CAN YOUR CAB REALLY FREE YOUR TONE?
Guitar amplifiers fall into two categories, combo amps and head with cab amps. Both camps have their own pros and cons with space, portability and ease usually taking the top spots of each list, but should they? Once you have even one head and cabinet setup, and plugged another combo amp or other head into an existing cab you realize there is something even more important to consider. Tone. That magic word that all guitarists are on a never ending search for. Turns out the cabinet and speakers you plug into have way more to do with your amp’s tone and feel than you likely ever realized. So can your cab really free your tone? Yes, yes it can.
WHERE IT STARTED
My first realization came after I bought my first head and cab setup, a grail level amp, the Two-Rock Classic Reverb Signature V3. Huge cleans with tons of bottom end was the name of the game for me. like all things life changes and I decided I wanted something smaller and more versatile. Enter a Bloomfield Drive 40 watt combo amp and out goes the Classic Reverb. A second cascading stage to give more in amp gain, and a smaller footprint for if I ever moved (I was in a bit of a minimalism phase). The only problem? After some time I really missed the big deep cleans of the Classic Reverb.
Luckily (in hindsight) I sold the head separate from the cab as I got a change to plug the Bloomfield combo into the Two-Rock 2×12 cab. The difference was honestly staggering! Not only did the bass response of the 2×12 come back, but surprising some of the chime that I thought was inherently lost in the new amp too! This revelation lead me to run the combo into the cab pretty much all the time, and eventually I swapped the combo for the 100 watt head version of the Bloomfield Drive as it seemed silly to have a combo speaker that was never getting used and also gave back the 100 watt bass response that I adore.
ADDING SOME MORE
The next head and cabinet pair I purchased was another huge 100 watt beast, the Paul Reed Smith J-MOD 100. This time the cabinet was an even bigger closed back cab giving me something else to play with. When you need more bass out of an amp (rare, but happens as you will see soon), that is the cab to plug into. The cab matches to the John Mayer signature amp very well, giving it the signature bass response that John raves about in his demos. The closed back doesn’t fill the space with sound in the same way the Two-Rock cab does, but instead gives a quicker response to the speakers as the air behind helps bring them back to the ready position faster.
WHERE IT WENT WRONG, BUT THEN SAVED THE DAY
So far both amps sound great, but different into each cab, but what about an amp and cab that were meant for each other but just don’t do it for me? That’s just what happened when I picked up a Mesa Boogie Triple Crown 100 head and cab locally. The cab was compact by deep, giving a really percussive mid range that I could see working really well for high gain metal players, but make the amp sound quite nasal and honky in my opinion. As I got ready to sell the amp and cab I figured I’d give the amp one last try plugged into the PRS cab and I was blown away, almost literally. Gone was the honk and in it’s place was massive bass end with a more classic rock feel. That cab (and the Two-Rock one as well, which also sounds fantastic with the Boogie) saved that amp for me.
After I had gotten rid of my original Classic Reverb, I plugged a lot of amps into that 2×12; 5-watt marshal clones, 20-watt hand-wired Marshalls, Kempers, and more. Compared to a number of other cabs I have had (Marshall hand-wired 2×12 for the 20 watt as well as some unbranded ones) it’s always sounded more open and balanced than the rest. Even in the world of IR’s and digital amps, do yourself a favor and get a great cab or two, it’s worth it. Next up for me, I’m thinking it’s time to try and 4×12 or 4×10 and see what that does to my tone.
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