what this type of setup will feel like
-
agreed; before my FRFR stuff arrived i used my Head with the cheapo behringer monitor and it sounded just fine; there was a definite improvement with the FRFR setup but it wasn't mindblowing by any means. The only real actual problem you'll notice with a simple monitor as a cabinet is the off-axis weirdness caused by the horn being separate from the woofer, which can mess with your perception of the sound. Other than that, it's just fine to get you by until you decide to push for a better setup.
-
@ash-wolford so in your estimation you would say the coax "horn screwed into woofer" like the emeinence betas would do the trick? I wonder what difference the parameters of the box make and which feels more comfortable to play with. i actually like the idea of two 12" frfrs on stands behind me
-
@brian-dress if you're absolutely set on having two drivers, i'd either 1) have two separate cabinets with their own coax woofer/tweeter combos, or 2) a single 2x12 cab with two woofers and a tweeter+horn mounted directly between them. These setups will minimize off-axis weirdness as much as possible while still giving you two woofers. I wouldn't put two coax pairs in the same cab though.
-
@ash-wolford yeah for sure. I actually had a great experience playing through my PC and a mixer to a JBL speaker on a pole using some kind of solid state power amp. I went mono through just one speaker and it sounded pretty nice
-
OK.... disclaimer – newb alert. Apologies if I give too much detail, but just trying to avoid any "but we need to know your setup to answer... " type responses. Please also bear with me if this post seems off topic, because in the end, the real question is "do I actually HAVE TO run FRFR?' - maybe I do :-(
So I've done lots of 'sound', mainly as a recording engineer, a bit of live in club venues (usually 'live recording') and I (more recently) play guitar. I was there at the start of MIDI, let alone DSP and modelling, but have loved and trusted valve amps for-ever. Hey.... The Ramones, The Buzzcocks and The Replacements, were all pretty lo-fi, but there's no knocking those guitar sounds :-)
I've recently bought a Bias Head (rack version) and am selling a stack (pardon the pun!) of valve amps; some Boogies, some Fenders, Orange, Vox. 58 = bad back; just can't do it anymore. The JVM410C I'm keeping will probably never leave home (and, like most of the others, hasn't since back operation #3, with #4 due mid-June).
I've pared my setup for 'live/practice' to a Marshall 1936 cab, the Bias (Rack) Head, a Bias Distortion Pro and a TC Electronic G-Force system, with expression pedals attached to the footswitch bit, but the processor rack mounted along with the Bias... on wheels, like an airline carry/wheel-on (3RU) trolley :-)
So... i'm geting to the question.... promise.
Ideally, I'd take my little Gator Wheelie rack bag and the 1936 (on another trolley I have) and my G-Force (via one of those trolleys) in a typical pedalboard case to a gig... two wheelie load-ins and the bonus of a 'real' amp cab (that I happen to love) that is relatively light and compact (especially on a trolley). For practice/parties I could 'choose-not-to-sell' a 1x12 V30 Celestion cab I have that would fit on one trolley with the Bias/ G-Force rack bag and sound similar enough to me. If I wasn't flying 'coach', I could probably sneak it onboard any flight :-)
I no longer have a 'real' studio, and to me, the Celestion IR's as as good or better than I could do at home... and home is it, having 'tree-changed' to a lovely spot in the country. In fact; I'd say the genuine Celestion IR's are excellent and feel/sound 'real'.
Anyway... the question... ??? Last bit of info... obviously, I want to run a typical 4-cable setup... mine is:
Guitar - wireless - G-Force i/p (for wah, etc) - loop out to Bias Distortion (BD) i/p - BD o/p to Bias Head i/p - Bias Head pre-out to G-Force loop i/p 2 (let's call it ModFX i/p) - G-Force ModFX o/p to Bias Head PowerAmp i/p (BH PA i/p) then... and HERE is the quandry!!!
I'd say BH PA 'speaker' o/p to 'real' guitar cab MINUS IR/CabSim AND, BH PA 'line o/p' to PA, foldback, IEM, recording i/p, etc, etc WITH the ('Genuine Celestion') IR ON.
Reading the Postive Grid manual, it seems to indicate sending a 'non' simulated signal (IR or not) to the BH PA 'speaker' outputs TURNS OFF the ability to interrupt the signal flow within the BH; a-la the '4-cable-method', which conversely (might) mean that if I want to integrate multiple FX loops (via main 'guitar' i/p and pre-amp out, power-amp in) then I MUST run a FRFR cab; as I cannot turn off IR I want to go to FOH/IEM's from the (powered) speaker outs.
I hope that a) that you folks somehow understand that explanation and; b) I'm wrong... and can run FX loops, IR's to line outs and non-IR'd outputs to my guitar cab.
If you're still with me; thanks :-)
Respectfully, Mike
-
@mike-1 I just picked up a bias rack last Thursday (gigged with it Saturday night and another one coming up this Saturday). I run a setup with a real cab (mesa recto 2x12) and utilize the fx loop for my pedal board so it is something similar if I understood correctly.
There are two modes Serial (default setting) and Parallel. These are enabled by the F2 switch on the front of the rack. Serial mode sends the same signal to all outputs (speaker and line outs). So if you turn on the cab sim it'll affect all outputs.
If you turn on parallel mode and turn on the cab sim it'll only affect the line outs and not the speaker out. However there is one caveat about parallel mode which I'm not too happy about. When parallel mode is engaged the effects loop ONLY works with the line outs. Meaning the speaker out going to your cab will not have effects.
Hope that makes sense.
You'll want to check out the Cab sim, Serial and Parallel sections of the manual if you want to reference the instructions.
-
Hey guys! I bought an used frfr cab, Matrix cfr12, and it really sounds amazing. Thank you all for your advices!