Creative Cabinet Choices
Ever wonder what a Superlead would sound
like through an AC30 cab but were afraid to
try for fear of blowing the Celestion AlNiCo
Blues? Once again, as long as the impedance
is set correctly, and the power is scaled back
to accommodate the speakers, who says you
have to use the same cab as the head was
designed for? Many times I’ve been in the
studio and knew that the tone of the amp
was dialed in, but wanted a different color.
Rather than running the typical, closed-back
4x12, I was able to choose between the many
different cabs available by attenuating the
signal down enough to allow safe operation.
It’s a great way to experiment with tone and
to further lessen the volume assault. This is
great for live situations as well. Imagine how much easier it will be on your back to carry in
a 1x12 cab for the gig. Heck, you usually only
mic one speaker anyway. You can still get
raging tone, just in a smaller footprint (physically
and sonically).
Dummy Load/Line Out/Speaker
Simulator
For recording or the ultra-adventurous live
guitarist, how about ditching the cab altogether?
These days with the myriad amp
modeling programs and hardware devices,
who says you even need a cab to produce a
mic’d speaker tone? Dedicated devices like
the Hughes & Kettner Red Box, the Palmer
PDI-series of speaker simulators and the
fabulous Axe-FX all offer ways of attaining a
variety of speaker tones without speakers. As
long as you have a dummy load and line out
on the attenuator you can accomplish this
easily. After setting the attenuator to “load,”
take the line out and feed it directly into the
hardware unit. The Red Box Classic offers
settings for “combo” and “4x12,” while the
Palmer offers an 8-ohm dummy load and multiple
settings to simulate a variety of speaker
configurations. Highly detailed speaker cab
emulations as well as microphone models,
reverbs and more can be obtained with the
Axe-FX by Fractal Audio Systems.
If you’re in a recording scenario and like to
use modeling software, consider bypassing
the amp models and just use the mic and
speaker models. The variety of software
amp modelers is vast with, more products
entering the market all the time. Each one
of them has its own sound and the options
are nearly endless. You’d be surprised how
good they sound, and with the no-speaker
option you can record at 2 a.m. with your
favorite amp. Better yet, if you fire up the
studio the next day and don’t particularly
care for the sound of the mic/cab combination
from the night before, you can change
it, because the only thing that was recorded
was the tone of the amp. For much more
detailed information check out the article,
“Look Ma, No Speakers!” in the July 2008
issue of Premier Guitar.
These are just a few options you can try out
with most current production attenuators.
There are certainly many more not covered in
this article that would be helpful, but there’s
only so much space available. The possibilities
are endless. That said, we are in a new
era of amps and tone, with more amplifier
options than ever before. And while amp
builders are certainly conscious of designing
new amps with lower wattage and features
such as power dampening or power scaling,
we do still love our high-powered amps.
Most of us won’t have the opportunity to
play Madison Square Garden anytime soon,
nor do a lot of us have amp rooms where we
can crank our rigs up and jam without consequence.
That’s why the attenuator is such
a great device. Not only does it act as a big
volume knob, it serves us in many creative
ways… your imagination is really the only
limit with what we have available today.