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Warwick Hellborg 215?

#63
Mr. Foxen said:
Is the lower speaker between two pairs of ports then? So effectively in two ported enclosures of different volumes?
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Diagram from the Hellborg manual:

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#65
The Low and Club cabs are made to be a pair played together, but yes, the Low Cab is the one you want if just getting since one of them since it is the closest to any standard single-15" cab. The Club Cab has a custom Celestion full-range coaxial driver and doesnt do well by itself. Not enough low-end.

Btw, I have both a Big Cab, and the Club/Low setup along with Hellborg power amps and a Hellborg pre. The two seperate cabs sound much, much better than the single 2x15 cab. Not sure I am smart enough to be able to say why, but it's all-around richer and just sounds much nicer at high volumes.

Good luck. The Hellborg stuff is super nice. Sucks its not made any longer, but you can still find the stuff used now and then.
 
#66
@shaft311
Greetings! And here comes the man for rescue! :thumbsup:

So... I have the possibility of getting a Hellborg cab for a good price and am thinking about the options. - The Club Cab would appear most preferable but I am afraid that it would be too "hi-fi" for my taste (I very much like the "vintage" sound of my 15 inch AMPEG B-100R which has no tweeter). I am looking for a very small venue cab that would excel in tone. I am not looking for SPL nor a slap bass thing. Just old school blues rock goodness.

Now the Big Cab I assume would have the low end that the Club Cab does not have, then again I fear it might be too much to handle (speaking of sound, not portability which is no issue for me). Then there is the 212 which might be the ticket... But? So darn difficult to choose when you have no clue.

How is the Low Cab alone?
 
#67
KF2B said:
@shaft311
Greetings! And here comes the man for rescue! :thumbsup:

So... I have the possibility of getting a Hellborg cab for a good price and am thinking about the options. - The Club Cab would appear most preferable but I am afraid that it would be too "hi-fi" for my taste (I very much like the "vintage" sound of my 15 inch AMPEG B-100R which has no tweeter). I am looking for a very small venue cab that would excel in tone. I am not looking for SPL nor a slap bass thing. Just old school blues rock goodness.

Now the Big Cab I assume would have the low end that the Club Cab does not have, then again I fear it might be too much to handle (speaking of sound, not portability which is no issue for me). Then there is the 212 which might be the ticket... But? So darn difficult to choose when you have no clue.

How is the Low Cab alone?
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I just picked up "the big cab" (2x15"). Here's my take:

For starters, it is surprisingly NOT loud. Speaking strictly on sound levels, I find an average 4 x 10" cab (with average sensitivity) to be considerably louder than the Hellborg 2x15 Big Cab.

When I first hooked it up, I hated it. I felt like I could barely hear it. It sounded undefined and hollow. But, then I listened back to a recording of my practice (I was practicing with a drummer, and recorded it). Even though I felt like I could barely hear any defined bass as I was playing, when I listened to the recording the bass was huge. I sounded like I was blowing the drummer out of the room, in terms of volume. And my stereo mic was in a common, well balanced position, that I have used many times before with this same drummer and different cabs. So, it was very odd that my bass sounded so loud on the recording, even though I felt like I was struggling to hear myself as I played.

So, the next time I played it I experimented with the cab placement, and my placement in relation to the cab. I quickly realized that if I pulled the cabinet away from the wall, and stood well off the cab, it sounded huge. I actually quite liked the sound after playing with the location of the cab, and I got it dialed into the room.

Sadly, for most gigs, I won't have the time or freedom to dial this thing in, which leaves me torn about my future with this cab. To me, my first impression is that this is a very finicky cabinet, which must have to do with it's unique design. If you dial it into the room with proper placement then it sounds fantastic (including BOTH the cabinet's position in the room, and your position in relation to the cabinet). But, if you don't have the cab in an ideal spot, or you are forced to stand too close to the cab,...then it sounds weak, and hollow, and undefined.
 
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#68
Mr. Foxen said:
Does Jonas Hellborg have an engineering background, or is he just a pretty face?
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That's pretty arrogant. For starters, the general idea with artist conceptions is that they articulate what they want something to sound like, and then then the engineers bring that "sound vision" to life. Certainly Jonas Hellborg is plenty qualified enough to articulate his sound preferences to Warwick's engineers. And I think it is fair to say that the world is far more interested in Mr. Hellborg's vision than they would be your (or my) vision. Artist's signature concepts have been done for years, and they've been widely popular. It seems odd to single out Jonas as the one artist we should disregard.

Finally, plenty of people have revolutionized instruments and amplification without engineering backgrounds. Leo Fender's degree was in accounting. Les Paul,...no engineering background. On,...and on,...and on.
 
#69
Fender had an engineering background, he ran a repair shop. With regards to my questions, a bunch of excuses don't make the answer something other than 'no'. I dunno why you think he is the only artist who's opinions on engineering I disregard, in my line of work I probably get through 3-5 a day.
 
#70
Mr. Foxen said:
Fender had an engineering background, he ran a repair shop. With regards to my questions, a bunch of excuses don't make the answer something other than 'no'. I dunno why you think he is the only artist who's opinions on engineering I disregard, in my line of work I probably get through 3-5 a day.
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Fender had a degree in accounting. He had no formal engineering education. He was a novice that quickly found his way, and changed the world, without a "background". I suggest you read about him.

In terms of formally trained engineers, they generally can't play worth a damn. As such, they benefit greatly from the input of those that actually professionally use the tools that they engineer.
 
#71
Working in a repair shop qualified him very well for what he did. I dunno why you need to belittle both practical experience and formal qualification. Some very excellent players happen to have extensive qualifications, such qualifications very often result in rather better paying careers than musician though, so they have little need to lend their names to the designs of others for money.
 
#72
Mr. Foxen said:
Working in a repair shop qualified him very well for what he did. I dunno why you need to belittle both practical experience and formal qualification. Some very excellent players happen to have extensive qualifications, such qualifications very often result in rather better paying careers than musician though, so they have little need to lend their names to the designs of others for money.
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Fender had no formal education in engineering. He started working with instruments as an untrained novice that learned as he went. That is a fact, and you can easily reference him mentioning that fact repeatedly.

As far as Jonas Hellborg, you have no idea what he knows about the engineering of the gear that he uses. He may know a ton about amplification, but you chose to belittle his input because he has no formal engineering education. Hellborg may be really interested in the engineering end of his gear. Maybe he isn't. But, he sure knows a lot about using those tools, and as such he can give valuable input on performance and preference.

As far as engineers go,....there are statistics of great musicians stretching for well over a hundred years,...how many legendary musicians can you name that had formal educations in engineering? Consider that and you will quickly see that engineers generally can't play worth a damn (in terms of professional proficiency). As such, they benefit greatly from the input of the professionals that are out there using the tools that they engineer.
 
#73
Yeah, all that stuff Fender did: pretty strong engineering qualification right there.

Not knowing if he had any engineering background was why I asked if he had an engineering background. I took your torrent of excuses as you knowing that he doesn't.

Of the many engineers in the music equipment field I know and deal with, very few are not proficient players of their chosen instruments.

I think you might be massively misunderstanding what an endorsement deal is.
 
#74
Mr. Foxen said:
Yeah, all that stuff Fender did: pretty strong engineering qualification right there.

Not knowing if he had any engineering background was why I asked if he had an engineering background. I took your torrent of excuses as you knowing that he doesn't.

Of the many engineers in the music equipment field I know and deal with, very few are not proficient players of their chosen instruments.

I think you might be massively misunderstanding what an endorsement deal is.
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I have no idea what Hellborg's engineering knowledge is, but it was pretty obvious that you would continue to belittle his uneducated input if he had anything short of a formal education.

I also know that if an engineer choses engineering as a living, then he isn't out there touring and recording with the gear. It takes a seasoned professional, like Hellborg, to understand how a piece of gear responds from venue to venue, night after night, session after session. It takes a seasoned pro, like Hellborg, to evaluate how a piece of gear responds tour after tour, year after year. The kind of understanding and practical experience doesn't come to an engineer as he sits at a drafting table. The collaboration between engineer and professional is not just a novel marketing idea,....it's simple logic to incorporate professional experience into design.

I do understand what an endorsement deal is. I just don't share your conspiracy minded implication that all endorsements are just an evil marketing plan that are intended to rob the customer of his hard earned money. Many players have a genuine desire to see that their gear preferences become popular, appreciated pieces of equipment that make it into production. It's human nature to want others to appreciate the things you appreciate,...particularly if you have some involvement in their creation.

Are artist endorsements sometimes nothing more than a money grab by a greedy artist and/or manufacturer? Sure! But, it's incredibly shortsighted and pessimistic to think that it only goes that way.
 
#75
I'm happy to belittle your answering of the question even though you have no idea. You could have just not dragged up a five year old thread instead, but for whatever reason you decided to try and construct an argument around repeatedly stating that playing bass well enough to get an endorsement deal makes someone a comparibly qualified engineer to designing and producing some of the most iconic music equipment in history.
 
#76
Mr. Foxen said:
I'm happy to belittle your answering of the question even though you have no idea. You could have just not dragged up a five year old thread instead, but for whatever reason you decided to try and construct an argument around repeatedly stating that playing bass well enough to get an endorsement deal makes someone a comparibly qualified engineer to designing and producing some of the most iconic music equipment in history.
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This thread may have started five years ago, but it had someone asking questions about the gear as recently as a few months ago. Being that I just got some of the gear, I decided to let others know what my personal experience was with it. Then I saw you arrogant post, where you essentially belittled Hellborg's participation in this equipment. So, I don't see how timeline is relevant. It seems like an irrelevant topic diversion.

Bottom line, you rudely implied that Hellborg had no qualifications to lend any input on the design of the equipment that is used in his profession. I think I effectively highlighted the error of your perspective.
 
#77
It was you that implied he has no qualifications in engineering, when you chose to answer the question. If I already knew, I wouldn't have asked the question. Those wiggly marks with a dot under after words are pretty hard to catch though.

Since you chose to make a fuss about it though, I'm now much more heavily inclined to believe he has no engineering background, since if he had, you'd have found and waved it about a lot by now.
 
#78
Mr. Foxen said:
It was you that implied he has no qualifications in engineering, when you chose to answer the question. If I already knew, I wouldn't have asked the question. Those wiggly marks with a dot under after words are pretty hard to catch though.

Since you chose to make a fuss about it though, I'm now much more heavily inclined to believe he has no engineering background, since if he had, you'd have found and waved it about a lot by now.
Click to expand...

Again,...I have no idea what Hellborg does, or doesn't know, about engineering. My point was that his professional experience, expertise and technical proficiency make his design input valuable - regardless of his engineering background.

And come on, at least own up to your implications. Your self importance hits like a hammer when you make comments like "Does Jonas Hellborg have an engineering background, or is he just a pretty face?",...

.....and "I dunno why you think he is the only artist who's opinions on engineering I disregard, in my line of work I probably get through 3-5 a day."
 
#79
Those are things I said, I think saying them pretty much covers me owning what they say. You'll note the word "engineering" in there which pre-emptively renders all you statements a bit irrelevant due to the "I have no idea what Hellborg does, or doesn't know, about engineering." part. Which begs the question, why do you keep stating it? Maybe you think stating "I have no idea about the answer, but I will argue with a question anyway, because I like a guy's playing" will persuade me to change my opinions of how endorsement deals work.
 
#80
Mr. Foxen said:
Those are things I said, I think saying them pretty much covers me owning what they say. You'll note the word "engineering" in there which pre-emptively renders all you statements a bit irrelevant due to the "I have no idea what Hellborg does, or doesn't know, about engineering." part. Which begs the question, why do you keep stating it? Maybe you think stating "I have no idea about the answer, but I will argue with a question anyway, because I like a guy's playing" will persuade me to change my opinions of how endorsement deals work.
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Again,...and again,....I have no idea what Hellborg does, or doesn't know, about engineering. My point was that his professional experience, expertise and technical proficiency make his design input valuable - regardless of his engineering background. You keep asking the same question, as though if you ask it enough I will change my answer.

It would be odd for an engineer to design tools without considering the opinions of those that actually use his tools professionally.

That being said....you claim to be an engineer, and you seem to proudly disregard the opinions of the non-engineer professionals that use engineered tools. So, I am curious, what products have you designed that are well respected in your industry?
 

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