reload 1960A with vintage 30s??

[mmistudent]

hey all... I'm considering swapping the 75 watt celestions out of my Marshall 1960A cab for a set of vintage 30s. When my band was recording, we tried getting a good sound out of my amp/cab to tape (Marshall JCM800 100 watt non master volume). No matter what we did it lacked balls. So we switched to a Mesa 4x12 loaded with vintage 30s... It was like instant balls. It sounded incredible. So much more definition and low end! My question is; was the better sound the result of the heavier mesa cab or the different set of speakers? I'd like to save money and just re-speaker the cab. I did notice when I was helping our engineer carry it down the stairs that it was quite a bit heavier.

is a song from that recording session

 

[Sonixx]

some is going to come from the cabinet... but in this case the majority will come from different speakers.

the MESA cabinet does sound differently than a Marshall... but the majority of the sound will come from the Vintage 30's. I loaded Vintage 30's in my Ampeg V4 cabinet and it cranks. I also have a MESA 2X12 that I record with and both sound great.

I listened to your track. What are you going for that's different than that? Sounded really good.

How did you mic and what mic did you use?

Try this before buying new speakers...

mic with a 57 and a condenser (4033 or 4050, C1 or anything else) both pointed directly at the cone center

Mix both to taste and Scoop out, to taste, between 600 and 2k Hz and boost at 2500 and 5K (fairly narrow) and cut everything else above 6K and below 60Hz. Play around with this. You can really alter the tone drastically playing around with these frequencies.

 

[krimson]

Sounds pretty good. The mixture of the cab and the speakers will change the tone radically. Putting the vintage 30's in may or may not sound good to you.

I highly recommend no eq'ing the miced amp signal when recording tho. If it doesn't sound right then move the mic and work the eq on the amp instead, also try a different guitar as well. If you do any eq'ing on the miced signal I would only do a cut below something like 80Hz.

 

[mmistudent]

some is going to come from the cabinet... but in this case the majority will come from different speakers.

the MESA cabinet does sound differently than a Marshall... but the majority of the sound will come from the Vintage 30's. I loaded Vintage 30's in my Ampeg V4 cabinet and it cranks. I also have a MESA 2X12 that I record with and both sound great.

I listened to your track. What are you going for that's different than that? Sounded really good.

How did you mic and what mic did you use?

Try this before buying new speakers...

mic with a 57 and a condenser (4033 or 4050, C1 or anything else) both pointed directly at the cone center

Mix both to taste and Scoop out, to taste, between 600 and 2k Hz and boost at 2500 and 5K (fairly narrow) and cut everything else above 6K and below 60Hz. Play around with this. You can really alter the tone drastically playing around with these frequencies.

Thanks for the advice... I really liked the guitar sound we accomplished that recording session... Nothings wrong with it. Heres the problem: I don't own the cab it was recorded with, and when we tried recording with my marshall cab, it sounded like crap. Yes, I do believe we used a 57 on it... we did experiment with its position on the speaker quite a bit, as well as with the amp EQ/dist pedal (beleive it or not we recorded that with a Boss DS2 dist pedal). More than anything, I'm worried about what I'm gonna do once I have my project studio set up. I'm gonna want a good sounding cab on hand just in case. I'll try those EQ techniques once I get my Aardvark Q10 (which should be sometime in the next 10 years). Thanks -Joe

 

[krimson]

Cutting out below 60Hz and above 6KHz is fine but don't chop out the mids! That is the frequency that the guitar is. The mids are the tone of the instrument. But you of course can try and you will find out that you will have a tough time when it comes down to mixing where everything will sound like mud.