Hello all! I was going to do a post about this Mesa Cab Clone ("CC"), and sort of review how it did with a PRS amp (my Grissom 30 in this case), but I decided that the most important question is:
"How does it sound versus a real cab?"
So I made a couple of clips and posted them on Soundcloud. One clip is the miked up speaker cab, one is the Cab Clone track.
Here's how I did it: I ran the output of my Grissom 30 into the Cab Clone, and also ran the "Thru" output of the Cab Clone into the speaker cabinet. That way, both the Cab Clone and the speaker run at the same time and can be directly compared.
I took the output from the CC and ran that into a mic preamp, and stuck a Shure SM57 against the grille just off the center of one of the speaker cones, and ran it into an identical mic preamp. Hit record, and you have the exact same performance recorded, one of the CC, one of the miked up speaker cabinet.
I wanted to be careful about setting the levels to be close, but this was a quickie demo, and I had the amp set up for a certain tone for a project, so I didn't want to fuss too much to try to match the levels exactly. I kind of eyeballed the meters and made the output levels as close as felt reasonable.
I found that the main difference between the two recorded tracks is that the one recorded with the 57 is a little more present/bright, and seems to accentuate distortion coming off the speaker cone a little more. But a lot of that could just be mic placement. Place the mic a little more toward the edge, and I'm pretty sure the 57 track would sound more like the Clone track.
At the same time, the Cab Clone track has a more solid bottom and lower midrange, with not as much brightness as the DG miked with the 57. The tracks aren't set at carefully matched levels, so you may or not find this, but I heard it in my monitors in the studio.
Really, the difference is more like you'd find with two different microphones than with two completely different methods of recording an amp, which surprised me a lot. Here are the links. The first one is the amp and cabinet miked with the 57, the second is the cab clone:
https://soundcloud.com/lschefman/grissom-amp-and-cab-semi-clean-comparison
https://soundcloud.com/lschefman/cab-clone-grissom-amp-semi-clean
To make the comparison more fair - that is, to make the cab clone sound closer to a mic in a room - I added literally a 1% wet amount of an Eventide room reverb. A tiny amount, but it is more like how I'd use a Cab Clone track in a mix, since the whole point is to use it to mimic the tone of a miked up cabinet.
I'll leave it to you to decide which track you prefer. I could see using either one in a mix, depending on context.
At some point I'll do some overdriven tracks.
"How does it sound versus a real cab?"
So I made a couple of clips and posted them on Soundcloud. One clip is the miked up speaker cab, one is the Cab Clone track.
Here's how I did it: I ran the output of my Grissom 30 into the Cab Clone, and also ran the "Thru" output of the Cab Clone into the speaker cabinet. That way, both the Cab Clone and the speaker run at the same time and can be directly compared.
I took the output from the CC and ran that into a mic preamp, and stuck a Shure SM57 against the grille just off the center of one of the speaker cones, and ran it into an identical mic preamp. Hit record, and you have the exact same performance recorded, one of the CC, one of the miked up speaker cabinet.
I wanted to be careful about setting the levels to be close, but this was a quickie demo, and I had the amp set up for a certain tone for a project, so I didn't want to fuss too much to try to match the levels exactly. I kind of eyeballed the meters and made the output levels as close as felt reasonable.
I found that the main difference between the two recorded tracks is that the one recorded with the 57 is a little more present/bright, and seems to accentuate distortion coming off the speaker cone a little more. But a lot of that could just be mic placement. Place the mic a little more toward the edge, and I'm pretty sure the 57 track would sound more like the Clone track.
At the same time, the Cab Clone track has a more solid bottom and lower midrange, with not as much brightness as the DG miked with the 57. The tracks aren't set at carefully matched levels, so you may or not find this, but I heard it in my monitors in the studio.
Really, the difference is more like you'd find with two different microphones than with two completely different methods of recording an amp, which surprised me a lot. Here are the links. The first one is the amp and cabinet miked with the 57, the second is the cab clone:
https://soundcloud.com/lschefman/grissom-amp-and-cab-semi-clean-comparison
https://soundcloud.com/lschefman/cab-clone-grissom-amp-semi-clean
To make the comparison more fair - that is, to make the cab clone sound closer to a mic in a room - I added literally a 1% wet amount of an Eventide room reverb. A tiny amount, but it is more like how I'd use a Cab Clone track in a mix, since the whole point is to use it to mimic the tone of a miked up cabinet.
I'll leave it to you to decide which track you prefer. I could see using either one in a mix, depending on context.
At some point I'll do some overdriven tracks.
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