Yesterday I sat together with Günter Haas for a little shootout. He brought his Matrix Q 12a and a Camper 112 CX that was sent to him for evaluation purpose. We had planned to evaluate these against one of my Atomic CLR's Although we're both from Hamburg we hadn't met before so let me first say that it was a real nice afternoon sitting together with Günter and chatting about music, gear and many other things. A real pleasure. Thank you for that, Günter! ;) Günter has an immense experience as a musician, and he is a very versatile session player for more than 20 years so it was fairly clear that I would do the filming and he would do the playing. He had also brought his 1966 Stratocaster which is a beautiful and very expressive guitar. All recordings were done with that beauty. We positioned the three cabs side by side in the middle of my living room, Matrix center, Atomic to the right, Camper to the left. Günter played riffs and phrases, and I did filming and switching betweeen two amp on the fly with the use of an A/B box. My personal impressions are as follows: 1. Atomic CLR was the loudest. It was dialed back a bit to match the Q 12a (which was maxed) in loudness. Kemper was set to -15dB and we went pretty loud. 2. Atomic CLR in backline position with the preset switch set to 'BL' had a little less bass than the Q 12a. 3. Atomic CLR was then changed to wedge postition with the preset switch set to 'TILT'. In this position it was significantly more bass heavy and actually had more bass than the Q 12a. 4. Both CLR positions and presets were pleasing to the ear (I liked the wedge/tilt) more but in respect to fidelity I was surprised about the drastic changes that the Atomic showed compared with the unaltered Matrix Q12. (And I can't help asking: When Atomic claims fidelity comparable to studio monitors, what is true fidelity now? BL or TILT with its huge bass boost. I didn't see this documented in the CLR manual either). 5. But the focus here is, of course, guitar amplification . Actually when the CLR was in wedge/tilt position, it was REALLY hard to tell which is which and I had to get close to the cabs several times just to make sure which one I was hearing. They were nearly indistinguishable. Awesome, both the Q 12a and the CLR. 6. Now for the Camper 112 CX. We had had very high hopes for this one, but it was a real disappointment. Why? Because it is so quiet that you NEVER EVER can dream of keeping up with a moderate drummer. Either we had a defective unit or KPA-solutions really have to re-work the poweramp of this one completely. To match full power on the Camper we had to turn down the Matrix to 9:00 - 9:30 of its volume pot which is ridiculously quiet. You can clearly notice we turned down in that part of the video as the cam mic captures a lot mor of Günter's string attack. 7. Apart from the missing loudness though, the Camper is a nice cab. So PLEASE RE-WORK the poweramp of this. 8. Is there a winner? Hmm, I don't think so. What I have learned though is that the Matrix Q12a is absolutely up to par with the CLR. Also it is lighter than the CLR and I like the form factor very much. Should I need another gigh quality stage monitor with a more amp like form factor i would seriously consider the Matrix. Feel free to comment and have fun watching the vid! [YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_E2oha1l-Y[/YOUTUBE] P.S: I don't know what YT did to the audio. Theres some phasing happening in the YT video that is not on the original video.
