Guitar Cabs And Speakers Are Important

[spawnofthesith]

something something impedance curves

 

[Eagle]

If your going to put a mike in front of the cab that's for "FRFR" anyway and people at the gig are hearing the PA ("FRFR")

 

[la szum]

My two most recent purchases have been big, dumb amps. For real.

 

[likitlikeyoulikeit]

I just want to reiterate, I'm not against someone else's thing that works for them.

I am purely speaking of personal preference for enjoyment sake. I know one can do this and along with this or that...to make it all null....

I just don't want the faff....so to speak.

I'm no analog purist...or anti digital. I'm just talking about the purity of the enjoyment and inspiration of playing with amps and cabs.

 

[Eagle]

Everyone should play what does it for them. I personally only use one guitar cab for quiet playing, a mesa thiele EV . I have recto 2x12 and custom Marshall 4x12s too.
Anything goes as long as it sounds good and feels right to you.
The worst live tones I have ever heard are usually down to user error ( or Headflush equipment) or bad playing.

 

[Aelred]

I took up playing guitar again after many years because I miss the sound of an electric guitar in a room, and there are no live venues around here anymore even if there were bands to play them. So I have to make my own noise in the suburbs with noise pollution restrictions (most of the venues were closed or stopped having bands due to noise pollution laws).

I have no intention whatsoever of gigging or recording anything ever.

A couple of Orange 15w Terrors – which would have me arrested cranked, but can go down to 0.5w. And a Two-note Torpedo attenuator for the Orange 1x12.

My Bad Cat Black Cat 20w with extension cab… I mainly use Master Volume, but it sounds sweet (perhaps not its best) at low volume.

Engl Fireball 25w coming this weekend – power soak down to 5 or 1 watt and Master volume.

My dream rig is a Mesa Triple on 2 4x12’s. But $$$, floor space and practicality …

If you gig or record, your requirements and budget may be very different. I don’t want to be a sound engineer or luthier and don’t want to sound overly “processed” in my room.

I took up playing again because I miss the sound of an electric guitar in a room.

 

[duzie]

 

[laxu]

Here's a great interview from Guitar Summit 2024 where Ignazio from Jensen explains various things that go into the design of a guitar speaker.

 

[Orvillain]

So are other options.

And let's be real here, people have mucked up "real" guitar amps into
"real" cabs using "real microphones," too. Nothing is foolproof or infallible.

Lies.

 

[FuzzyAce]

Barriers to creativity are just that.

The biggest barrier is:

 

[likitlikeyoulikeit]

The biggest barrier is:

Fair....but there are outside operators benefitting from our distraction.

 

[Will Onyx]

While my heart is with the premise of this thread, the tinnitus in my ears say there must be another way.

 

[bikescene]

Cabs and speakers are cool. Speakers are an easy way to make big changes to tone for relatively little money.

I’ve been doing a lot of speaker swapping the past few years. It’s fun to listen to the classics, but also the more maligned stuff like G12T-75s and RI Jensens.

I’ve just really started to appreciate different cabs sizes/configurations. That will be the next rabbit hole to fall into. It’s been interesting to hear a Greenback in a larger closed closed back 2x12 vs a smaller open back 2x12.

I’m probably looking at a Recto 2x12 or 4x12 next year. Maybe I’ll try to build a bee box 1x12.

 

[FuzzyAce]

Fair....but there are outside operators benefitting from our distraction.

Always will be, for sure.
I do try to keep an open mind with gear, it just comes and goes in waves -- what to use and why, etc. The key is having fun, like you said earlier in the thread, no matter what you're using. And even more importantly, just use what we already have. The newest gadget or tube amp may inspire, but in a month it won't be new, then what are we gonna do? For me I need a purpose along side the fun aspect of it, some kind of goal that gets me to another destination. Gear choice is just the bare bones of it, the rest is the personal challenge of just doing something with it that has meaning.

 

[FuzzyAce]

While my heart is with the premise of this thread, the tinnitus in my ears say there must be another way.

I feel your pain!

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Fair....but there are outside operators benefitting from our distraction.

The "people feeding us "FRFR"" is the smoke adjacent to the mirror...

like what you like, and of course having a rig that you are comfortable just plugging into and playing is going to be both more fun, and more likely to lead to musical output.

But I'd say if someone needs to be cranked through a Big Cab, or needs a Special Power Amp so that can really appreciate all the ethereal dynamics of their amplified sound...when playing at volumes where the acoustic sound of their electric guitar is at least as high as whatever is coming from the speaker...has as much of a tweaker syndrome/gear-standing-in-the-way-of-playing, blah blah blah as an Astrophysicist that is busy...adjusting a treble EQ control to make their "FRFR" less harsh.

 

[jay mitchell]

But I'd say if someone needs to be cranked through a Big Cab, or needs a Special Power Amp so that can really appreciate all the ethereal dynamics of their amplified sound...when playing at volumes where the acoustic sound of their electric guitar is at least as high as whatever is coming from the speaker...has as much of a tweaker syndrome/gear-standing-in-the-way-of-playing, blah blah blah as an Astrophysicist that is busy...adjusting a treble EQ control to make their ""FRFR"" less harsh.

What about people who never need to "adjust a treble EQ control to make their ""FRFR"" less harsh?" You listen to guitar sounds through ""FRFR"" speakers all the time. Do you always feel a need to turn down the treble whenever you can hear guitar in the music you're listening to? I don't.

If your two- or three-way speaker really does make guitar sound "harsh," then you need to find another speaker.

 

[likitlikeyoulikeit]

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

What about people who never need to "adjust a treble EQ control to make their """FRFR""" less harsh?" You listen to guitar sounds through """FRFR""" speakers all the time. Do you always feel a need to turn down the treble whenever you can hear guitar in the music you're listening to? I don't.

If your two- or three-way speaker really does make guitar sound "harsh," then you need to find another speaker.

If you feed a harsh, overly treble signal into a speaker, the sound coming from the speaker is likely to also be harsh and overly treble. The Rocket Scientists amongst us that are okay Tweaking for Days are clever enough to Menu Dive until they find something that controls the treble output of whatever we are feeding to that speaker and...turn it down. They teach that skill in Year Three at I Need A Degree To Play My Gear University.

*sarcasm*

 

[jay mitchell]

If you feed a harsh, overly treble signal into a speaker, the sounding coming from the speaker is likely to sound harsh.

Then you need not to feed a "harsh, overly treble signal into a speaker". If your preamp/modeler/profiler/whatever generates a signal that is harsher than the "real" amp/cab you're trying to emulate, that's where your problem lies. Blaming a neutral monitor for accurately amplifying that "harsh, overly treble signal" is the intellectual equivalent of blaming a mirror for making you look ugly.