Holy Shitballs (Again!) Port City OS 2x12

Robboman

Robboman

Fractal Fanatic
Just thought I'd do a little review for the 'real guitar cab' guys.

I've been curious about these Port City Wave cabs for a while and read the rave reviews. I never had the opportunity to try one out myself.. til today. This week I came across a pretty fair local deal on a unloaded OS 2x12, so I went for it! Woohoooo... I've had this pair of vintage 1980 G12-65s on the shelf for a few years, just waiting for a nice cab to come along.

First impression - quite light for such a big 2x12, and the top handle is in the perfect spot. I pulled off the back panel to drop in my speakers.. nice, clean, perfect construction inside, nicely dressed in black paint (nice touch). In the pic you can see those two 1/2" ply panels mounted at 45 degree angle, one across the top and one at the bottom at the back of the cab. Supposed to reflect the back sound down and out the bottom front port. There's also an angled piece leading out the lip of the front port, ('ramped' port) . Seems this would kind of direct sound upward towards you from the floor.

I put it beside my Marshall 1960a to do a little tone shootout. About the Marshall - I'm really familiar with this old cab and it always sounded killer to me. It's an early 80's cab, the G12-65s I put in the PC came from this cab. The other two 65s are still in there, mixed with a pair of WGS Vet-30s, which I always thought was a nice combination. I re-covered this cab myself by the way, (that's why it's brown tolex and wheat grille. The original tolex was really beat to shit!). Around 8 months ago I did an A/B shootout between this and a stock Mesa OS 4x12 slant. The Marshall won. Mesa was louder/deeper but just didn't sound as good to me - I sold it :).

So with the Marshall and the Port City side-by-side I plugged in my Axe-Fx II, Matrix GT1000FX and ran two speaker cables from the A and B outputs of the Matrix, with the switch set to 'parallel'. This let me easily A/B the two cabs easily by turning the knobs on the Matrix.

Well Holy Shitballs Batman! Several cranked up hours later I have to declare - this PC cab sounds freakin fantastic in every way. It completely destroyed the Marshall. I mean completely. Not even close. This 2x12 sounds bigger, punchier and most importantly.. much, much smoother and sweeter.

Before hearing it I thought the PC might be too bassy or too dark (G12-65s can be pretty dark to begin with), but I found it nice and balanced, really punchy and full in the mids and smooth in the highs. When switching from Marshall to the PC, the overall EQ is a little different (in a good way) but it's more than that... the PC seems a lot 'looser' feeling and smoother somehow. I've read it described as how the speakers can 'breathe' - the cones can move more freely compared to a non-ported closed cab. Now I've heard what that means. By comparison the Marshall feels all tight and stuffy.. constricted. No character or 'bloom'. Despite this sweet looseness, I don't hear any lack of definition or muddiness or anything. It's solid and clear. It just plain sounds better.
Another great thing is that it seems to have much better dispersion off-axis than other cabs. There's no ice-pick beam and there's a really wide sweet spot, you can walk around and still hear detail. I assume the port is helping in that dept.

Two thumbs way up for Port City. Best cab I've ever heard!

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Has anyone made any Port City cab IRs? I'm going to experiment with this when I get a chance.. I found some info from Daniel (Port City designer) saying you can actually mic the port (and the room) on these cabs effectively:

From Interview with Daniel Klein of Port City Amplification | The Guitar Note

PT: Tell us about the Wave Cabinets.

DANIEL: Having played in clubs and also having done some studio work, I realized that, when it comes to cabinets, the majority of people are either doing open-back cabinets or closed-backed cabinets. Would you guys agree with that?

PT: Definitely.

DANIEL: There are some cabinets that have some small ports on them that can kind of accentuate certain things. But I knew that there had to be a different way and a better way.

The thing with open-back cabinets is that no matter what room you’re in, it’s always going to be different than your prior room. So if you are playing venues with an open-back cab, you are always going to get a different sound. So the consistency really isn’t there. And also you lose a little bit of volume and bottom end, just because a lot of the sound that’s coming out the back is just making its way around the room, and it’s not hitting your ear the way it should.

And with closed-back cabinets, there are several design flaws. Number one, when a speaker moves, it moves in both directions. When you’re standing in front of a cabinet, whether it’s a 1×12, a 2×12 or a 4×12 cabinet, obviously the majority of the sound you’re hearing is coming from the front of that speaker. But there’s so much that’s being emitted from the rear of the speaker. In a closed-back cabinet, those frequencies normally aren’t strong enough to penetrate through the wood, through the glue that holds the Tolex on, and through the Tolex itself. So what happens is that a lot of those frequencies coming from the rear of the speaker simply stay inside the cabinet, and bounce around, and, as they slow down, they can become these standing waves.

If you guys go into any mixing room, you’ll find little bass traps, little Styrofoam or plastic things in the corner that absorb low frequencies. That’s because low frequencies, when they become standing waves, tend to go toward those corners or wherever there’s a right angle. Obviously there are a ton of right angles inside a cabinet.

So what we did was design a cabinet that has two different forty-five degree angle sound deflecting panels which would shoot all the sound waves from the rear of the speaker down to the bottom of the cabinet, then from the bottom of the cabinet to the front of the cabinet. That’s where the real magic of the Wave Cabinet comes in. The cabinet is ported all the way on the bottom, the full width of the cabinet. It’s about an inch and one-eighth port. So what happens is from the back of the speaker, the sound waves are projected down, then out the very front, The cabinet breathes tremendously well.

Not only is it ported along the front, but it has a ramped port. Some other cabinets have a smaller circular port located on the bottom of the cabinet. If you put your hand down there, you can feel the pressure coming out, but you’ve got to think, “Okay, where’s this going?” It’s coming right at your ankles, and that’s really not doing a whole lot for you. Granted, it fills the room and that’s better in some situations. But you’ve got to think “Is there any way I could possibly design that better?”

What we have is a ramped port in the front. It’s a thirty-one degree angle. What that does is elevate those frequencies right into the stream of the speaker. So you’ve got the frequencies coming straight off from the speaker, and then you’ve got these other frequencies coming through the bottom of the cabinet that are pushed through this ramp. It’s kind of like when two rivers collide, the current picks up. It’s the exact same thing with the Wave Cabinet. Since the sounds from the rear of the speaker are being pushed out, it actually mixes with the front frequencies being produced by the speaker.

It’s a tremendously mixed sound. Peter Thorn of the Chris Cornell Band recently took his 4×12 cabinet. I delivered it to him at the Raleigh, North Carolina Amphitheater where they were playing. And after playing it, he just looked at me and said, “The sound that I’m getting from this cabinet sounds like it’s coming out of a PA. It’s so balanced.”

You know how some cabinets can be overly woofy and kind of muddy and dark? That’s because the standing waves inside of the cabinet are cancelling out a lot of the high end. And some cabinets are really bright and harsh. With the Wave Cabinet, because you are getting one hundred percent of what your speaker is producing due to the patented design of the cabinet, you are really getting a balanced, even sound.

Dave Weiner of the Steve Vai Band said it better than anyone else. He said, “Playing a regular cabinet is like watching standard television. Playing a Wave Cabinet is like watching high definition television.”

PT: Would there ever be a situation where someone would want to mic the bottom port of the cabinet? Or would you want to move the mic back further to get the mixed sound?

DANIEL: That’s another great question. A lot of the guys who buy Wave Cabinets are studio guys and producers, just because you are going to be able to mic the room and get great coverage. There’s this huge spread of sound that, in any room, is going to be great. But also you can do the traditional close mic’ing.

You can actually mic the port. It is one of the very few cabinets where you can mic the port. So you could put like a Sennheiser 421 about six inches back and about six inches up to catch that ported sound, and it’ll work just fine.

On a lot of cabinets, you can’t mic the ports because some ports are two or three inches, depending on the manufacturer. If you have one 2” or 3” port, and there is one speaker pounding out the sound, there is just so much air coming out of the cabinet.

Imagine you have a two liter bottle that’s full of water, and you turn it directly upside down. What’s the result of that?

PT: Well the air’s going to rise to the top, right?

DANIEL: Right. And is the water going to pour out smoothly, or will it glug-glug its way out?

PIPES: Glug-glug!

DANIEL: Right. The bottle has to inhale and exhale, and, when it does that, the water comes out. Think about your cabinet in the same way. When your speaker is pushing out all that, the air is coming through that port, and then it’s going to be sucked in. It goes back and forth. When you have something as inconsistent as that, you are not going to be able to mic it because there are going to be phase issues. Because the Wave Cabinet breathes in a circular fashion, you can mic the port, you can mic the speaker, you can mic the room, and together those work out to be a remarkable combination.
 
Hi Robboman

Congrats - good to hear you're loving your new PC 212.
I've been interested in those cabs for a while now, but haven't had the chance to try one for myself yet.
If you shoot some IR's of it please share them here - I for one would love to try them out.
Best
RB
 
I too have been very interested in these cabinets. My G.A.S. pangs have now gone up by a factor of 1000! Thanks Robboman for the in-depth review, pics, and the interview with Daniel. If you manage to get some IRs created of the cab before I get my hands on my own cab, I would be very grateful!
 
I'll definitely share IRs but not sure when I'll have time to capture. Mics and mixer currently in drummers basement.. and btw they're not anything high-end. Still, it's worth a try.
 
Cool. Definitely give it a try when you can... I bet you'll be surprised at how good they sound. I used a cheap EMU-0404 USB interface to capture IRs of my cabinet (used a Shure SM57), and I thought they turned out very good.
 
I've always wondered - Why don't cab/amp manufacturers like Port City make and sell their own official IR's? I'd bet they'd make quite a profit as a lot of artists from this generation are going digital
 
I have an OS 1x12 with a Scumback. Although I dont use it with my AxeFx, it is an amazing cab and sounds great with about any amp I have thrown at it.
 
My 4x12 OS Wave is the best! Although I am having speaker issues at the moment, Daniel is being extremely helpful with helping me troubleshoot it. Best sounding cabinet, period, no question. You need to hear it to believe it.
 
The 4x12 is WAY too much for my needs, and Daniel even told me this, and tried to sell me the 2x12! haha. I was just like... Take my money! I want more!! I am planning to buy a 2x12 OS Wave as well though.
 
Can't say enough about PC. Order a custom OS vertical 2 x 12 with EVH "greenbacks". Can't wait to hear it.. 100% custom a 1 off and Daniel said YES to everything. Should arrive soon.. will post after..
 
Port City is the way to go. I recently acquired a vertical OS2x12 wave cabinet from a forum member, cooper grant i believe. kick ass cab. mine has wgs veteran 30 and et-65 speakers. sounds fantastic. so loud for only being a 2x12
 
No UK dealers that I know. But call it payback for Matrix being so far away :p


But really, I am sure he can ship it. Would most likely ship it with speakers separate.
 
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