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Dietz club

Jan 16, 2010
199
83
Didnt see a club for Dietz cabs yet. I know these cabs are rare but does anyone else have one?

Heres my 3x15

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Maybe I can get this picture posted. Never tried to post a picture before.
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I bought this maybe 20 years ago. It was a butt ugly blondish color. I painted it black, and removed the expanded metal speaker grille. I mounted the grille you see in it's place. It's handled anything I could throw at it so far.
 
I guess they are too local to be widespread. I'll bet that 3-15's monster weighs a ton! By the way, I remember seeing Tommy Shannon playing through one (I think it was a 2-15's)on an early Austin City Limits with SRV. The later ACL that they did I believe he was using Hartke.
 
I like the TL606/thiele style Dietz. I beleive they are the most common. I had first seen them in Dave Sims rig back in the 80's I believe. I know for sure he had them when I saw Jesus Lizard at the Kennel club in SF. in the early 90's.
He didnt have em when I saw Scratch Acid in New Orleans in 86 or so.
Very mid forward esp with a Jazz bass!
 
Kinda cool to see responses from both coasts. They used to make those at Heart of Texas Music here years ago but never got big, nationally distributed or anything. I never bought one but they keep a 215 one at Antones for kind of a "house" backline cab. Played that one a few times. They're heavy as hell. Pretty much another take on the TL606. Only ones I've seen had 15L's in them.
 
One of those 315's was up for sale on craigslist here last year sometime. It was unloaded though, no speakers.

Yeah, I saw that listing. Never saw one until then. That's gotta be a serious cab.

My lifelong best friend played a pair of 1x15's with Johnny Bush for about 10 years with a '62 reissue P bass. Talk about a wall of sound! Another friend of mine played a pair of 1x15's (early ones painted white) with my 75 Jazz I sold him (yeah, I'm stupid). It was awesome. Makes me think the 3x15 has got to be tremendous.
 
Back in 1999, I was in Austin on a co-op with IBM. I played quite a bit with a guy who had a white or cream Dietz 215, but no bass. I had a much smaller SWR 210 (being a poor college kid at the time), but an Ampeg SVTIII amp, so I used his cab.

I'll probably never forget the sound of my jazz bass (still have) through the Ampeg amp pumping out of the Dietz cabinet. I didn't know I could sound like *that*, and probably haven't sounded like that since.
 
Back in 1999, I was in Austin on a co-op with IBM. I played quite a bit with a guy who had a white or cream Dietz 215, but no bass. I had a much smaller SWR 210 (being a poor college kid at the time), but an Ampeg SVTIII amp.
Maybe it was mine, living a life with a subsequent owner. Here I am, at about age 15, playing at a skating rink in Austin with my Dietz 215, which weighed as much as a small car. That's a Sunn Coliseum 300 on top of it, which also weighed as much as a small car:

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That was in probably 1986. I sold that cabinet in 1992.
 
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By the way, I stopped by HOTM one afternoon when I was in Austin about three years ago and spoke to Ray about these cabinets. They were handmade, and he said that 25 years before, they were so much better than the mass produced cabinets that he had no trouble selling them at twice the price.

But now, he said, the production tolerances and materials quality had caught up with him and he could no longer build a differentiated product at a competitive price.

Then he gave me the hard sell on a Mexican Fender with inch-high action.
 
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Cab on right is an original Dietz, cab on left is a Mergilli Innovations Dietz replica. TONE

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Here they are paired with the house Dietz cab for Antone's in Austin (middle).

Word is this was Tommy Shannon's when he played with SRV, and may have been the cab featured on aforementioned Austin City Limits episode. Best sounding bass cab I have ever come across, my 2 Dietz's are a direct result from it.