NCD: BluGuitar Nanocab

[laxu]

I've had a helluva gear day. First the relic Tele, then the mail brought a used BluGuitar Nanocab I scored a few days ago.

In the pic there's a "on the smaller side of medium" banana for scale. And the Tele and the Amp 1 Mercury Edition I suppose. The cab is ridiculously tiny! It's barely larger than the 12" BluGuitar speaker inside it!

I've been wanting to try this cab because I wanted to know if something this small can sound good. Thomas Blug has also said it should sound good at low volume, so that was another thing I was interested in trying out. He has also explained that even the front grille material (paper) was carefully selected to get the best sound out of this thing.

So how's it sound? Bigger than its size would suggest. Being ported obviously helps, but even at very low volume it can sound full if you just turn up the bass quite high on the Amp 1. The BluGuitar speaker is Greenback-ish in voicing, so it goes well with the Amp 1.

Obviously it's not going to sound huge or thumpy like a 4x12 or anything, but for a home, or ultra-portable small gig cab, I think it punches well above its weight and size. It's somewhat mid-forward so I think it would cut through well with a band.

In any demos on YouTube I feel the Nanocab sounds a bit thin and bright but in a room, I don't feel that is the case. The overall character is pleasing, it only gets harsh if you set your amp to make it so.

It's a bit late so I didn't dare to play the setup very loud, but with the main Amp 1's MV on about 2 was pretty spot on for a reasonable daytime volume level and there's definitely a lot of room to get much louder.

I've been living in "cab sims through studio monitors" land for over a year now so it's fun to have a real cab at home again, even a tiny one. It feels a bit odd switching between this and my studio monitors as you get so used to the tones you have out of one speaker system that one or the other is going to sound "wrong" if they are dialed very differently.

PS. Bonus points for the way BluGuitar has designed the Amp 1 to have a gap under it so it fits perfetly over the handle. It's not a pretty amp, but it's a well designed one.

 

[James Freeman]

Banana!

 

[JiveTurkey]

I've always wondered about this cab. Very nice!

 

[Warmart]

Ohhh nice, congrats! The cab is, however, quite deep, and clearly shows the limitations of your banana.

 

[James Freeman]

I've been living in "cab sims through studio monitors" land for over a year now so it's fun to have a real cab at home again, even a tiny one. It feels a bit odd switching between this and my studio monitors as you get so used to the tones you have out of one speaker system that one or the other is going to sound "wrong" if they are dialed very differently.

I concur.
When I don't play through my guitar cab for a few weeks, going back to it from studio monitors, even a small 1x12 will sound huge.

 

[mbenigni]

I've always wanted a Nanocab. Congrats!

 

[laxu]

Ohhh nice, congrats! The cab is, however, quite deep, and clearly shows the limitations of your banana.

It's all about the girth anyway!

 

[Foxmeister]

I have a Bluguitar fat cab - I must say that they really do sound "bigger" than they actually are.

 

[paisleywookiee]

I tend to shy away from using a banana for scale.....

But awesome little cab! They make great stuff.

 

[Alex Kenivel]

 

[laxu]

Played the Nanocab a bit louder now, so more impressions:

My main cab to use with the BluGuitar Amp 1 ME is a Bluetone 4x10 with 10" Greenbacks seen above. It's just big enough that atm it's residing in my parents' basement, which is why I have been using mostly modelers, IRs and studio monitors at home in my small apartment.

For a medium to high gain Marshall tone (think e.g more modern Iron Maiden, Judas Priest etc sounds), I've been setting the Amp 1 ME EQ with the 4x10 to Bass 4-5, Mid 5-6, Treble 5-6. This range tends to work with most guitars I own. I then roll the guitar volume and tone back to get around any harshness that the amp's old school bright cap value could introduce.

Using the Nanocab, I ended up with Bass 7-10, Mids 4-6, Treble 4-5. Turning the bass high can help it get a bit of oomph to the low end, but it's not going to satisfy someone who loves e.g a 4x12 low end thump, or the amount of bass some Mesa amps have on tap. The cab definitely needs to be on the floor or it gets too thin.

I kinda want to try the Fatcab now...

Notice that the BluGuitar EQ is very different from typical amp tone stacks. It's instead more like a post-EQ consisting of a low/high shelf filter and a 600 Hz midrange filter. So it has more sound shaping range than most amp EQs and even small changes (1 dial number higher/lower) can be fairly significant.

On top of that the Amp 1 has tiny little channel Tone knobs on the side that blend between two fixed tonestacks to further alter the sound. The Classic channel blends from a Plexi tonestack to a JCM800 style and the Modern channel goes from Soldano SLO-ish to some brighter, angrier ENGL type thing. The Vintage channel has no Tone knob because according to Thomas Blug it's perfect as is - and I concur! It's the channel I use the most.

 

[laxu]

Playing some lighter stuff with my Tele on the Vintage channel, rolling guitar volume back to clean it up...damn, it sounds really satisfying even down to pretty low volumes. Really good home/small gig/portable cab for blues, classic rock etc. No idea how it souds with other amps.

This is what BluGuitar says of the speaker:

The NanoCab comes with the BG12-C, a custom-made 12" speaker with a 60 watt load capacity, which was specially developed for use in the NanoCab. Thanks to the special, particularly vibrating membrane, the BG12-C sounds very balanced even at low volumes. The 38 ounce magnet ensures a focused mid-range sound image. The BG12-C combines the qualities of the Celestion Greenback and the Celestion Vintage 30 with higher power handling.

The speaker gives the specially tailored box with the ported housing a balanced character in the direction of clean and blues rock, which makes the NanoCab an ideal cabinet for clean and blues as well as quiet playing at home.

The speaker in the Nanocab is slightly different from the one in the Fatcab too. 38 vs 42 ounce magnet it seems.

 

[laxu]

Since the only mics I own are the Sonarworks XREF20 reference mics, I decided to try if I can record the Nanocab with one of those. I think it worked reasonably well. I put the XREF20 aimed at the "G" in the BluGuitar logo plate, so pretty much dead center, 1" away. Added a bit of compression from Logic Pro's stock compressor plugins just to raise the clean bits a bit.

Guitar is the KDC "Barncaster" Tele, bridge pickup. Any dynamics were done only by picking softer or harder, so the amp cleans up really nicely!
BluGuitar Amp 1 ME is on the Vintage channel with the MV at about 5.5 but volume reduced to home volumes using the internal powersoak.

I actually forgot the Amp 1 on EQ settings that Thomas Blug used to match his Amp 1 to a Soldano SLO using the Modern channel. But I think those worked pretty decently on the Vintage as well. B/M/T: 4.5 / 7 / 7.

 

[laxu]

Got to try the BluGuitar Fatcab today. While the amp used was the Amp 1 Iridium Edition rather than the Amp 1 Mercury Edition I use myself, you could find similar enough tones in the two to compare.

I might actually prefer the Nanocab. The Fatcab seemed like something that will open up better at stage volume and didn't quite get there at modest store volumes I used. If the Nanocab is more mids with a smoother top end, the Fatcab is more lows and highs.

I was actually surprised, I was thinking maybe the Fatcab will just sound bigger and more open, which it kinda did, but there's something really pleasing about the Nanocab and it can be turned down to "the acoustic string sound of the guitar is louder than the amp" level low and still sound somewhat decent. Most cabs become thin and fizzy like that.

 

[laxu]

Another riff, this time miced with an Audio Technica 2020 which works a whole lot better. Pretty easy mic to use on this cab, just put it around the center and adjust distance to add/avoid mic proximity effect.

Forgot the settings and even guitar used here, but it's again the Vintage channel.