
It may not be the sexiest part of your rig, but the speaker enclosure plays a crucial role in the signal chain. Here’s what’s going on inside.
In our mad pursuit of boutique gear, it’s easy to overlook the humble speaker cabinet. While we drill down on the merits and specs of various speakers, the box that houses them typically takes a backseat to everything else in our signal chain. Which ain’t right, if you think about it. No guitarist is going to wow the crowd dangling a raw 12" speaker from a pole, right? The truth is, your cab plays as important a role as any other device in your rig, so it’s worth taking the time to explore it in its various forms. We’ll cover key points that will better acquaint you with what you already own and help you make an informed decision the next time you purchase a combo amp or extension cab. And while we’re at it, perhaps we’ll dispel a few myths.
Cabinet Material
If you ask guitarists what their cabs are made of, most will say “wood.” That’s the short answer, but it’s also very broad and incomplete. There are many different types of wood, and what a builder chooses will affect how the cabinet performs. Each type of wood has its pros and cons, and whether a cab has an open or closed back has a huge bearing on what a builder chooses to construct it with.
Many combo enclosures are made from solid wood—particularly vintage Fenders, which were built with solid pine. And since vintage gear is the gauge by which most new gear is measured, replica pine cabinets have grown in popularity over the years. Solid pine cabs typically have an open back, meaning the speaker is exposed to the air and thus delivers a more diffused and less directional sound. Solid pine is lighter than other cabinet woods and, as anyone who has lifted a combo amp knows, weight savings can be crucial—especially if you haul your gear to lots of rehearsals and gigs. But pine flexes, and this can emphasize certain frequencies. Because open-back combos don’t trap soundwaves, but rather allow them to escape, you don’t end up with resonant frequencies being accentuated by the cabinet walls. This explains why solid pine is ideal for open-back combos. Closed-back cabinets are more focused and directional, so it’s rare to find one made of solid pine, due to the aforementioned flexing and the sonic chaos it can bring.
Whether a cab has an open or closed back has a huge bearing on what a builder chooses to construct it with.
Most closed-back, or sealed, cabinets are constructed from plywood, as are some combos. The industry standard is 18 mm Baltic birch plywood, which differs from the sheets of plywood sold at the hardware store. To be a useful cabinet material, plywood needs to be voidless—meaning there is no trapped air between the plies. Unlike plywood used for less demanding tasks, Baltic birch plywood is made to be voidless, and this prevents the cabinet walls from rattling when you play. In Baltic birch plywood, each ply is a uniform thickness, laid with the grain alternating between north-south and east-west, and the boards are laminated with exterior-grade adhesives. The rigidity of Baltic birch plywood makes it an excellent material for closed-back cabinets, such as 4x12s and bigger 2x12s. Because of how it’s made, Baltic birch is nearly indestructible. However, this also makes it very heavy, which is why you see wheels on a lot of these larger cabinets.
You’d think the strength of Baltic birch would make it a good material for bass cabinets. Well, bass cabinets tend to need more rigidity than even Baltic birch offers, so they’re often made with chipboard or medium-density fiberboard (MDF). Both of these materials are extremely strong and have little-to-no flex because of the way they are made. Chipboard, sometimes called particleboard, is made by gluing together many different chips of otherwise useless wood scraps—and sometimes even sawdust. The chips are bound together with a resin and then drawn out into boards. MDF is made in much the same way, but, as its name suggests, uses much more finely broken-down wood fibers. This material is then pressed together with wax and resin at high temperatures. While the strength of these engineered materials is very high, so is the weight.
As a general rule, to do justice to the low frequencies of bass, mass wins. You need all that physical weight to help produce a burly low end. But there’s a downside to these man-made materials: They can deteriorate over time with heavy use, such as banging the cabinet against every stair as you hoist it up three flights to play for those 10 people.
Many combos have medium-density fiberboard cabs, which are sturdy but heavy. Some players opt to re-house their combos in aftermarket enclosures made of solid pine—the wood Leo Fender originally used. Available for popular models like this Fender Blues Junior, pine cabs look cool, shave pounds off the combo’s total weight, and arguably enhance the amp’s tone.
Photo by Andy Ellis
Cabinet Joinery
I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about different types of corner joints and how the joinery method impacts the cabinet. There are three main types of joints: the rabbet joint, the box or finger joint, and the dovetail joint.
The three types of joinery used for building speaker cabs. Dovetail joints are the strongest and are most often found on high-end cabinets with exposed, stained wood.
Diagram by C.J. Sutton
As you can see in the diagram, these are quite different from each other, but it’s important to note that unless the joint is made poorly and allows the corners to flex, the joinery type has virtually no effect on the sound. Rabbet joints are the most commonly used in domestic cabinets because they are fast and easy to execute, and they’re strong. Finger joints are the most sought-after because that’s how Leo did it in the ’50s and ’60s. These joints are stronger than rabbet joints and reduce the potential for flexing. The strongest of all is the dovetail joint. Good dovetail joints can hold together without any glue, but don’t worry—no one actually builds speaker cabinets with unglued dovetail joints. You’ll see dovetail joints on higher-end cabinets, particularly those made of stained wood with visible joints that are part of the look.
The Baffle
The front part of the cabinet where the speakers mount is called the baffle. It needs to be the strongest and most rigid piece of all because this part of the cabinet is subject to the most impact stress. Baffles are nearly always made with Baltic birch plywood, or in some cases even MDF—even if the cabinet walls are made of solid wood, such as pine.
There’s a lot of hubbub about whether speakers should be mounted to the front or rear of the baffle. When a cab has a front-loaded speaker, the grille is removable to allow access to it. Front-loaded speakers are found most often in bass cabs and ported guitar cabs, where the back of the cab is designed for rigidity and is not removable. A rear-loaded speaker attaches to the back of the baffle, which you access in closed-back cabs—such as a Marshall 4x12—via a removable back panel. Most open-back combo amps also sport rear-loaded speakers.
The rigidity of Baltic birch plywood makes it an excellent material for closed-back cabinets, such as 4x12s and bigger 2x12s.
The theory behind front-loaded speakers is that they don’t seal up perfectly to the baffle and thus allow air to escape, which adds some musicality to the sound. Also, in a recording situation, it’s easier to swap out front-loaded speakers in a quest for different tones. Conversely, rear-loaded speakers can be more of a pain to replace. In closed-back cabs, you have to remove the entire rear panel. If you’ve ever opened up a 4x12 cabinet, you know there are a lot of screws involved in securing that back panel. And if you’ve ever decided to take a shortcut and not put all the screws back in, then you know about the potential for ugly rattling.
A side note about 4x12 cabs: Some have posts inside that connect the center of the baffle to the rear panel. These baffle posts are designed to offer additional support and create one more connection point to keep the rear panel from flexing.
Speakers can be attached to either the front or rear of the baffle. Front-loaded speakers are accessed through a removeable grille; rear-loaded speakers are housed in open-back enclosures or in closed-back cabs with a removeable rear panel.
Diagram by C.J. Sutton
Before you can access the rear-loaded speaker in some open-back combo amps, you first have to remove the chassis. This means virtually disassembling the entire amp. Please note: Never stick your hand inside an amp chassis. There can be lethal voltages present even after the amp is turned off and unplugged.
So is one speaker-mounting method superior to the other? That depends on what you’re after: Rear-loaded speakers form a tighter seal to the baffle and provide a sound that works well with rock ’n’ roll and heavier music, and front-loaded speakers can sound airier. But there’s no right or wrong. My friend Jason Jordan of Monarch Cabs says it best: “It’s all a matter of preference, really. What guitarists think of as a “good” sound is based on the music they listen to. As builders, we have formulas for making speaker cabs sound a certain way. It is a science. But at the end of the day, you need to experiment and listen, and then simply go with what works for you and your playing.”
Although the vast majority of amp cabs have either an open back or closed back, it is possible to have both. This 4x10 Marshall cab has been professionally modified to be configured either way, depending on the size of the stage and the band’s music. If you’re considering doing this yourself, the trick is to cut the back panel into thirds and then completely wrap each piece in “cab carpet.” This creates a super-tight fit between the panels and prevents rattling. In closed-back mode, tour-case latches hold the middle section securely to the fixed top and bottom pieces.
Photo by Andy Ellis
Cab Placement
So what happens when you want to take your rig public? What should you consider when placing an amp or cab onstage? The answer depends greatly on whether the cab is going to be miked up or not. If it is, then the cab can really go anywhere. To keep the stage volume down, many bands face their cabs backward—or even remove them completely from the stage—because the miked sound will be fed back through the monitors, which can be either onstage wedges or in-ear buds.
If you’re not miking your speakers, and the sound from the cabinet is the sound the audience will hear, it gets a bit trickier. You have to position the amp so you can hear it while you’re playing, yet the audience also gets a good mix. If your cabinet has wheels, you might find that popping them off or setting the cab on its side increases low-end resonance through greater contact with the floor. But this stage coupling might introduce muddiness into the band’s sound—exactly what you want to avoid. It depends on the stage and room, and each venue is different. The way to tame unwanted rumble is to reduce contact with the floor, perhaps by using an amp stand, or keeping the wheels attached to your cab, or placing it on the rolling bottom of a road case. Wheels offer another advantage: They make it easier to move your cab around during soundcheck until you find the sweet spot where you, the band, and the listeners can all enjoy your cosmic licks.
Some amp cabs are designed not to be heard—at least by anyone in the immediate vicinity. Such sealed “speaker coffins” have an internal mic clamped to a gooseneck to allow for precise positioning. Accessed through a hinged trap door, the mic connects to a recording console or front-of-house mixer via an external XLR jack. Notice how the Celestion Greenback in this Demeter Silent Speaker Chamber is front-loaded to facilitate quick speaker swaps.
Photo by Andy Ellis
Visual Vibe
Some players swear the cab’s covering material—or even its color—and grille cloth have an effect on tone. In my experience, I haven’t noticed any evidence of this. Certain grille cloth materials, such as cane, are more rigid than others, and this could potentially influence the sound, but essentially grille cloth choice is cosmetic and if it has any effect at all on tone, it’s very slight. By the time the drums get pounding and you’ve cranked up your amp in response, it’s the speakers you’ll be hearing, not the grille cloth. And if you think a cab wrapped in red or green vinyl sounds better than black Tolex, who’s going to dispute that? After all, you might actually play better because you love the way your amp looks.
By the time the drums get pounding and you’ve cranked up your amp in response, it’s the speakers you’ll be hearing, not the grille cloth.
While some players agonize over the thickness of the grille cloth or cabinet covering material, there’s little evidence these cosmetic details have any significant effect on tone.
Photo by Michael Silva
Eyes On the Prize
When it comes to gear, my motto has long been “if it sounds right, it is right.” Once you understand the basics—wood, construction details, and how speakers are mounted—it’s then a matter of putting in the hours with different types of rigs and amp cabs.
In the process, you’ll develop an instinct for what sounds best with your guitars, technique, and musical style. And this is where the fun begins. My advice? Don’t stress over little things like what type of corner joints you have. Just get out there and play!
If you’re not miking your speakers, and the sound from the cabinet is the sound the audience will hear, it gets a bit trickier. You have to position the amp so you can hear it while you’re playing, yet the audience also gets a good mix. If your cabinet has wheels, you might find that popping them off or setting the cab on its side increases low-end resonance through greater contact with the floor. But this stage coupling might introduce muddiness into the band’s sound—exactly what you want to avoid. It depends on the stage and room, and each venue is different. The way to tame unwanted rumble is to reduce contact with the floor, perhaps by using an amp stand, or keeping the wheels attached to your cab, or placing it on the rolling bottom of a road case. Wheels offer another advantage: They make it easier to move your cab around during soundcheck until you find the sweet spot where you, the band, and the listeners can all enjoy your cosmic licks.
The bold English band return with their eighth record, Dreams on Toast. The brotherly guitar duo tell us about their pilgrimage back to Tonehenge.
The experience of locking in with the Hawkins brothers for an hour of conversation is not unlike absorbing their gonzo, wildly effervescent take on classic hard rock. To be sure, Justin, 49, the band’s frontman and de facto lead guitarist, and Dan, 48, who plays guitar, produces, and contributes backing vocals, keep you on your toes.
An instance of deep creative insight will jump-cut to a well-executed crude joke with a set-up involving slide guitar, which Justin taught himself to play during Covid lockdown in standard tuning, “not the G cheating tuning.” Passages of admirable self-reflection are interspersed with a freewheeling riff on Kid Rock and a debate about the finer points of crawling up one’s own arse. It’s kind of a blast.
The sad inability of critics and even audiences to reconcile fantastic hard rock with a sense of humor has dogged the Darkness throughout its existence, to the point where Dan believes the “classic rock community” only really came around to the band after Justin and drummer Rufus Taylor performed in Taylor Hawkins’ all-star tribute in 2022. “Finally, ‘Okay, these guys aren’t actually just fucking around,’” says Dan. Fair enough, but what exactly are they doing?
The Darkness’ new album, Dreams on Toast, their eighth LP overall and sixth since reforming in 2011, is quite possibly their strongest set yet. In its wide-ranging, often surprising charms, it somehow manages to muddy the waters even further while also firming up an ethos—namely, that the Darkness are smart rock and pop mastercraftsmen who contain multitudes. Or, as Dan describes their M.O.: “We can do whatever the fuck we want, whenever we want, and we don’t have to worry about it.” Adds Justin, “The funny thing is what we actually want to do is just write timeless songs.”
Dreams on Toast, the British hard-rock band’s eighth full-length, is a testament to their indefatigable belief in the melding of hard-rock riffage with humor.
Justin Hawkins’ Gear
Guitars
- Atkin JH3001
- Atkin Mindhorn JH3000
- Dan’s red Gibson ES-355
- Dan’s Epiphone Casino (for slide)
- Atkin acoustic
- Brook Tavy acoustic
- Taylor 12-string
Justin and Dan’s Amps
- Ampete amp/cab switcher
- Vox AC30 head
- Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier
- 1959 Marshall plexi Super Lead
- Marshall 1987X
- Friedman Smallbox
- Friedman BE-100 Deluxe
- Marshall cab with Celestion Greenbacks
Effects
- Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive
- SoloDallas Schaffer Replica
Strings & Picks
- Rotosound Roto Yellows .010s
- Dunlop Tortex .73 mm
Dreams on Toast boasts moments of quintessential Darkness—in, say, “Walking Through Fire,” a hooky rock ’n’ roll behemoth that pays plainspoken tribute to the power of … rock ’n’ roll—and gets even more meta with a winky line about wasting time “shooting yet another shitty video.” For those who’ve followed the band from the start, it can evoke the shock of discovering the Darkness on MTV in 2004, when they were an exuberant burst of Queen-inspired virtuosity amidst so much overwrought post-punk and stylized garage rock. (“I fucking hate videos. I don’t even know why we bother,” shrugs Justin, the centerpiece of several of the most memorable rock vids of the 21st century.)
Elsewhere, Dreams on Toast has a knack for subverting expectations. “The Longest Kiss” leans into the progressive-pop facility of Jeff Lynne, Sparks, or Harry Nilsson. “Hot on My Tail” and “Cold Hearted Woman” are deft examples of rootsy pop writing, finding a niche between honky tonk and transatlantic folk. “The Battle for Gadget Land” engages in campy rap-rock, as if satirizing the nu metal that thrived when the Darkness was founded. It also betrays a British punk influence—a vestige, the brothers ponder, of their father’s excellent musical tastes and his decision to play his sons Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Bewilderingly, “Weekend in Rome” features a voice-over by the actor Stephen Dorff.
But the album’s absolute highlights belong to the signature balance that allows the Darkness to remain instantly identifiable while also being custodians of rock’s various traditions. “Rock and Roll Party Cowboy” seems to revel in macho rock clichés, until you notice a reference to Tolstoy in the chorus and realize that the badass at the center of the narrative is in reality a stone-cold loser. “There’s a line in there, which gives it away,” Justin explains, “where he says, ‘Where the ladies at?’” The truth hurts: “The party he’s describing is a disaster.”“The funny thing is what we actually want to do is just write timeless songs.” —Justin Hawkins
The same savvy defines “I Hate Myself,” a punked-up barroom-glam throwback that tackles heartbreak and self-contempt. The song also has a buzzed-about video in which Justin appears, unrecognizable, as a man who wears his grief, vanity, and insecurity on his face as questionable plastic surgery. The clip is startling, cinematic, and willfully not very much fun. Consequently it’s inspired pushback, even within the band. “I think on this record, from the recording to the videos and everything, I think we’re challenging people,” Justin says. “We’re trying to explore genres and visual ideas that we haven’t done before. Like, there’s only two of us on the album cover; me and Dan aren’t even on it.
“It’s like we’re doing everything differently, and in ways that make people go, ‘Well, what the fuck is this?’ I think we’re hopefully positioning ourselves as a band that cares about the art.”
The brothers Hawkins in action. They wrote the songs for Dreams on Toast on an acoustic guitar, face-to-face.
Photo by Gareth Parker
Fraternal Dynamics
Following 2021’s Motorheart, which was built piecemeal in the throes of the pandemic, Dreams on Toast is a welcome return to (literal) face-to-face collaboration. “Pretty much everything on the album was written on an acoustic, me facing Justin,” Dan says. “Holding my gaze,” adds Justin, with a straight face.
“We have quite a lot of success when I’ve just got an acoustic and I’m thrashing away,” Dan posits, though “thrashing away” isn’t quite fair. In fact, the through line tying Dreams on Toast to landmark Darkness singles like “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” “Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End),” or “Love Is Only a Feeling” is the precision of the craft—the sheer perfection of the sonics and the shape of each song, the seamlessness with which an intro becomes a verse and then a bridge before an earworm chorus breaks down the door. Track after track.
“I think we’ve always been good at arranging,” Dan says. “Sorry to blow our own trumpets, but I think that comes from Justin and my musical upbringing.” To wit: Fleetwood Mac’s pop-rock masterpiece Rumours was on heavy rotation at home. At the outset of his career, after he’d been a drummer and a bass player, Dan only “started playing guitar properly as a session player,” he says. “And that kind of taught me a lot about placing things, when to do things and when not to.
“The only reason I can play guitar is because I wanted to work out how songs were written,” he adds later. At one point during the chat, Justin mentions his experience writing and producing music for commercial clients—something he and his brother continue to partake in, in specific under-the-radar situations. He maintains that work doesn’t inform the Darkness too much, though he does allow that it furthers their understanding of the architecture of songs. “We learn about how they’re built,” he says, “what’s happening underneath the bonnet.”
In the end, Dan explains, the band doesn’t chase down a song in the studio until it’s been properly worked out. “Because there’s no point, is there?” Justin says. A delightful exchange about turds, and the pursuit of polishing them, ensues.
“The only reason I can play guitar is because I wanted to work out how songs were written.” —Dan Hawkins
Dan Hawkins’ Gear
Guitars
- 2000 Gibson Les Paul Standard
- Gibson ES-355
Effects
- Ibanez TS9 and TS808 Tube Screamers
- SoloDallas Schaffer Replica
- Keeley Caverns
- Keeley Katana Boost
Strings & Picks
- Rotosound Roto Greys .011s
- Dunlop Nylon .73 mm
Dreams on Toast features the band’s current lineup with the rhythm tandem of Rufus Taylor, the son of Queen drummer Roger Taylor, and bassist Frankie Poullain. It was produced by Dan, who helms his well-appointed Hawkland Studios in Sussex, England.
Unprompted, he shows us around via Zoom, and in his lighthearted practicality, you get a sense of the study in contrast that the Hawkins brothers have presented since they were boys in the English seaside town of Lowestoft. (For an intimate look at their relationship and the band’s hard-won return, check out the 2023 documentary, Welcome to the Darkness, which will be available on platforms in the States starting in mid April.) The conventional wisdom dictates that Justin is the YouTube personality, the opinionated fount of charisma, falsetto, and unforgettable guitar leads, and Dan is the engine room, the pragmatist and a rhythm ace in the mold of his hero Malcolm Young. It’s definitely not that cut-and-dried; Dan, despite his modesty, can put together a great solo, too, and they’re both affable and entertaining, with the pluck to have forged ahead through physical and personal challenges. But it’s true enough.
“I’ve been in my studio for eight hours a day working on my guitar rig for this next tour,” Dan says, feigning salty exasperation. “I’ve spent so much money.” Enter Justin: “And I learned how to go snowboarding.” Dan is interested in the guitar for “what it is capable of sonically, not necessarily emotionally,” he says. “I imagine that’s like the opposite of how I see it,” his brother replies. “That’s why it works!” says Dan.
“As soon as the amp question comes up … I don’t even know what my settings are,” Justin admits. “I’m more concerned about guitars, and I think Dan’s more concerned about amps.”
Dan the amp man: The younger Hawkins brother manages “Tonehenge,” the wall of amplifiers at his studio which he and his sibling use.
Photo by Gareth Parker
Visiting Tonehenge
Actually, Justin’s response to the amp question is terrific: “You could just send him a picture of the Tonehenge,” he says to his brother, referring to a mouth-watering monument of heads and cabs in Dan’s studio. Dan goes on to explain his wall of sound and how he uses an Ampete switcher to explore various combinations. On Dreams on Toast, he says, we’re hearing plenty of Marshall and Friedman—which “take care of the EL34 stuff”—as well as a Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier and a handwired Vox AC30 head that “played a major role.” Dan doesn’t feel compelled to “pull out loads of weird combos,” he says, because “we’ve got a big sound that we need to portray pretty much straight away.” Mission complete.
Guitar-wise, the big takeaway on Dreams on Toast is that we’re hearing less Les Paul than we might be used to on a Darkness record. Dan continues to swear by his 2000 Les Paul Standard, whose high-output 498 humbucker has had a huge impact on the consistency of his sound. “It’s only in recent years that I realized you could actually pull the volume back” and achieve the tone of “a really nice old Les Paul,” he says. His strings have thinned out to .011–.052 after he’d bloodied his fingers one too many times using .013–.054 sets with a wound G.
For his part, Justin has largely moved away from the white Les Paul Customs that became an indelible part of his image long ago, settling into a fruitful partnership with the English brand Atkin, whose esteemed reputation for handcrafted acoustics shouldn’t overwhelm its versatile lineup of electrics. “I know I’ve sort of become synonymous with the white Les Paul, and that’s good; I think every generation should have a white Les Paul player,” he says cheekily. “But maybe my time is gone now. Maybe it’s somebody else’s turn.”
Justin enjoys his Atkin signature models: the Frankenstrat-indebted JH3001 and the JH3000 Mindhorn, an offset with two humbuckers and an LP-style bridge. “I’ve always loved Strats,” he says, beginning to describe his concept for the JH3001. “I’ve always enjoyed the tonal variety, and the way they play is interesting.” But signature instruments are opportunities to correct annoyances and combine archetypes, and so it goes with the 3001.
He wanted a floating, Floyd Rose-style bridge, which would allow him to do dive bombs “and all the things I’ve been teaching myself to do,” he says. (Those shred moves impress as smartly deployed accents to tracks like “Rock and Roll Party Cowboy.”) Justin had long been frustrated with the standard pickup-selector location on Strats and “wanted the electronics to resemble more closely what the Les Pauls do.” A 3-way toggle for two handwound humbuckers can be found on the upper horn, and the wiring is visible via a transparent Perspex pickguard—an homage, perhaps, to Justin’s lovingly remembered Dan Armstrong acrylic guitar (for which he had only the Country Bass pickup). The JH3001, Justin says, is a “FrankenPaul, if you will,” or, as Dan recommends, a “Lesocaster.” The Mindhorn, whose offset body might strike you as a meld of Firebird and Fender, offers Justin the reliability of a Tune-o-matic-type bridge; on other offsets he’s played, like a Jaguar, he’d pick so hard the strings would pop out of their saddles. “Also, the selector’s in the right place for me,” he says.
He also leans on his brother’s collection. One of his go-to instruments for his flourishing slide skills is Dan’s old Epiphone Casino. And Justin explains that Dan’s red Gibson ES-355 was the axe of choice for two of his hardest-hitting solos on the record: the twinned-up lines of “The Longest Kiss” and the breakaway Angus-isms of “I Hate Myself.”
“We’ve got a big sound that we need to portray pretty much straight away.” —Dan Hawkins
Justin’s signature Atkins JH3000 Mindhorn, wielded here, has forced his recognizable white Les Paul into a supporting role.
Photo by Gareth Parker
Solo Break
Which brings us to the choreographed majesty of Justin’s solos across the Darkness catalog—masterpieces in miniature, as hooky and bulletproof as the songs they complement. Justin expounds on his process: “When I’m trying to build a solo, we normally just run the track and I have a go. And usually, I’m going 100 miles an hour, finding phrases and trying to modify them so they don’t sound like where I’ve nicked them from. But the most important thing is that you can sing along to it, so it becomes a countermelody.” He thinks technical dazzle can work beautifully in a solo, but only when it’s held in judicious balance among less-showy principles. “The thing that sets the great guitarists apart from the other ones is the expression,” he says. “I’m talking about dynamics and vibrato.”
His lodestars of lead playing include Mark Knopfler, whose “Tunnel of Love” solo “shows you an infinite number of harmonic choices” atop a straightforward chord sequence. “It’s full of ideas,” he says. “None of it’s showing off; it’s all logic.” Other favorites are similarly thoughtful rockers, among them Brian May and Jeff Beck.
He digs EVH too, though those concepts came later. “There was a guitar teacher in Lowestoft that would teach everybody how to do that—the tapping and all the things that Eddie Van Halen invented,” he recalls. “I didn’t go to that guitar teacher. I was more interested in blues playing, really, and that kind of expression. It wasn’t until later that I thought, ‘Ah, fuck, I kind of wish I’d learned that properly.’ Because now I’m asking my guitar tech how to do it.”
His brother’s lead playing is an inspiration as well, in its ability to surprise and draw contours that Justin simply would not. “He makes interesting choices,” Justin says, “and then I always scratch my head and go, ‘Wow, I would never have thought to play that note.’ So I try and sometimes I think, ‘What would Dan do?’”
YouTube It
Watch the Darkness rip a trio of exuberant rock ’n’ roll romps to a massive festival audience.
Very diverse slate of tones. Capable of great focus and power. Potentially killer studio tool.
Sculpting tones in a reliably reproducible way can be challenging. Midrange emphasis may be a deal breaker for some.
$199 street
Bold-voiced, super-tunable distortion that excels in contexts from filtered boost to total belligerence.
Whitman Audio calls the Wave Collapse a fuzz—and what a very cool fuzz it is. But classifying it strictly as such undersells the breadth of its sounds. The Seattle, Washington-built Wave Collapse has personality at low gain levels and super crunchy ones. It’s responsive and sensitive enough to input and touch dynamics to move from light overdrive to low-gain distortion and degenerate fuzz with a change in picking intensity or guitar volume. And from the pedal’s own very interactive controls, one can summon big, ringing, near-clean tones, desert sludge, or snorkel-y wah buzz.
The Wave Collapse speaks many languages, but it has an accent—usually an almost wah-like midrange lilt that shows up as faint or super-pronounced. It’s not everyone’s creamy distortion ideal. But with the right guitar pairings and a dynamic approach, the Wave Collapse’s midrange foundation can still span sparkly and savage extremes that stand tall and distinctive in a mix. There’s much that sounds and feels familiar in the Wave Collapse, but the many surprises it keeps in store are the real fun.
Heavy Surf, Changing Waves
The absence of a single fundamental influence makes it tricky to get your bearings with the Wave Collapse at first. Depending on where you park the controls to start, you might hear traces of RAT in the midrange-forward, growly distortion, or the Boss SD-1 in many heavy overdrive settings. At its fuzziest, it howls and spits like aFuzz Face orTone Bender and can generate compressed, super-focused, direct-to-desk rasp. And in its darker corners, weighty doom tones abound.
The many personalities are intentional. Whitman Dewey-Smith’s design brief was, in his own words, “a wide palette ranging from dirty boost to almost square-wave fuzz and textures that could be smooth or sputtery.” A parallel goal, he says, was to encourage tone discoveries in less-obvious spaces. Many such gems live in the complex interrelationships between the EQ, filter, and bias controls. They also live in the circuit mash-up at the heart of the Wave Collapse. The two most prominent fixtures on the circuit are the BC108 transistor (best known as a go-to in Fuzz Face builds) and twin red LED clipping diodes (associated, in the minds of many, with clipping in the Turbo RAT and Marshall Jubilee amplifier). That’s not exactly a classic combination of amplifier and clipping section components, but it’s a big part of the Wave Collapse’s sonic identity.
The BC108 drives one of two core gain stages in the Wave Collapse. The first stage takes inspiration from early, simple fuzz topologies like the Tone Bender and Fuzz Face, but with a focus on what Dewey-Smith calls “exploiting the odd edges and interactivity in a two-transistor gain stage.” The BC108 contributes significant character to this stage. The second, post-EQ gain stage is JFET-based. It’s set up to interact like a tube guitar amp input stage and is followed by the clipping LEDs. Dewey-Smith says you can think of the whole as a “fairly” symmetric hard-clipping scheme.
“The magic of the circuit is that those gain stages are very complimentary. When stage one is running clean, it still passes a large, unclipped signal that hits the second stage, making those classic early distortion sounds. Conversely, when the first stage is running hot, it clips hard and the second stage takes a back seat—mostly smoothing out the rough edges of the first stage.” Factor in the modified Jack Orman pickup simulator-style section in the front end, and you start to understand the pedal’s propensity for surprise and expressive latitude.
Searchin’ Safari
The Wave Collapse’s many identities aren’t always easy to wrangle at the granular-detail level. The control set—knobs for bias, filter color, input level, and output level, plus switches for “mass” (gain,) “range”(bass content at the input), and “center” (shifts the filter’s mid emphasis from flat)—are interdependent in such a way that small adjustments can shift a tone’s character significantly, and it can be challenging to find your way back to a tone that sounded just right five minutes ago. Practice goes a long way toward mastering these sensitivities. One path to reliably reproducible sounds is to establish a ballpark tone focus with the filter first, dial in the input gain to an appropriately energetic zone, then shape the distortion color and response more specifically with the bias.
As you get a feel for these interactions, you’ll be knocked out by the sounds and ideas you bump into along the way. In addition to obvious vintage fuzz and distortion touchstones I crafted evocations of blistering, compressed tweed amps, jangly Marshalls, and many shades of recording console preamp overdrive. The Wave Collapse responds in cool ways to just about any instrument you situate out front. But while your results may vary, I preferred the greater headroom and detail that comes with single-coil pickup pairings. Humbuckers, predictably conjure a more compressed and, to my ears, less varied set of sounds. I also found black-panel Fender amps a more adaptable pairing than Vox- and Marshall-style voices. But just about any guitar or pickup type can yield magnificent results.
The Verdict
Though it’s hard to avoid its filtered midrange signature entirely, the Wave Collapse is a pedal of many masks. Once you master the twitchy interactivity between its controls, you can tailor the pedal to weave innocuously but energetically into a mix or completely dominate it. These capabilities are invaluable in ensemble performances, but it’s super enticing to consider how the Wave Collapse would work in a studio situation, where its focus and potency can fill gaps and nooks in color and vitality or turn a tune on its head. Pedals that stimulate the inner arranger, producer, and punk simultaneously are valuable tools. And while the Wave Collapse won’t suit every taste, when you factor together the pedal’s sub-$200 cost, thoughtful design, high-quality execution, and malleability, it adds up to a lot of utility for a very fair price.
The New ToneWoodAmp2 is smaller, lighter, rechargeable, and offers foureffects simultaneously, along with a mobile app and much more.
ToneWoodAmp has released the second generation of its popular accessory that brings a wide array of special effects to acoustic guitars without needing to plug into an external amplifier.
The ToneWoodAmp2 has been redesigned with portability, ease of use, and enhanced performance in mind, featuring a lighter and more compact design while adding more features and capabilities. The new ToneWoodAmp2 has a powerful DSP, a rechargeable battery that lasts for more than 10 hours, and it provides more creative tools as well as the ability to play with up to four simultaneous effects. A new smartphone app allows users to operate the device from either their phone or the device itself.
Reverb Basics | ToneWoodAmp2 Effects Guide
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.The upgraded product is also a fully professional preamp. In addition to the built-in effects, it includes a powerful EQ, compressor, “Feedback Assassin” tools, and more. “While the firstToneWoodAmp provided a breakthrough technology in how acoustic guitar players experience their guitar playing mostly off-stage, the new ToneWoodAmp2 doubles as an on-stage professional pre-amp device with many new capabilities, a perfect tool for performing musicians who need a professional set of tools in a very small footprint package,” says Ofer Webman, CEO of ToneWoodAmp and its inventor.Like the original ToneWoodAmp, the ToneWoodAmp2 attaches to any acoustic guitar via an innovative magnetic X-brace. A new and unique guitar attachment system, called the LiftKit, allows the second-generation device to attach to any acoustic guitar, even a guitar with a curved back.
TonewoodAmp2 features expanded capabilities by its new smartphone app: With its built-inBluetooth®, guitarists can now connect the ToneWoodAmp2 to a free smartphone app for extended control, intuitive adjustments, preset management, and on-the-fly tweaks. The new app is compatible with all modern iOS and Android devices.“The new device is a massive improvement from the original ToneWoodAmp,” says MikeDawes, the U.K.-based guitar player who has twice been named the Best Acoustic Guitarist in the World Right Now by MusicRadar and Total Guitar's end-of-year poll. “This thing is not only reverb or delay or chorus on your guitar it’s everything and more at once. The reason why this is so good is that it’s reducing every barrier that I would have to creativity.”The new ToneWoodAmp2 is available for $300.
For more information, visit www.tonewoodamp.com.
Paul Reed Smith also continues to evolve as a guitarist, and delivered a compelling take on Jeff Beck’s interpretation of “Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers” at the PRS 40th Anniversary Celebration during this year’s NAMM.
After 40 years at the helm of PRS Guitars, our columnist reflects on the nature of evolution in artistry—of all kinds.
Reflecting on four decades in business, I don’t find myself wishing I “knew then what I know now.” Instead, I’m grateful to still have the curiosity and environment to keep learning and to be in an art that has a nonstop learning curve. There’s a quote attributed to artist Kiki Smith that resonates deeply with me: “I can barely control my kitchen sink.” That simple truth has been a guiding principle in my life. We can’t control the timing of knowledge or discovery. If profound learning comes late in life, so be it. The important thing is to remain open to it when it arrives.
I look at what’s happened at PRS Guitars over the last 40 years with real pride. I love what we’ve built—not just in terms of instruments but in the culture of innovation and craftsmanship that defines our company. The guitar industry as a whole has evolved in extraordinary ways, and I’m fortunate to be part of a world filled with passionate, talented, and good-hearted people.
I love learning. It may sound odd, but there’s something almost spiritual about it. Learning isn’t constant; it comes in stages. Sometimes, there are long dry spells where you can even struggle to hold onto what you already know. Other times, learning is sporadic, with nuggets of understanding appearing here and there that are treasured for their poignancy. And then there are those remarkable moments when the proverbial floodgates open, and the lessons come so fast that you can barely keep up. I’ve heard songwriters and musicians describe this same pattern. Sometimes, no new songs emerge; sometimes, they trickle out one by one; and sometimes, they arrive so quickly it’s impossible to capture them all. I believe it’s the same for all creatives, including athletes, engineers, and everyone invested in their art.
Looking back over 40 years in business and a decade of preparation before that, I recognize these distinct phases of learning. Right now, I’m in one of those high-gain learning periods. I’ve taken on a teacher who is introducing me to concepts I never imagined, ideas I didn’t think anyone could explain—things I wasn’t even sure I was worthy of understanding. But when he calls and says, “Have you thought about this?” I lean in, eager to absorb, not just to learn something new for myself, but because I want him to feel his teaching is appreciated, making it more likely that the teaching continues.
“Learning isn’t just about accumulating knowledge; it’s about applying it, sharing it, and evolving because of it.”
Beyond structured teaching, learning also comes through experience, discovery, and problem solving. We recently got our hands on some old, magical guitars, vintage pickups, microphones, and mic preamps. These aren’t just relics; they’re windows into a deeper understanding of how things work and what the engineers who invented them knew. By studying the schematics of tube-mic preamps, we’re uncovering insights that directly influence how we wire guitar pickups and their electronics. It may seem like an unrelated field, but the many parallels in audio engineering are there if you look. Knowledge in one area has a ripple effect, unlocking new possibilities in another.
Even as I continue learning, I recognize that our entire team at PRS is on this journey with me. We have people whose sole job is to push the boundaries of what we understand about pickups, spending every day refining and applying that knowledge so that when you pick up a PRS guitar, it sounds better. More than 400 people work here, each contributing to the collective advancement of our craft. I am grateful to be surrounded by such a dedicated and smart team.
One of my favorite memories at PRS was at a time we were deep into investigating scale lengths on vintage guitars, and some unique pickup characteristics, when one of our engineering leaders walked into my office. He had just uncovered something astonishing and said, “You’re not going to believe this one.” That excitement and back-and-forth exchange of ideas is what keeps this work so rewarding.
As I reflect on my journey, I see that learning isn’t just about accumulating knowledge; it’s about applying it, sharing it, and evolving because of it. I get very excited when something we’ve learned ends up on a new product. Whether lessons come early or late, whether they arrive in waves or trickles, there is always good work to be done. And that is something I just adore.