Hey guys, sounds like you're all experiencing similar issues. I am getting a good sound on stage and out front but only because I'm lugging a Marshall 4x12" with me. For the P.A. I go direct out, but for distorted tones it can sound a bit too brtittle-bright so sometimes the soundguy will slap a mic in front of my cabinet and blend it with the D.I. Out to warm the tone up. For stage, I don't like the looseness of the bass frequencies from open-back speaker cabinets (playing mostly hard rock and classic metal so bass has to be tight) so a standard 1x12" or 2x12 combo is out as most are open-backed. And the Tech21 PowerEngine looks cool but I'd like a stereo 2x12" solution and a 1x12" PowerEngine is $339 at Musician's Friend so 2 of those starts to get expensive. I've been thinking that my solution will be to build a 2x12" cabinet using 2 speakers from my 4x12" and then build my Marshall stereo power amp into the cabinet. I still think this is a product that Line 6 could really do well with considering how many people use pedalboards and are plugging into the clean channel of a combo amp and not using the bulk of the electronics of the amp.

Guitarzan, I have a very specific tone I am chasing, and I know what you mean about the fuzzyness of many of the X3 patches. The closest I've got to a cleaner distorted tone from the Line 6 is a tone a friend and I cooked up based on the Dual Rectifier amp model. I'm at work now but I can post details later. I've always prefered real tube amps, but it's hard to beat the flexibility of the effects patching from the X3 Live and the convenience of carrying it all around in a lightweight pedalboard. It would take a lot of fancy dance moves to replicate some of the effects chains that can be switched instantly on the X3 with a standard pedalboard with individual pedals, and though I am still carrying the 4x12" around it's nice not to carry around a 50 lb. amp head as well. As far as powered monitors, in theory they should provide a great sound when speaker emulation from the X3 is used, but in real life that's not been my experience. They still tend to sound muffled and/or fuzzy. IMHO a better solution is to make an amplified speaker cabinet without preamp controls, with guitar speakers in it to more accurately produce the frequency range of a guitar, despite the cabinet emulation in the X3 live and other Line 6 products. I just have to figure out the cabinets dimensions for the project I mentioned above and then I can get started building. I'll report back with the results.

Andy