I'm able to move mine around only a couple of months after having my chest sawed in half during surgery, so yeah, I LOVE light!
A Thread On The David Grissom Cab
- Thread starter László
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I'm able to move mine around only a couple of months after having my chest sawed in half during surgery, so yeah, I LOVE light!
alantig
Zombie Four, DFZ
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Problem. Solved.
It isn't a problem, but if it was, that wouldn't be the solution. Though I saw your mastery of the rattle-can in those pics of your metal storage unit...
Dusty Chalk
alberngruppenführer
Yeah, but no. You mentioned elsewhere regarding the 85/15 vs. 57/08 pickups thread that one's not really better, just different, and I completely agree with the concept. I would even go farther and make the following generalization -- once you get beyond a certain threshold of quality, decisions boil down to preferences more than one actually being better than another. That's why "oh such and such after market pickups are the best" don't help me a whole lot. In what way are they better? Does that match my needs?
Similarly, I already have a favourite guitar -- why would I need any others? Because they're different. Ditto amps and cabs, and probably the single most differentiating factors in cabs are the speakers. So I just want something different, that's all.
I had this one Rivera Clubster, and for some reason, I bought a second one (the first was the 12, the second was the 10). Someone had swapped the speaker, and the result was that it had almost no bottom end, so I ended up returning it within the return period. I still kind of regret that, because it had a really sweet sound to it, and I've mentally "moved on" from needing that much bass all the time, sometimes I want that sound. I wish I made a note of what speaker was in there. It was red, that's all I remember (so Eminence).
Maybe something chimey? Just thinking out loud.
I agree with it, too (that's why I said it)!
Therefore, I hereby renounce, take back, disavow, repent of, and otherwise repudiate my earlier remark!
Dusty Chalk
alberngruppenführer
:top:
Still going to try a full-stack first, though (2x4x10).
Still going to try a full-stack first, though (2x4x10).
I should point out that the reason I said the thing about not fixing the speakers is because I realized that my last half dozen or so speaker cabs have all had the dreaded V-30s, and I liked all the cabs, and am about to buy a second DG30 with the danged V-30s. So there's that.
I do technically own a Mesa cab with a Celestion/Black Shadow 90 in it, but it lives in LA now with my son.
Dusty Chalk
alberngruppenführer
Yup. First cab I ever got was a cheap Marshall (?) clone loaded with V30s. Never needed the real thing. I could defiinitely envision a guitarist going through his entire career without ever needing anything else. That's just not me.
Or me.
I've had lots of other speakers - Greenbacks, G12 Hs, G12 M 65s, Jensens, Alnico Blues, the Black Shadow 90s, G12 75s, Eminence in a couple of flavors, hemp cones...it's been a long ride over many years. But the V-30s work well in the right cabs, so there's that. I've had them in PRS, Mesa (several), Bogner (several), Bad Cat and a couple of others, and I've never felt they weren't a good match for my amps, though of course they sound different in every cab.
One thing that's good about the V-30s for me is that they seem to match up well to SM57s, and to ribbon mics. That upper mid spike that people hate is actually really good for recording! I've always felt this way, and one of the proofs was my oversize Bogner 212 with V-30s. That cab was very, very bright in the room, in fact, with some amps I thought it was almost unlistenable, yet it recorded as well or better than any cab I've ever had until getting the DG cab, which does something different completely, but records very well. Another thing I shouldn't have sold, of course.
A couple of days ago, I was watching one of the Tim Pierce videos where he said his recording cabs are loaded with V-30s as well. A thousand major label records in, he's settled on the V-30, which kind of surprised me. I figured he'd have a bunch of different choices in his speaker cab closet, but no. He's got a 212 and a 412, and that's it. Both have V-30s, apparently. So I felt a little better about my own choices in that regard.
Generally speaking, in a live band application, the bass is lost, and the energy to produce it is wasted. Unless you're like me and like the output stage working that hard. I'll put the cab on a stand to keep from turning the stage into a subwoofer. But the speaker(s) get thrashed by my amp in a very musical and fulfilling way.
Rider1260
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With my H and it Stealth DB cab it likes to have someplace to project too, started it in a corner of my guitar area didn't like it so much moved it next to my Boogie where it could throw across the room before hitting a wall and it sounds much better
The main reason it sounds better is that in a corner you have what's called Quarter Space Bass Reinforcement. This is undesirable except for subwoofers. It really has very little to do with the speakers projecting toward the opposite wall. Here's what happens in a quarter space reinforcement situation:
The floor increases the bass room mode by doubling it; close to one wall on the floor doubles it again, and in a corner the second wall doubles it a third time. A corner is close to two walls. The only way to create worse room modes is to put the speaker in a corner with a very low ceiling! There will be standing waves all over the place.
So what you get in a corner is a very muddy sound, with lots of peaks and nulls depending on where you're listening in the room. The corner is never a good place to stick an amp, unless you move it several feet from the rear wall and corner.
Even when the cab is closed-back, you have to remember that low frequencies are very long wavelengths - a 100Hz wave like your guitar can produce is 11.25 feet long, and omnidirectional. The reflections off floor, side walls, and back wall come from these omnidirectional frequencies. Some arrive out of phase, and cancel each other out, so you get nulls, and some reinforce one another, so you get those uncontrollable peaks. And the smaller the room, the worse the result can be.
As frequencies rise, the wavelengths shorten, and the direct sound from the speakers tends to be more directional, but wall reflections even at higher frequencies matter, and for the most part, the bounce off the wall causes phase cancellations, which is why studio recording rooms use diffusers, absorbers, and irregular surfaces at various angles to control splashback.
Out-of-phase signals bouncing off walls cause a frequency that is 180 degrees out of phase to cancel out completely and become inaudible - this is how a humbucker pickup cancels out hum. In a room, when a frequency bounces back completely out of phase, it is cancelled, and you don't hear that frequency. So you get peaks and nulls in the frequency response.
The frequencies that will be cancelled by the opposite wall by arriving out of phase depends on - you guessed it - their wavelength. This is simply a mathematical thing. Different rooms' sizes and distances of the wall from the sound source will cancel out different frequencies.
The best sounding place will usually be at least a foot off the floor about 35-40% into the room. But everything depends on the measurement of the actual room. That isn't practical for most applications, but moving it out of the corner was a good first step, and moving it away from the wall as far as is comfortable would be another good step.
Reflections off the opposite wall don't really help things, most merely cause phase cancellations, but that can sound pretty good depending on distance, by accentuating certain frequencies and cancelling others, of course. And a little room reverberation often sounds good, but of course it comes at the price of phase issues.
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Having worked in basement studios for years, I couldn't agree more that they present problems. The ceiling in my studio, fortunately, is a full 8 feet, so I got lucky - it's one of the reasons I got this place. But even if the basement walls are drywall, and even if there's a fairly decent ceiling, the bass pressure doesn't move through the walls like it does in other rooms, it bounces back off the concrete or cinder block walls. You probably saw the pictures of my studio with all the bass traps; I have twice as many as would be needed on the main floor in a similarly sized and shaped room!
Also, I use acoustic risers and gobos to get the cabs up off the floor, prevent structure-borne vibration, and absorb sound pressure levels. It's a pain in the rear to do all this, but at least I get good sound, which is important for my livelihood.
I once met with one of the premier studio designers about having him work on and redesign my old home studio. The first thing he asked was, "Is it in a basement?" I said yes. "I won't design a studio in a basement," he said. "The acoustical problems are nearly impossible to overcome and I won't put my name on that. Got a garage?"
Thing was, my wife hit the roof when I told her we were moving my studio to the garage. I didn't want to add on, so I gave up and simply treated the room as best I could. My newer space is actually a lot better sounding because it's more symmetrical and the ceiling is 8 feet. But it's still not like having a purpose built room, though I guess it works for me.
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