Unimpressed with my Boogie 1x12 mini recto cab

Sorenspete

Sorenspete

Inspired
I got it sometime last year and I just never liked it. I messed around with it for a few hours yesterday as well as the speaker impedance curve (finding the speaker resonance frequency etc.). My main issue is that it seems to have way too much presence and absolutely zero bottom end. I'm assuming that this is 20% the fact that it's a small 1x12 cabinet and 80% how things are set in the speaker tab of the amp block. The speaker tab is one of the last frontiers for me so I have some research and learning to do.

Signal path:
Guitar -> rack tuner -> Axe-Fx III Mk II -> Fryette 2/90/2 power amp -> MESA / Boogie Engineering 1x12 Mini Rectifier slant cab w/ Vintage 30

My Fryette has depth and presence controls. I've turned the depth all the way up and the presence all the day down. It was purchased second hand without me getting it checked over by my local amp tech but I don't think the issue is with the power amp.

For the last week I've been gearing up to switch out the Yamaha HS8's and the 1x12 with two Orange 4x12's but last night the monitors sounded so much better than the 1x12 I'm having doubts.

Cheers
 
Rudimentary question, but is the Cab block engaged in the Axe III? You mentioned the monitors sounded better but no mention of the state of the Cab block with either use.
 
JoKeR III said:
Rudimentary question, but is the Cab block engaged in the Axe III? You mentioned the monitors sounded better but no mention of the state of the Cab block with either use.
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The cab block is obviously engaged when using monitors but there is no cab block in the preset for the real cabinet.
 
markwayne said:
If I was limited to single 12 in a small cabinet, it would have to be an EVM 12L. IMHO - Celestions seem to need to at least be paired before they start to have some girth.
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Thanks for this info. Next week I'll be ordering an Orange PPC412-C in black so I'm sure that cab will be a night and day difference. Same speakers (more or less).
 
I'd wager a guess that this is all about the size of the cabinet, the floor the cab is on, etc. My 1x12 Mesa cab (not Rectifier branded) is very mid-present in a way that a 4x12 is not. I think it's the nature of that kind of enclosure — experimenting with the 112 cabs in the Axe FX and compare them to their 412 equivalents, and you'll hear the same thing. Part of the fix is getting an oversized one (see the bassiness of a 4x12 oversized Recto cab), but if you're doing that in a 1x12, it's worth asking if you should get an enclosure with more speakers instead.

If you wanted to, you could try putting the speaker in an area of the room where the bass is most amplified. The way you test this in a home theatre set up is to put a bass-heavy song (in this case, a bass-heavy riff) on a loop, then crawl around on your hands and knees. Wherever you hear the most bass, that's where to put the sub — or, in this case, that's where you should put your speaker.

Most people would suggest starting with corners.

Forgive me if you already knew this and tried it all.
 
Yeah, if you are after low end girth, there is no substitution for a cabinet's internal volume to help a speaker move air. Hence the popularity of Boogie's Thiel, front-ported cabinets. When I first started downsizing from 4-12 cabinets, I had some Thiele-design 2-12 cabinets built. Those things could be thunderous and I didn't miss the 4-12 cabinets at all.

Of course, all of this ignores the fact that the microphone only hears is what's coming off the speaker's cone. On large stages, it becomes a matter of diminishing returns and I eventually just had the extra low end dialed in at the monitor desk and fed back into my front wedge.
 
Ah! The Thiele Widebody is what I have! Forgot the name of it. Thank you!

In the 1x12 size, it's not that bass-heavy. Very nasally, at least with my Mark V. It's a bit better with some amp sims in the Axe FX, but it needs a lot more bass than one would think to push air.

It pushed more bass in our old condo, where it was tucked between shelves and things on a wall. I had to flip it on its side because it was pushing a lot of sub frequencies into the floor and I was concerned for the neighbours. So a lot of it really is about the room and its placement therein.
 
I never owned a single 12 Thiele cabinet. I have heard that stacking two of them with the ports aligned gives you a 3dB boost in the low end. That was certainly the case with my 2-12s.

I have gigged single 12 cabinets many times, but never without folding the guitar back into the front wedges. I apologize if I have misunderstood the OP. If this is for playing in a house, and you have a decent pair of studio monitors, I would not look any further. Maybe add a powered subwoofer if you really want to feel the low strings.

I mostly gig as a single or duo these days and the best thing I have done in the last twelve years (aside from buying into the Fractal ecosystem) is to add a powered sub to my mains. It allows me to scale up to some pretty large rooms without having to carry any more gear.
 
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