Thinking of IRs as time capsules

[MarkStudios]

I love IRs because I cannot find (or afford lets be real xD) certain old "sounds",cabs or speakers
but this thing has been in my mind for a while...

Honestly speaking...how long until celestion pre-rola pulsonic speakers (1962 to 1973) deteriorate further until they not longer sound "good"?
How many good quality 50s/60s fender small combo amps could there possibly be out there today?
its already difficult to find a good UK 90s made V30 on its prime (used but not "too much") and they are "just" 20-30 years old in comparison

So how much time until those sounds are even more difficult or impossible to capture therefore being gone forever?
Even if you find a 70s Marshall cab 30 years from now it will not sound the "same" as the same exact cab IR captured today...
thats why I own and love a lot of IR packs because I just cannot go to the local music store and buy those cabs/speakers anymore
(and lets not even talk about vintage mics or preamps used during IR capture...)

I'm not implying that old speakers/cab are inherently better than new ones
but they are different because of the "raw" materials used are sometimes just gone.

@York Audio @ownhammer @ML SOUND LAB @Valhallir any thoughts on this matter?

 

[Valhallir]

I love IRs because I cannot find (or afford lets be real xD) certain old "sounds",cabs or speakers
but this thing has been in my mind for a while...

Honestly speaking...how long until celestion pre-rola pulsonic speakers (1962 to 1973) deteriorate further until they not longer sound "good"?
How many good quality 50s/60s fender small combo amps could there possibly be out there today?
its already difficult to find a good UK 90s made V30 on its prime (used but not "too much") and they are "just" 20-30 years old in comparison

So how much time until those sounds are even more difficult or impossible to capture therefore being gone forever?
Even if you find a 70s Marshall cab 30 years from now it will not sound the "same" as the same exact cab IR captured today...
thats why I own and love a lot of IR packs because I just cannot go to the local music store and buy those cabs/speakers anymore
(and lets not even talk about vintage mics or preamps used during IR capture...)

I'm not implying that old speakers/cab are inherently better than new ones
but they are different because of the "raw" materials used are sometimes just gone.

@York Audio @ownhammer @ML SOUND LAB @Valhallir any thoughts on this matter?

Maybe that sounds a little stupid, but we at Valhallir.at see ourselves more like some kind of "librarians", than business men.
I just love cabs and guitar speakers, and especially the ones, that are older than 25 years and up. I also love modern ones, that are voiced to more
modern stuff, but in most cases it's really hard to beat the "ancient" ones.

Capturing older cabs is a way of keeping the heritage alive. And even if there are still some people talking about the amp-in-the-room-sh**,
there has never been a better way to conserve the characteristics and unique voices of guitar speakers than nowadays.
The audio quality has already exceeded the human hearing ability by far.

And things have certainly changed, when it comes to the quality of IRs. If you look at the enormous amount of great IR-producers nowadays, who already captured some really nice cabs around the globe.

It remains exciting, folks!

 

[sprint]

love a lot of IR packs because I just cannot go to the local music store and buy those cabs/speakers anymore

Even of they were available, I suspect I am not the only one who cannot afford to have many real cabs or to switch real cabs often - IRs provide those on a budget the abilty to have access lots of cab tones not otherwise available die to cost.

 

[York Audio]

@MarkStudios I think we're living in a very exciting time. Even though I do this literally every single day, it's still so cool to me that we're able to "capture" a cabinet like a snapshot in history and experience it whenever we want. You're right that speakers degrade over time with heavy use and the way a cab sounds today will be different than how it will sound years down the road depending on its journey. I feel like cabs are almost living things that change with time and "learn" the kinds of tones we like after we play with them for a while. The quest of capturing never ends. We can always try new techniques, listen to old stuff and see if we can make it better, and experiment with different speaker/cab combinations to see if something feels inspiring. And every time we make an IR, it's like bottling up that moment in time and that cab may never sound like that again.

Today I took test shots of two cabs I wanted to mess with. One of them sounded particularly great and made me excited to shoot it while the other one sounded good but didn't sound "ready," so I have some things I need to try with that cab before it gets the royal treatment. When a cab sounds awesome, that's the time to shoot it and immortalize it. If it sounds a little off, it's better to give it some time and TLC and wait until it settles in.

As time goes on, those speakers and cabs you mentioned will be harder to find, but I imagine that they'll still sound great for years to come. It's not like a lot of people are dropping $2k on a quad of pre-Rola Greenbacks for their touring rigs knowing that they'll get beaten up. People who have those speakers know what they are and tend to honor them. Hopefully we can capture them before someone's kid tries them with a Triple Rectifier during band practice and fries the suckers.

 

[dr bonkers]

@MarkStudios I agree with everyone. We are the preservers of a heritage.

Part of the challenge, especially when finding cabs that are 20+ years old that have seen a lot of action, is determining is this the best one to use as the standard bearer to make a definitive statement that this is representative of how cab x with speaker Y should sound.

There have been times with more common cabs that the speaker/cab combination does not sound representative of the sound we picture in our head of a Mesa with V30s for example. In that sense we kind of move on to find a better example.

Other times when the speaker is say 50 or 60+ years old, you kind of have to ask yourself, is this the best that's going to come along that is an example of this speaker/cab of this age?

Another thing to consider is that many classic recordings were done with speakers that were 1 to 10 years old at the time. Will that speaker really sound the same after 10 or 20,000 hours of playing on it or will it change into something different tonally?

My big fear is regarding there are less and less people who can do quality historical restoration level speaker repair today. Growing up in the 80s and 90s, there were a lot more shops that could do this, but the numbers are dwindling. At some point, they will become as rare and pricey as museum level art restorers if more people don't learn this art.