Using same cab for different amps

Nado

Member
I'm curious what people do here, or if they have a favourite cab that has a fairly universal application.

The cab selection range is great, but it's a little like going to Blockbuster (a defunct video store in Australia) and going home with nothing because of the massive choice! Watching Leon Todd's videos, at least on the videos, he uses his Greenback loaded TV MIX cab on pretty much everything. All of his sounds are great. If I was to think real world - hypothetically I may own a number of amp heads (I don't!), and one great quadbox with my favourite speakers, and chop and change amps as I need to. So this approach kind of makes sense.

I guess I'm thinking of reducing choice fatigue, having a consistent cab (because the variance is huge from cab to cab), and refining my sounds at amp level. At least for a while.

Thoughts?

Cheers.
 
It's not a bad idea at all. Have a look at this studio tour by Tim Pierce:


He runs a 4x12 that he has in an iso cab in his garage. Whenever he talks about his signal chain, he always refers to that 4x12 and he's been featured on more than 1000 records. I'm sure along the line he's changed setup but using the one cab for all his sounds really works for him. And yeah, definitely helps with ear fatigue and option paralysis.

I would pick an amp you're familiar with, that feels like home and start to audition cabs for that sound. When you've found something you like try with different amps and yeah, a 4x12 with greenbacks work with everything I use.
 
I use the same cab for my clean and dirty tones.

The cab is responsible for 50% or more of the sound. So using the same cab will make amps sound more alike. Whether that's a good or bad thing, is up to you.
 
I use the same cab for my clean and dirty tones.

The cab is responsible for 50% or more of the sound. So using the same cab will make amps sound more alike. Whether that's a good or bad thing, is up to you.
Agreed. I do feel it also makes having hundreds of amp models much less enticing so I would treat the modeler more like a 4 channel amp rather than getting completely different tones for each channel.
 
I'm trying to settle on a good universal cab that I like and just stick with it for a while and experiment with amps. I certainly understand the logic of using the same cab in a preset for a gig for consistency - done enough FOH work to understand that. Leaning toward a good factory Greenback cab mix, or maybe LT's or perhaps the York Matchless 2x12 which is very nice.
 
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If you are recording then using different sounding cabs is an artistic choice, maybe.

But, consider this: If you are playing live then you're going to be messing with your sound man who might need to adjust your sound to fit into the mix when you use a different cabinet. Do that too much and they will get tired of tweaking your sound, and instead will let you sound like you're all over the place resulting in the band not sounding consistent or cohesive. Just because we have hundreds of choices doesn't mean we should use every one.
 
If you are recording then using different sounding cabs is an artistic choice, maybe.

But, consider this: If you are playing live then you're going to be messing with your sound man who might need to adjust your sound to fit into the mix when you use a different cabinet. Do that too much and they will get tired of tweaking your sound, and instead will let you sound like you're all over the place resulting in the band not sounding consistent or cohesive. Just because we have hundreds of choices doesn't mean we should use every one.
Agreed.
 
But, consider this: If you are playing live then you're going to be messing with your sound man who might need to adjust your sound to fit into the mix when you use a different cabinet.
Yes, that's it. If you play pre-programmed material with all other band members, than different cabinet could work (the program should take into account what frequency each sound should cover). But if you like to jam, or make improvvisation... than less is better! Even in a trio using only one cab could help to balance the sound between clean/crunc/lead/fx sound... in the past different (real) cab had both eq AND feel differences. Now with IR we can shape our eq, and use drive/amp/cab block to tailor the feel and sound to our needs.
I will use different cab only in a cover/tribute band, when I need a sound to characterize an era: for funky stuff I prefer jensen 4x10, it will sound (and feel) bad with 4x12 GB. But the whole band will change the sound...
 
If you play a mono sound in your live setup, you can route your clean and your dirty sound separately through the left and the right output. That way the sound guy can use two channels and doesn't have to react to your sound changes.
 
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