If using a cab on a chain feeding the front of a tube amp is wrong...

[bxlgotham]

Why does it often sound good? Is it wrong? Asking out of ignorance and re-examining my understanding. Currently running an AC-10C, very bright speaker on this little amp, can often sound too shrill with some chains I create. I throw a cab block on it and things get good. Is it wrong? I have no amp block in these chains btw, just drives and FX.

 

[yek]

A cab is a filter, to some extent. Depending on the settings, it attenuates the highs and boost lows.
Which can work well when running an amp at low volume levels, or with a speaker that sounds too hi-fi at low level (e.g. EV 12L).

 

[Piing]

If it doesn't blow up or smells cheesy, it is not wrong

 

[sprint]

No routing combination is wrong, but, learning why something sounds the way it does, or learning why typical practice / procedure is what it is (or is not what it is not), can be useful to dialing in any given sound that comes to your mind. Often micing a cab and sending that result into another cab won't sound good since it could be a pronounced roll off X2 etc + other possibly not so compatible compounded eq, but if the 2nd cab is really bright the added cab could be taming that brightness via it's own eq. I'd prefer doing the same via an understood eq designed specifically to address that hi end and which could be adjusted methodically rather than using a somewhat random added cab model solution.

 

[bxlgotham]

No routing combination is wrong, but, learning why something sounds the way it does, or learning why typical practice is what it is (or is not what it is not), can be useful to dialing in any given sound that comes to your mind. Often micing a cab and sending that result into another cab won't sound good since it could be a pronounced roll off X2 etc + other possibly not so compatible compounded eq, but if the 2nd cab is really bright the added cab could be taming that brightness via it's own eq. I'd prefer doing the same via an understood eq designed specifically to address that hi end and which could be adjusted methodically rather than using a somewhat random cab solution.

Makes perfect sense and I understand a speaker is essentially a filter/EQ on a raw powered sound at the end of the day and so how you get the pieces of the sound out of the picture is all about what you just described.

 

[skolacki]

Didn’t know this was a thing. An ass backwards guitar rig. I’ll try it.

 

[touch33]

It’s my fave part of the AFX3 — being able to do things that would make a repair tech gasp WITHOUT actually blowing something up.

 

[lqdsnddist]

I run a modeler or sometimes a real amp, through a load box, into an IR cab sim, back into the front of a tube amp and play it through the amps 1x12 speaker and it sounds great, best of both worlds tone. Heck sometimes even mic that cabinet then lol

IR is basically an EQ and the real speaker is an eq of sorts as well since it rolls off the highs and lows to some degree. The tone stack of the amp and voicing also colors the tone, in my case, using a blackface style tone stack, and an all tube power section.

Should work but it sounds better than any FRFR speaker or monitor as they don’t sound “real” and in the room, and a guitar cab on its own doesn’t sound enough like an album it mic’d cab, so the unlikely solution is to play a mic’d cab sound through a real speaker. Sounds huge and in the room and like an album all at once.

I’ve gone back and forth with a bunch of cabs on their own, monitors on their own, you name it and always come back to using my ToneKing Gremlin with a Alnico Cream 1x12 as the best my guitar has ever sounded

 

[bxlgotham]

I run a modeler or sometimes a real amp, through a load box, into an IR cab sim, back into the front of a tube amp and play it through the amps 1x12 speaker and it sounds great, best of both worlds tone. Heck sometimes even mic that cabinet then lol

IR is basically an EQ and the real speaker is an eq of sorts as well since it rolls off the highs and lows to some degree. The tone stack of the amp and voicing also colors the tone, in my case, using a blackface style tone stack, and an all tube power section.

Should work but it sounds better than any FRFR speaker or monitor as they don’t sound “real” and in the room, and a guitar cab on its own doesn’t sound enough like an album it mic’d cab, so the unlikely solution is to play a mic’d cab sound through a real speaker. Sounds huge and in the room and like an album all at once.

I’ve gone back and forth with a bunch of cabs on their own, monitors on their own, you name it and always come back to using my ToneKing Gremlin with a Alnico Cream 1x12 as the best my guitar has ever sounded

The Friedman ASC-12 sounds about as damn real as you can hope it to. Maybe you mean FRFR speakers, which I agree. But Friedman ASC-12 is FRFR and you couldn't tell it's not a real amp in the room. Sounds and feels like one. Also weighs as much as one. IMO.

 

[lqdsnddist]

The Friedman ASC-12 sounds about as damn real as you can hope it to. Maybe you mean FRFR speakers, which I agree. But Friedman ASC-12 is FRFR and you couldn't tell it's not a real amp in the room. Sounds and feels like one. Also weighs as much as one. IMO.

Funnily enough, had one probably like 5 years ago, right when they came out.

It had some amp issue with tons of static/white noise that resulted in it having to get returned.

I remember boxing up that beast and it’s horrible handle location lol

Can’t remember exactly how it sounded but I switched to a CLR as they were more readily available back then.

ASM I think was a little chunkier overall; maybe less accurate which at the time I probably thought was a negative, but likely sounded a bit subjectively “better” perhaps

Would be curious to find the old valve reactor which was like a CLR with a dock for a POD, 6l6 powered 50 watt and probably a celestian 70/80, might of actually sounded really good

My Gremlin is silly expensive for a 5 watt kt66 class A with just a tone knob and volume, but it’s pretty linear and had a attenuator built in so I can hit it pretty hard and get a little power amp breakup and sag which likely contributes to the tone too. Nice thing is bypassing the fm3 and you get a nice clean blackface style and then run the amp and cab model and it can be a Plexi or Engl etc lol

 

[666was999]

Distortion emphasizes highs. Crazy wild inharmonic unforgiving highs, that people usually don't want to hear, though they do sometimes depending on the kind of music.
The cabs job besides other colouring is it to filters these highs out again and to do that it has to come after the distortion. Which also means for amps that don't distort their place in the sequence matters less.