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Another Accugroove thread

#21
Practice tonight was a blast.

I had spent the past few days running the new cab in so I did not have to be too timid during the practice. However, it was interesting to note that even during the practice the sound developed, to the extent that by the end the lows were thundering out.

I only tried the cabs stacked on top of each other with the 12" at the bottom of each cab. I was going to try them on their side and also standing next to each other but did not get round to that.

The band commented on how good my bass sounded so that was a nice thing. I also noticed how much more sensitive the controls on my sans amp stomp box/amp/bass were, much more so than with the single Tri 112 and Epi 1x10ul I was using before.

I think I will be spending some time altering the eq on my Clarus and bass to get the sound I want. I think this is particularly suprising [in a good way] because I did not expect this to be the case. I am very suprised at how much better two Tri 112L's sound compared to using one. It is more than twice as good than using just one Tri 112L. It is very hard to properly describe what the two of them sound like.

On one of the songs, Crossroads, I just turned the piezo's on full and went for it. The sound was remarkable it was a vintage rumble yet with total clarity, vintage yet Hi Fi, [possibly an oxy moron] and one which I had never found before. It was perfect for the song and will definately be used again.

Anyway enough ramblings for now. I will do a proper review at following my next gig later this month.

Regards

Matthew
 
#23
Suburban said:
I will spend my coming time (how long it may be) impatiently waiting by my mailbox for the box, in which you sent me that rig; out of pity, no less.... :bawl:
Click to expand...

I promise to send it to you as soon as I have finished with it, but it might be a very long wait. :hiding:

Seriously, I am amazed at how loud the rig is even with only a maximum of 200 watts being available from the Clarus at 4 ohms. It makes me wonder what the AI slave amp would be like pumping out 600 watts at 4 ohms. Also the clarity I got last night really opens up endless possibilities for eq tweeking which I suspect will take me many weeks to discover the full range available too me.

There could be an argument to say that my rig is too clean in its sound, but it does give me a fresh canvas to add the colour I want rather than having a 'brand' sound which I have to adjust.

Regards

Matthew
 
#24
Here is a shot of my rig at our gig this past saturday. My goal was to try a combined rig implementing the best of tube and SS amps. My intial thougt was to just throw the Gordo under the Jr., but as we have a fairly large stage area to work with, I decided to bring the Tri 210L (also so that I could hear how the 210L and Gordo pair up at a gig). I am powering the Jr. with my Aguilar 680/728. The Jr. is just so darn good with tube amps. So far, it seems to be the best cab in my collection when it comes to tube amps. Some ported cabs don't like the low damping factor and high cone excursion that powerful tube amps can generate, but the Jr. just eats it up and asks for more! I used the "amp thru" signal out of the 728 to send a signal to the CA9, which fed the Gordo and Tri 210L, with one cab on each channel.

The Pignose B-100V was there as my "rhythm guitar" rig (being fed an octave up signal from my Akai UniBass). It works quite well in this regard. On a side note, I tried using it to power the Jr. for a little bit, and to be honest, it sounded pretty darn good! The two basses in the photo are my modified DeArmond Pilot 5 Deluxe (Bart pups and OBP-1 preamp) and my new Skjold Custom 5 (on its maiden voyage!). I ended up using the Skjold all night, and let me tell you, Skjold=>680/728=>Whappo, Jr. is a very, very beautiful (and kind of frightening) thing! :D
 
#25
tombowlus said:
Here is a shot of my rig at our gig this past saturday. My goal was to try a combined rig implementing the best of tube and SS amps... I ended up using the Skjold all night, and let me tell you, Skjold=>680/728=>Whappo, Jr. is a very, very beautiful (and kind of frightening) thing! :D
Click to expand...
wow! very hip, Tom! did you get a recording of the show?

from the lows,

Stew
 
#26
tombowlus said:
Here is a shot of my rig at our gig this past saturday. My goal was to try a combined rig implementing the best of tube and SS amps. My intial thougt was to just throw the Gordo under the Jr., but as we have a fairly large stage area to work with, I decided to bring the Tri 210L (also so that I could hear how the 210L and Gordo pair up at a gig). I am powering the Jr. with my Aguilar 680/728. The Jr. is just so darn good with tube amps. So far, it seems to be the best cab in my collection when it comes to tube amps. Some ported cabs don't like the low damping factor and high cone excursion that powerful tube amps can generate, but the Jr. just eats it up and asks for more! I used the "amp thru" signal out of the 728 to send a signal to the CA9, which fed the Gordo and Tri 210L, with one cab on each channel.

The Pignose B-100V was there as my "rhythm guitar" rig (being fed an octave up signal from my Akai UniBass). It works quite well in this regard. On a side note, I tried using it to power the Jr. for a little bit, and to be honest, it sounded pretty darn good! The two basses in the photo are my modified DeArmond Pilot 5 Deluxe (Bart pups and OBP-1 preamp) and my new Skjold Custom 5 (on its maiden voyage!). I ended up using the Skjold all night, and let me tell you, Skjold=>680/728=>Whappo, Jr. is a very, very beautiful (and kind of frightening) thing! :D

...
Click to expand...
Sweet!

Wish I had been there.
 
#27
Stewmc5222 said:
wow! very hip, Tom! did you get a recording of the show?

from the lows,

Stew
Click to expand...

A friend had a camcorder, but I haven't checked it out yet. I have toyed with the idea of recording some of our shows to ADAT-XT's, but as I am running sound, playing bass, and singing more than I should be, it gets a bit busy!
 
#28
tombowlus said:
A friend had a camcorder, but I haven't checked it out yet. I have toyed with the idea of recording some of our shows to ADAT-XT's, but as I am running sound, playing bass, and singing more than I should be, it gets a bit busy!
Click to expand...
excuses, excuses! :p

sounds like you've got your hands quite literally full, man!

let us know how the vid turned out,

from the lowest,

Stew
 
#30
matthewfoote said:
tombowlus

Wow, an amazing rig you have there my friend. That must move a serious amount of air!

Regards

Matthew
Click to expand...

The air from just the Aggie/Jr. side was, indeed, quite mighty! Adding in the other two cabs was just ludicrous, so I used a blend for one set, mostly the tube side for one set, and mostly the ss side for the third set. As it turns out, it all worked out just about how you would expect (but with a twist). The all-tube path was thick, rich, lively, and had almost palpable texture. The SS rig had insane clarity and cut, was extremely tight, but did sound a bit sterile compared to the tube rig.

Here was the "twist" I talked about. With most basses, I notice that with tube amps, the low end is warm and full, but not as tight, focused, and precise as it is with a good solid state amp. This seems to become more apparent as I turn up the volume. However, that Skjold Custom 5 is so darn tight and clear on the low end (and through its range, really), that even with an all tube rig running pretty darn loud, I have incredible clarity, precision, and tightness down to a low B. The Whappo, Jr. certainly deserves a good deal of the credit for this, but even so, the Skjold truly amazed me in this regard.

Take care, Tom.
 
#32
I decided to spend a bit of time this morning messing around with my rig. The purpose was to see if there was any difference in tonal quality by placing my cabs in different configurations.

The test was in my front room which had wooden floorboards over joists. The cabs were placed 3ft in front of a brick wall.

The cabs were of course my two Accugroove Tri 112L's
The amp used was an Acoustic Image Clarus, and the bass used was a fretless Sei bass 7 string flamboyant. The eq on the amp and bass were set flat and no effects were used. I used both the Bartolinis with a schack 3 band pre and peizos's with a John East 2 band pre.

First of all I placed the cabs side by side with the 12" speaker in both cabs at the bottom.

This set up had great projection with a full and tight bass. The mids and treble were excellent with no harshness. This gave a very clean [Hi Fi] full sound over the whole tonal range. Visually it looked good with the Accugroove signs on the cabs the correct way up.

The downside to the excellent projection was that when standing close to the rig the sound not very good. It was a little muted and on a loud stage it would be hard to use this configuration and too hear oneself clearly.

2. I stacked the cabs on top of each other but inverted the top cab so that the tweeters from both cabs were in the middle and the 12" speakers were at the top and bottom.

This configuration gave good projection but it was noticable that the bass was woolly and not as tight as in the first example. I could not detect any real difference in the mids and treble. Up close the sound was much better than the first example due I presume to the height of the stack being closer to ear level.

Visually it looked strange because the Accugroove lable on the first cab was up side down.

3. I then turned over the top cab so that it was sitting the 'right' way up on top of the bottom cab. This gave excellent close up results the low mids were much tighter and would cut through a band mix on stage really well. There was also a more balanced projection than in the previous configuration with a much tighter controlled bass however the bass was not as pronounced as in the first side by side example which still had the best projected tone.

Visually it looked great. The height of the rig would look good on stage and the cabs were the right way up so you could read both Accugroove signs.

4. Last but not least I turned one cab on its side with the long cannel port at the bottom then placed the 2nd cab on top with the 12" speaker at the bottom and the tweeters on top.

The tone from a projection perspective was a real revelation. There was a far deeper bass response than with any of the other configurations I had tried. The low mids and mids also seemed to be more evident and the whole tone seemed warmer. Standing up close to the rig I was also able to hear clearly everything that was going so hearing oneself on stage with this configuration would not be a problem.

A very nice byproduct of this configurations was the way the low mids performed. Mwah was more pronounced and when using the piezo's the extra low mids available helped the piezo's sound as they should. It really emphasised the difference between the barts and the piezo's meaning more variations in tone were available. Lastly this configuration gave an excellent rumble when I played the A on the E string down to the low B, much more pronounced then available previously.

Summary

After carrying out this test I shall certainly be trying out the last configuration at my next practice and gig to see how it sounds in a band setting. To my ear this was the most pleasing tonal change out of all my cab configurations which was a very useful exercise for me and a couple of hours well spent.

Regards

Matthew
 
#33
matthewfoote said:
Summary

After carrying out this test I shall certainly be trying out the last configuration at my next practice and gig to see how it sounds in a band setting. To my ear this was the most pleasing tonal change out of all my cab configurations which was a very useful exercise for me and a couple of hours well spent.

Regards

Matthew
Click to expand...

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing this information with us!

Tom.
 
#35
Great job Matthew! There's one more way to try them; stack them, but turn both cabs on their sides with the long cannel port at the bottom.

On another note; Myron Dove (Santana) just left here 5 minutes ago after returning a Jr. he tried at a gig. Myron has 2 Tri 112L; 1 Tri 210L & 2 El Whappos. It looks like he's going to be adding a Jr. to his tool box.

Mark
AccuGroove Groovy Speakers!
 
#37
Whappo Grande said:
Great job Matthew! There's one more way to try them; stack them, but turn both cabs on their sides with the long cannel port at the bottom.

On another note; Myron Dove (Santana) just left here 5 minutes ago after returning a Jr. he tried at a gig. Myron has 2 Tri 112L; 1 Tri 210L & 2 El Whappos. It looks like he's going to be adding a Jr. to his tool box.

Mark
AccuGroove Groovy Speakers!
Click to expand...
man, you guys are making me jones for still another AccuCab... STOP IT!!

:rollno:
 
#39
tombowlus said:
(...)
Click to expand...

oh my freakin'!!!

i was GAS'in for a Dubya-Jr., but now you pushed me over the edge! looks simply killer with your all aggie setup. that aggie/jr. setup would have been plenty for me, but you just had to go all "Bowlus" didnt ya? :smug: :D

btw, would you say that the Tri210 has a more inherent punch, or does the Jr. give you more than enough?

and while i'm glad Matt's supremely satisfied with his Tri112's, for some reason i could never gel with mine. :( then again, i have yet to really gel with ANY 1x12 cab. still, the fuller 2x12's are more my bag, and i can only imagine what the Dubya-Jr. can do for me. holy crap, i'm GAS'ed...
 
#40
jokerjkny said:
oh my freakin'!!!

i was GAS'in for a Dubya-Jr., but now you pushed me over the edge! looks simply killer with your all aggie setup. that aggie/jr. setup would have been plenty for me, but you just had to go all "Bowlus" didnt ya? :smug: :D

btw, would you say that the Tri210 has a more inherent punch, or does the Jr. give you more than enough?

and while i'm glad Matt's supremely satisfied with his Tri112's, for some reason i could never gel with mine. :( then again, i have yet to really gel with ANY 1x12 cab. still, the fuller 2x12's are more my bag, and i can only imagine what the Dubya-Jr. can do for me. holy crap, i'm GAS'ed...
Click to expand...

Obviously, I have tried a lot of cabs :D, but I have to say that there is something special about that Whappo, Jr. I'm not saying that it is the best cab that I have tried, but I can't think of a cab that I can honestly say is better than the Jr. (on the whole - there are some circumstances where other cabs may do a better job of accomplishing a given purpose). Of course, I have not tried an El Whappo... ;) The Jr. really, really shines with tube amps, as I mentioned. And now that I have the Skjold, with its uber-tight lows, I no longer have any complaints about low end tightness from an all-tube rig.

As to the Tri 210L, I honestly can't say that it does anything that the Jr. can't do. With the EQ set flat, it probably has a little more upper midrange presence and high end clarity, but that may be just a trick of the ears because of the somewhat thicker low mids and greater "heft" from the Jr. Somewhat to my surprise, when I use the two of them together, what I notice the most is a thicker, more hefty sound (as if that is possible!), as opposed to adding significantly more high end and upper mids (which was sort of what I expected). At that gig, though, with the Gordo/Tri 210L being fed by the CA9, those two had a more present and more articulate and precise high end, and the overall clarity and balance was incredible. I need to try directly A/Bing the Gordo/Tri 210L to the Jr. using the same amp. But back to your direct question, I actually don't think that the Tri 210L has any more punch than the Jr., just a slightly different approach. Maybe a hook, instead of the Jr.'s vicious upper-cut. :eyebrow:

If you like a full sounding 2x12, then by all means, go audition a Whappo, Jr.!!!

Later, Tom.
 

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