In my (limited) experience as sound engineer and musician in the past open back guitar amps sounds the best, just because of the lack of reflection. So i can follow your point. But it has no use to try to play guitar trough flat hifi style speakers, a guitar amp should sound very coloured with a treble peak.
What i did was padding the back of a closed box with thick felt, wich helped a lot, but most of the time, when i recorded guitar, i took of the back of the speaker box (mostly possible to change the driver) and recorded it like that. But most amps i've ueed (mainly Fender and Vox combo amps) have at least a partly open back.
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Hi Waxx,
Well it largely depend of genre in my experience ( about open back): with rock or blues band and mellow/ soft metal it is probably true.
With more modern style in metal ( neo/ nu/ whatever...) i always prefer closed back and most guitarist i have worked with too. Mesa style cabs.
Leadbelly opinion is a reality ( frequency fighting between instruments) but with the advent of b ( and sometimes a) strings tuning there is a need to reproduce low end and open back i find defective in that case. Even if you end up using high pass on them it give some thickness which is difficult ( for me and the way i work) to achieve with open back.
Galu's and Charles opinion is almost what i think of it but i would include microphone too: sm57, md421, e609, ribbon or electrostatics all gives different rendering and 'colour' to the final sound.
But it is an opinion others are as valid as mine, there is many ways to skin a cat.
An other thing in my way of working is that i use almost always two mics minimum, so the resulting sound is probably not easy to copy. One much more treble oriented the other low end oriented. Mix and match to taste once monocompatibility have been checked. Sometimes two more ( one 609 for mid or a ribbon and a Static u47 fet or my own version of c12a as distant mic to have 'air' and room).
Well it largely depend of genre in my experience ( about open back): with rock or blues band and mellow/ soft metal it is probably true.
With more modern style in metal ( neo/ nu/ whatever...) i always prefer closed back and most guitarist i have worked with too. Mesa style cabs.
Leadbelly opinion is a reality ( frequency fighting between instruments) but with the advent of b ( and sometimes a) strings tuning there is a need to reproduce low end and open back i find defective in that case. Even if you end up using high pass on them it give some thickness which is difficult ( for me and the way i work) to achieve with open back.
Galu's and Charles opinion is almost what i think of it but i would include microphone too: sm57, md421, e609, ribbon or electrostatics all gives different rendering and 'colour' to the final sound.
But it is an opinion others are as valid as mine, there is many ways to skin a cat.
An other thing in my way of working is that i use almost always two mics minimum, so the resulting sound is probably not easy to copy. One much more treble oriented the other low end oriented. Mix and match to taste once monocompatibility have been checked. Sometimes two more ( one 609 for mid or a ribbon and a Static u47 fet or my own version of c12a as distant mic to have 'air' and room).
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Hello krivium,
I left microphones out of it on the one hand so as not to complicate things even further and because strictly speaking they are not part of the instrument.
Case in point: A grand piano is a fully fledged instrument in it's own right whereas an electric guitar without amp and speaker is not. However a grand can be made to sound remarkably different by using different mic'ing regimes.
It is a production issue more than a musician/instrument issue.
I left microphones out of it on the one hand so as not to complicate things even further and because strictly speaking they are not part of the instrument.
Case in point: A grand piano is a fully fledged instrument in it's own right whereas an electric guitar without amp and speaker is not. However a grand can be made to sound remarkably different by using different mic'ing regimes.
It is a production issue more than a musician/instrument issue.
I guess a cat could literally be skinned by the use of a Marshall full stack!
Charles
So true! Particularly in black metal: had a guitarist which looked for ' les oreilles qui saignent' kind of sound ( ear bleeding). Painfull memories of sessions as they were perfectionist and it took so much time to reach their goal...
Charles i got your point. Where to draw the line?
When i was assistant many times musicians dictate to engineer which mic to use and where to locate them... with great success!
Since i consider mic as part of the 'sound'.
Mario's quest and Kstr message reminds me of a french guy's site which decided to 'upgrade' most of his gear ( electronic mod mostly) and gave audio example of before/after mods.
I was surprised to find that for my own preference it was too much upgrade in the end and in some way i prefered the amplifier with some of the 'flaws' still present:
Exemples d'optimisation d'amplificateurs à lampes pour guitare
Check for yourself. For the studio 22 definetely he is gone too far for me.
Sometimes i purposedly locate amplifier head on the cabs to get vibrations into the electronics and have triboelectric effect / microphony at works... not hifi at all!
I was surprised to find that for my own preference it was too much upgrade in the end and in some way i prefered the amplifier with some of the 'flaws' still present:
Exemples d'optimisation d'amplificateurs à lampes pour guitare
Check for yourself. For the studio 22 definetely he is gone too far for me.
Sometimes i purposedly locate amplifier head on the cabs to get vibrations into the electronics and have triboelectric effect / microphony at works... not hifi at all!
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Does a guitarist actually need a loudspeaker cab? 
The attachment shows the Revv D20, an all-valve head which has an optional reactive load for organic feel & tone when playing without a cab & hosts virtual cabinets onboard for direct recording, silent playing, & live performance without a microphone.
D20 – Revv Amplification
The attachment shows the Revv D20, an all-valve head which has an optional reactive load for organic feel & tone when playing without a cab & hosts virtual cabinets onboard for direct recording, silent playing, & live performance without a microphone.
D20 – Revv Amplification
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Galu forget that thing ( if you want to go that way) and go for the original: Two Notes products!
Torpedo is incredibly good. Not astonishing when you met Guillaume ( Pille) owner and developper of the brand. Quite a good guitarist and a very good engineer ( as well as a very kind and interesting guy). Much more flexible concept too imho.
Torpedo is incredibly good. Not astonishing when you met Guillaume ( Pille) owner and developper of the brand. Quite a good guitarist and a very good engineer ( as well as a very kind and interesting guy). Much more flexible concept too imho.
There are many ways to approach guitar tone. There are also many ways to amplify a guitarist or bassist.
Traditionally they used small amps, mic'd up and played over the PA, reproducing the sound of a small amp driven to its limits (if the tone is desired) and picked up by a mic and amplified. Think small Fender Amps, and Vox amps. The Fenders of old actually used pine in their cabinets and some folk like pine cabs because of its association with early Fender. And to add to that, the baffle was I'm pretty sure just anchored at the sides on some cabinet models, allowing the whole baffle to flex - lunacy! LOL
Then when bands like the Who got into it, they wanted to be louder than the other bands had huge backlines of amps provided by guys like Jim Marshall and companies like Laney. That was the beginning of bands touring in convoys with road crews that could take on small armies. They wanted the sound of 100 little amps driven to their limit but with coherence. This lead to the big 4x12 cabinets we see today.
As time went on, there were various advances in how one could manipulate and reproduce their tone. Shout out to Tom Schoz or Boston who created the Rockbox Distortion effect. You've heard it before on something I'm sure.
The sound of many amps out there is the sound of the speaker breaking up, the tubes overdriving etc. The breakup is what makes some speakers so special. Those spikes are the salt and pepper (or thyme and rosemary) that these guys cook with. It's why the aforementioned Marshall 1960 cabinet sounded less good after a poster here "improved" it. And subjectivity, if that was the sound he wanted, he did. It's like painting, there is no wrong... But certain things just worked over time and became commonplace.
Amp makers and instrument makers employed people with similar backgrounds to the guys we follow, engineers and electronic guys, but they just did things a bit crazier than the HiFi crowd. A little distortion was pleasant, and eventually, a lot was ******* awesome! These guys also worked hand in hand with the band's they supplied in order to know 1) their needs as customers, and 2) where to push innovation. Think of the Leslie rotating speaker. Famous in many songs, maybe not recognized, but nowadays it could likely be reproduced by other means... But at the time, the effect was so cool and what guys wanted at the time, so they made em. And still do, I believe.
Back to guitar cabs... The cabinets dont need to be built like a HiFi cab. Guitarists traditionally stay out of the lower register and let the bass do its thing. That has changed somewhat with the advent of styles like Doom metal and Stoner Rock, where those low droning notes are the backbone of their sound. This crowd has embraced "detuned" cabinets which are borrowing principles that we use but adapting them to guitars. The detuned is like a cross between open baffle and an oversized leaky box IIRC. One can try this by removing half the drivers from a 4x12 or 2x12 cabinet or similar. That backwave a previous poster mentioned is part of the sound.
Whoever said "play a guitar over a HiFi speaker..." And noted how bad it would be... Has obviously not heard of Impulse Responses. Using modern technology, it's possible to record an impulse response sampled from the real guitar cabinet that will reproduce the speakers characteristics with a great deal of accuracy. So I just record my clean guitar, and on the fly, the program will put my signal through a simulation of say a Celestion V30 speaker, and out of my HiFi rig, I will hear what it would sound like if my guitar were played through that Celestion. It's actually pretty cool.
I have always found it funny that musicians love gear that acts funny and does weird stuff, yet we as listeners want none of that nonsense.
Traditionally they used small amps, mic'd up and played over the PA, reproducing the sound of a small amp driven to its limits (if the tone is desired) and picked up by a mic and amplified. Think small Fender Amps, and Vox amps. The Fenders of old actually used pine in their cabinets and some folk like pine cabs because of its association with early Fender. And to add to that, the baffle was I'm pretty sure just anchored at the sides on some cabinet models, allowing the whole baffle to flex - lunacy! LOL
Then when bands like the Who got into it, they wanted to be louder than the other bands had huge backlines of amps provided by guys like Jim Marshall and companies like Laney. That was the beginning of bands touring in convoys with road crews that could take on small armies. They wanted the sound of 100 little amps driven to their limit but with coherence. This lead to the big 4x12 cabinets we see today.
As time went on, there were various advances in how one could manipulate and reproduce their tone. Shout out to Tom Schoz or Boston who created the Rockbox Distortion effect. You've heard it before on something I'm sure.
The sound of many amps out there is the sound of the speaker breaking up, the tubes overdriving etc. The breakup is what makes some speakers so special. Those spikes are the salt and pepper (or thyme and rosemary) that these guys cook with. It's why the aforementioned Marshall 1960 cabinet sounded less good after a poster here "improved" it. And subjectivity, if that was the sound he wanted, he did. It's like painting, there is no wrong... But certain things just worked over time and became commonplace.
Amp makers and instrument makers employed people with similar backgrounds to the guys we follow, engineers and electronic guys, but they just did things a bit crazier than the HiFi crowd. A little distortion was pleasant, and eventually, a lot was ******* awesome! These guys also worked hand in hand with the band's they supplied in order to know 1) their needs as customers, and 2) where to push innovation. Think of the Leslie rotating speaker. Famous in many songs, maybe not recognized, but nowadays it could likely be reproduced by other means... But at the time, the effect was so cool and what guys wanted at the time, so they made em. And still do, I believe.
Back to guitar cabs... The cabinets dont need to be built like a HiFi cab. Guitarists traditionally stay out of the lower register and let the bass do its thing. That has changed somewhat with the advent of styles like Doom metal and Stoner Rock, where those low droning notes are the backbone of their sound. This crowd has embraced "detuned" cabinets which are borrowing principles that we use but adapting them to guitars. The detuned is like a cross between open baffle and an oversized leaky box IIRC. One can try this by removing half the drivers from a 4x12 or 2x12 cabinet or similar. That backwave a previous poster mentioned is part of the sound.
Whoever said "play a guitar over a HiFi speaker..." And noted how bad it would be... Has obviously not heard of Impulse Responses. Using modern technology, it's possible to record an impulse response sampled from the real guitar cabinet that will reproduce the speakers characteristics with a great deal of accuracy. So I just record my clean guitar, and on the fly, the program will put my signal through a simulation of say a Celestion V30 speaker, and out of my HiFi rig, I will hear what it would sound like if my guitar were played through that Celestion. It's actually pretty cool.
I have always found it funny that musicians love gear that acts funny and does weird stuff, yet we as listeners want none of that nonsense.
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Cool indeed!
And your example serves to illustrate that a guitar speaker is a producer of sound while a Hi-Fi speaker is a reproducer of sound.
Cool indeed!
And your example serves to illustrate that a guitar speaker is a producer of sound while a Hi-Fi speaker is a reproducer of sound.
That is also not always true. A classic dub soundsystem is not only the reproducer of the sound, but also shapes it in a high power settings. Those custom build stacks are not at all ment to sound clean and with a flat frequencyplot, they are ment to give the effect of heavy subbas dominated reggae, often with a certain lofi feel to it (the UK ruffneck Steppers style). Key examples of that ruffneck style is Jah Tubby's who build most of his equipment (preamp including the crossover, amps & speakers) himself to his wishes...
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![0408200605[1].jpg](/community/data/attachments/718/718186-305e7ae80c08f1d24cbf80cbffda2177.jpg)
I've been to Jamaica, and there's BIG speakers everywhere. People have PA speakers stacked up outside their houses in Kingston. People have beautiful vintage audio equipment in their houses. They play the music loud.
Music is a priority there. Artists in general are held in high esteem; not considered bums like here in the US (I know it's sad).
But a dub soundsystem is for disc jockeys - these are neither guitar speakers nor Hi-Fi speakers.
Might be interesting yes. Probably very trebly/ear piercing with the smaller driver however.
Will probably not suit every style.
Having multiple different drivers is common ( at least in the studio i used to work in). Even with the same driver reference in a 4x12" they all sound different.
Mesa had a 4x12" with 2 x open back, 2 x closed. Very convenient in studio.
Will probably not suit every style.
Having multiple different drivers is common ( at least in the studio i used to work in). Even with the same driver reference in a 4x12" they all sound different.
Mesa had a 4x12" with 2 x open back, 2 x closed. Very convenient in studio.
A few makers build multi way cabs for just this purpose and also to accommodate Impulse Response simulators. The output is on point but the reproduction of sound is more hifi than a traditional cab.
Well, I noticed many guitar players to adore the Bogner cabs and most of them use polyfill and some other tweaks. So, many musicians claim absorption kills sound and yet praise cabs that have it...
And, its too late to discuss should I do it or not haha I used 21mm marine grade birch plywood, the frame at the back is to attach the back so it can be removable. I will seal it with silicone sealing tape (my Marshall cab has no sealing at all so despite being called sealed its more like aperiodic). Driver is offset so only the vertical dimensions are symmetric but there baffle is narrower. I will also run a roundover bit but it will be for cosmetics and to prevent corner chirping. Absorption will be light, foam pyramid sheets and I plan on finishing this with white paint, then sanding it and adding polyurethane clear coating to get a vintage look.
And, its too late to discuss should I do it or not haha
I used 21mm marine grade birch plywood, the frame at the back is to attach the back so it can be removable. I will seal it with silicone sealing tape (my Marshall cab has no sealing at all so despite being called sealed its more like aperiodic). Driver is offset so only the vertical dimensions are symmetric but there baffle is narrower. I will also run a roundover bit but it will be for cosmetics and to prevent corner chirping. Absorption will be light, foam pyramid sheets and I plan on finishing this with white paint, then sanding it and adding polyurethane clear coating to get a vintage look.Attachments
Your fast! Nice to have option to run it closed or open back. 21mm bb... must weight a ton but it'll last a lifetime.
Well done! Keep us updated on the outcome!
Which driver do you plan to use? Given this kind of guitar speaker aren't overpriced it may be interesting to try different ones.
For corners and finish if you don't like what you end up with there is always tolex and dedicated corners protection availlable.
Tube-town.de have great choice of hardware, tolex,...
Well done! Keep us updated on the outcome!
Which driver do you plan to use? Given this kind of guitar speaker aren't overpriced it may be interesting to try different ones.
For corners and finish if you don't like what you end up with there is always tolex and dedicated corners protection availlable.
Tube-town.de have great choice of hardware, tolex,...
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