I tried to post the below a couple of days ago, but couldn't get the clips to load, then.
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I had a few days last week with my brother at my folks' place, while they were away. I am currently in possession of a 210 Flex Mod, a MAS 112, and the 46 that Mike recently built me – not to mention JGR's most recent Box O' Tone prototype (gotta give that back, though). In the throes of summer's last heavy geek :'( and not knowing when another such confluence of time, opportunity to play/record into the wee hours, and excellent gear would come my way again, I documented what I could.
I have mixed feelings about posting this. (Though, since you're reading this, I've obviously gone ahead and done it anyway.) There are the self-conscious questions -
Am I being a pest? Do these clips make me look fat? – and everyone knows that you can't entirely trust clips, anyway; the player, the instrument, and the way a recording is made all affect the result. Still, I made some
clips of different preamps awhile back and folks seemed to find those useful. The aforementioned caveats applied there, of course, but as long as I set the levels reasonably and used the DI, recording technique didn't come much into play. Cabs are different – mic selection and mic placement need to be considered. I only have one mic (an Audio Technica AT 2035) and not a ton of experience with mic placement. So...
Notes:
- The mic is generally 1-2 feet from the cab being recorded. I just moved it around until what was coming through the headphones sounded reasonably close to what I heard without them. Little changes in placement and angle made big changes in the recorded sound, but I got as close as I could.
- The Box O' Tone (which I used for all the clips, without any EQ filters engaged) has a variable impedance control. I've been setting this between noon and 1:30 for a passive bass, but I was goofing around with it earlier and forgot it set quite low – 8:15 or so – which loads down the passive pickups and dulls their tone and attack a bit. I didn't realize this until I'd made all the recordings, though, so that, at least, is consistent from cab to cab. I still think it (the BoT) sounds good here, and that softer-edged, slightly-loaded-down sound might be something you'd want in certain situations.
- A room recording made further back with something like a Zoom would have been a nice addition. I didn't do that.
- The mic was moved for each cab, of course, but I recorded all the clips on one cab before moving on to the next, so mic position is consistent from clip to clip for a given cab.
- Bass is my usual Fender reverse P/J. Further details on the Soundcloud page for the playlist if you want them.
- To me, listening on headphones, the clips don't exactly capture the sound – let alone the feel - of standing in front of the cabs. Still, I hope that they're close enough to be useful in forming a rough idea of how they compare to each other and hearing what the switching options do. Bear in mind that I didn't use any EQ and these cabs all take EQ pretty well. Any weirdness in the recordings is solely my fault. For the sake of time and sanity, everything was recorded in one take (though I did remove some of the gaps where I was flipping switches).
- The 46 and the Flex are recorded without the sub.
Clips:
C Major 7 arpeggio, both pickups, played through the 46, the 112, the Flex, then the Flex with the woofer out-of-phase with the mids ("voicing" switch). All switches (excepting the voicing/flipped phase at the end) in their default positions.
Little, semi-palm-muted riff I play around with sometimes - on the neck pickup, through the 46...
...through the Flex top...
...and through the 112. (There is a short glitch at the beginning of this recording.) Switches on the cabs in the default positions for all of these.
46, bridge pickup, chords and harmonics, playing with the switches in this order: 1-2)Tweeter on: mids normal, then mids hot. 3-4) Tweeter off: mids normal, then mids hot.
(Note: Per my request, my cab is set up so that "normal" is "hot", and "hot" is "hotter", relative to a "normal" 46. I also asked for the switch on the tweeter.)
Same thing through the MAS 112: Tweeter on with mids normal, hot, then off. Tweeter off, with mids normal, hot, then off (woofer only), in that order.
Finally, through the Flex top, with one tweeter on and mids normal, hot, then “Dark” (pads them back and engages a light bulb circuit that adds compression as you push the cab), then with the tweeters off and the mids normal, hot, and “dark” in that order. Didn't do two tweeters (there is a second that you can engage) or the voicing/out-of-phase here, for the sake of time.
That's all!
-Mark
