Barefaced Activier

Speaker‑cab innovators Barefaced add a dedicated power amp option to their full‑range speaker designs.

Regular readers may recall my enthusiasm for the innovative Barefaced Reformer 1x12 guitar speaker cabinet back in 2018. Barefaced’s AVD (Augmented Vent Diffractor) design acts as both a tuned port for greater low‑frequency extension and a diffuser for an amount of rear‑firing sound. The result is an unfeasibly small and lightweight speaker cab that just sounds so much bigger than you’d imagine it possibly could. Barefaced have a lot of other cab designs, too, and started out making bass cabinets that were significantly lighter in weight than other bass cabs without this adversely affecting their performance, but it was apparent from the outset that their AVD cabs might also make a good platform for a full‑range system.

Barefaced soon launched their Reality series, marrying Celestion’s two‑way, coaxial F12‑X200 ‘Full Range Live Response’ 12‑inch driver with an enhanced version of their AVD design, designated AVD8. The enhancement was mainly in the addition of an Eminence APT80 rear‑facing high‑frequency driver that coherently combines with the AVD’s rearward output to create a figure‑8 polar response for the cabinet as a whole, the audible effect of which is a far more consistent tone across a wide range of listening positions. My long‑term experience with the F12‑X200 is that its low‑end performance seems to be quite dependent on its enclosure, but the AVD design certainly seems to bring out the best in it.

Powering Up

Whereas almost all full‑range PA‑style cabs likely to be used with digital amp modellers these days are self‑powered, using a modeller with a passive Reality cab still leaves you needing to find a suitable power amp. The Barefaced team had apparently been working on a design for a high‑end bass amplifier since 2017, but seeing a gap in the guitar market, they directed their efforts towards the project that became the Activier range: Activier 1 with a single input, gain control, and external Speakon for an extension speaker; and Activier 2, with two identical channels. The amplifiers can be fully integrated into even the smallest AVD cabs, with each Activier channel able to deliver 200 Watts RMS into a 4Ω load, 100W into 8Ω or 50W into 16Ω, whilst adding less than one and a half pounds to the already remarkably light weight of a small AVD cab.

The Activier employs the latest ICEpower Class‑D power‑amp module, in combination with a custom‑designed FET preamp offering 30dB gain with very low noise and distortion. It’s also passively cooled, so there’s no fan noise to worry about. Even though it will most often be seeing a balanced line‑level source from a modeller or effects unit, the input is unbalanced; a balanced line input on XLR or TRS would have been nice, given that most modellers will have a balanced output and the modeller might need to be located some distance from the speaker in a stage setup. Input impedance is 1MΩ, so you could even connect a guitar straight in if you only wanted a very clean sound. Testing with a variety of digital amp and speaker modellers, sending at line level, I found I could easily get the Activier/Reality 112FR combination up to stage performance levels whilst maintaining the feeling of there being both plenty of headroom and more power in reserve.

The Activier Class‑D amp module can be fitted to any Barefaced AVD guitar cabinet, and comes in one‑ or two‑channel versions.

Reality Check

I have previously checked out the passive version of Barefaced’s Reality cab, and found it to be a significant step up from using a self‑powered PA‑style speaker as an on‑stage monitor. The large‑cone driver of the F12‑X200 keeps it closer to the feel of a conventional guitar speaker, whilst the coaxial tweeter integrates much better, to my ears, than any system in which there is physical separation between the tweeter and the LF driver. The Reality’s rear‑firing tweeter is the icing on the cake, giving the AVD cabs a lovely enveloping rear output that you can tune to the environment. It’s a bit like the effect of using an open‑back combo cab with a reflective surface behind, but more, and better!

In a Reality cab with an integral Activier amp, the resistive tweeter level control employed in the passive version is replaced by two mini switches, one offering 3dB attenuation, the other 6dB, and 9dB when combined. I generally preferred a setting of ‑6dB for loud electric guitar, but I could imagine going to ‑9dB in somewhere really bright‑sounding.

Where I certainly would use the full rear tweeter output, however, is when using an AVD cab with an amplified acoustic instrument — an acoustic guitar with a natural‑sounding pickup system sounds simply superb through one of these. It is like playing an actual acoustic instrument, only louder, with the sound seeming to come from everywhere around the instrument rather than a single point.

Better Than A PA Cab?

There are a significant number of manufacturers now addressing the ‘dedicated powered speaker for modelling amps’ market, and that simply wouldn’t be the case if just using powered PA speakers worked entirely satisfactorily for everyone. I can’t say that I’ve tried them all, but with a good modeller source, I can confirm that I found I could use the Activier/Reality 112FR combination behind me on a small gig like a normal guitar amp, using it as the only guitar sound source for the room, and I can’t say I have ever really experienced that with a PA‑type speaker. As always, you’ll need to dial in your tones at performance volume to make sure you have enough midrange — there’s no getting round the Fletcher‑Munson effect!

The Activier/Reality 112FR combination offers an incomparably compact and lightweight, self‑powered, all‑analogue solution for the modelling‑amp guitar player...

The Activier/Reality 112FR combination offers an incomparably compact and lightweight, self‑powered, all‑analogue solution for the modelling‑amp guitar player, with excellent off‑axis frequency response, and the familiar‑feeling dynamic response of a conventional guitar cabinet. Even with only a nominal 200 Watts maximum rated output, compared to the quoted 1000 Watts or so in some other systems, it’s got ‘thump’ in the way that a plastic PA speaker never has. Barefaced’s ‘conventional guitar speaker’ aesthetic, too, will doubtless help this design appeal to those who just prefer to maintain a more traditional look to their stage setup even when using a modelling solution. The Activier amp module, perhaps thanks to the curated response and very low noise floor of its FET preamp design, is a cut above typical Class‑D performance, in my experience, and I rather hope to see it made available as a standalone ‘pedalboard’ amp module as well, before too long.