Hmmmmm....possible new cabinet in the works....

[Hardrock69]

So a few weeks back, some friends asked me to jam with them on a few toons at a club gig.
Used my Marshall JMP 100w head. Borrowed the guitarists JCM900 slant cab.

The irritating thing about club gigs is when the sound dude will not let you crank the amp.

In rehearsal I had my head set on 3. Was decently loud without being overpowering.

Nice.

At the club, sound dude speaks over monitors, tells me to turn it down a bit. I turn to 2 and he says that is fine.

Being as tall as I am, the sound goes by my knees as it is. Was able to hear myself just enough to play the material. But it made me wish I either had a straight cab so I could have a full stack, or a 4 X 12 Anvil case to set my slant cab on, so the thing would be at ear level.

One of the axes I have had for some time now is an Epi Korina Explorer. Beautiful guitar.

I call it my furniture guitar, because it just sits around the house looking beautiful, but collecting dust because I do not play it much. Explorers look cool, but with the shape of the body going upwards as it goes to the butt end, it interferes with my right arm when I play.

So about 2 weeks ago I was perusing Craigslist looking at Marshall cabs. They can easily be had for $275-350 around Nashville depending on condition. I suddenly had a flash of inspiration.

Find someone who would want to trade a Marshall 1960B straight cab straight across for my Explorer.
The Explorer cost me 300 bucks and only had one owner when I got it. Still had the plastic on the pickguard it was so new. I have never taken it out of the house....it is in mint condition.

So a week ago I saw an ad a guy placed who had a straight cab. I emailed him, asked him if he would want to trade for my Korina Explorer. He replied he was very interested.

I am to meet him tomorrow night to do the deal.

I dunno how old his straight cab is, but as long as it has four functional speakers, I will be fine with that.

The main thing is....for the first time in my life I will have a full Marshall stack!



Not that I get out and play live very much, but hey, every guitarist should have one.

Will post pics late tomorrow night when I get it home (if all works out).

[jhale667]

[VAiN]

Sweet man! I have a 5150 half stack and have always dreamed of the bad-assness of a full stack! I don't think my condo would agree though... but fuck them.

[jhale667]

I kinda hate most Soundmen in small clubs. They FREAK when you walk in with a half-stack. I can switch my Boogie down to 15 watts (I don't like to but I can) and still they cry and want to stand over you with a Db meter...I actually had one asshat ask me "You're not going to PLAY through that, are you?" No, it's onstage for looks, you idiot!

[Hardrock69]

I have to give credit. Sound man at that club was on the ball, and any solos I played, I instantly heard them blasting out of the PA.

My friend just emailed me. Looks like they are going to drag my ass up onstage again later in the fall. Sounds cool to me. This time though, I will have a full stack. And I think I will fuck with the sound guy beforehand, and tell him that I could not hear myself last time so I am turning it up to at least 8.

[ashstralia]

good stuff HR. i had an almost identical thing!. i swapped an ibanez destroyer for a 1960b about 15 years ago, then got sick of carting the full stack around (and never being able to turn it up past 4) so i sold the cab and bought a nice set of golf clubs.

[Diamondjimi]

I've had a few confrontations with sound guys over volume. I love the look on their face when I show up with 5 or 6 cabs.(mainly for backline visual). First thing
the dumb one's always ask "You're not plugging all of them in, are you?" DUH! The absolute best is when you actually have a soundman who knows what the fuck he's doing
and can throw my guitar in my vocal monitor. I'll usually turn it down a bit as long as I can hear myself> And since I don't perform with my back to the friggin audience, I need
to have volume behind me so I can hear what I'm doing. But there's nothing better than when the sound dude has the right amount of guitar in my monitor with the right amount of rear volume.
It creates, what I like to call my bubble. It's like my sound is all around me when the balance is right.
What I've done in a single cab situation where I can't have it as loud as I need it to hear myself, I'll set up my rack on a chair and lean/tilt my cab back like a Fender Twin leaning back on a milk crate
or chair to angle the sound directly at the back of my skull. (works great)

[Hardrock69]

Yeah. I may never haul this cab out of my house for all I know. But, it was always me dream to own at least one stack in my lifetime.

And I am now living the dream, lol.



Have not opened the cab up yet, but it is a cab that has 2 inputs on the back, a switch for stereo at 150-watts/channel, or mono @300 watts.....one input is 4 ohms, the other is 16.

Serial number on the bar-code sticker on back is M-2000-19-1700-Z.

If it were common sense, I would say it was built in 2000, but I will check the date codes on the speakers. I figure without even seeing them they are 75-watt Celestions. Cab was a bit heavy. Has the one tolex tear on the front, but otherwise appears to be in great shape.

Will post more images once I get into it.

The dude who owned it is a GREAT guitarist. Had a Strat, and a Gibson Les Paul Custom...playing through a JCM900 head into a 2 X 12 Orange cab. His band was top notch, all good players.

I brought him out into the parking lot and showed him my Korina Explorer, and his eyes got wide and he almost began drooling, lol. He played on it for a moment, then let one of his bandmates check it out, and right away said "Yeah man, if you wanna trade, I'll go for it." He lead me to the band van, we got the cab out, and he helped me load it into my Jeep. I stayed to watch them, had a drink, and was very impressed with the band. All covers, but he said they play every weekend, and it showed. They were VERY tight, and I could find no fault at all in any of them, or in the band as a whole.

But all the way back home I am yelling in the car "I GOT ME A NEW FUCKING CABINET YEAH!!!" And I am sure as the guitarist cruises home tonight he is gonna be yelling "YEAH I GOT A NEW KORINA EXPLORER!!!!".

Okies...opened up the cab. The standard G12T-75s greet me with a smile......Celestion date codes are all the same....May 8, 2000.

Cabinet was bought new by the guy I got it from somewhere in the early 2000s, so it is a one owner cab. The slant cab he WAS using is now his practice cab, and the Orange cab is his gig cab. Pretty handy in terms of being able to transport efficiently. And it fucking sounded droolably good.

Marshall cab serial number on the sticker underneath the top inside made no sense, and, there is no info on dating cabinets after about 1995 I could find on the net. But at the official Celestion site, they list date code usage up to 2005.

So it is not an old cab at all, but what the fuck. Someday when I am in the cash again, I will get on craigslist and try to find an older cab. Even a beater would be cool, cause I could always recover and refurbish them so they look brand new.

Inside:



Now if a certain asshole were here, the thread would have been hijacked with a bunch of bullshit about what I SHOULD do with the cabinet and why it is not as good as it could be, etc., etc.



HOLY KRAP! Why did this amp never sound like this before? Seems to have all kinds of grind compared to what it did before, now that I have plugged it into 2 cabs. Plugged straight in, no noise gate, no Tube Screamer, just one wire right into the high input.
Strange. I mean it had a great overdriven sound before, but now it is the proverbial wall of sound, and seems to have a lot more atomic meltdown to the crunchiness of it.

*fapfapfapfapfapfap.......​*

[Diamondjimi]

Fuckin A bro. Using 2 cabs def. fills out the sound better, eh?

Congrats!

[Hardrock69]

It is really a trip. The difference between 1 cab and 2 is as noticeable as the difference between my old Carvin 4 X 12 with the same type of speakers, and my slant cab that replaced it.

They say the 75-watt Celestions are better for low end, so I now have the best of both worlds. Am going to do some recording tomorrow, and will post a sample mp3 eventually.

[Hardrock69]

One mod I will take care of soon.....I will rewire the cab with heavier speaker wire. Same configuration (since it is a mono/stereo cab, I wanna leave it stock), but I always hated the stock factory wirw gauge. It looks like it would fucking melt if I turned the amp up past 5, lol.

[jhale667]

Very cool score, dude - and yes, glad the thread isn't getting derailed with proclamations of what you should do with the cab, and how you should replace the 75-watters and whatnot. If you like it and it sounds good, it IS good.

I too love the looks of a full stack but from personal experience seeing how every pro dude I teched for ran their rigs, the top cab is usually for show, especially in a smaller club. You don't necessarily want your head getting cut off for 2 hours a night. but it looks SO COOL... I've actually considered getting a 2x12 to stick on top of one of my 4x12s for just a little more "oomph" but not enough to be overbearing.

[Hardrock69]

Well, the trick is to have the cab right at ear-level, but wear ear-plugs.
Won't have the amp blasting my fool head off (2 is not really high-volume, eh? ), so it will be fine.
I hooked up the V to it today again. Wow. Lotsa low end. I am digging it!

[jhale667]

Well, the trick is to have the cab right at ear-level, but wear ear-plugs.
Won't have the amp blasting my fool head off (2 is not really high-volume, eh? ), so it will be fine.
I hooked up the V to it today again. Wow. Lotsa low end. I am digging it!

Earplugs? Isn't that like having sex with a rubber?? That's kinda always what wearing Sonics or anything that was still supposed to allow you to "hear" correctly felt like to me...but at the same time, still don't wanna get my head cut off...but with a 2x12 on top thinking I could still feel it more in my chest w/o dying...lol

I would like to try some in-ear monitors...

[Nitro Express]

I kinda hate most Soundmen in small clubs. They FREAK when you walk in with a half-stack. I can switch my Boogie down to 15 watts (I don't like to but I can) and still they cry and want to stand over you with a Db meter...I actually had one asshat ask me "You're not going to PLAY through that, are you?" No, it's onstage for looks, you idiot!

I've had a half stack right next to my bed.

[Nitro Express]

Sweet man! I have a 5150 half stack and have always dreamed of the bad-assness of a full stack! I don't think my condo would agree though... but fuck them.

You will go back to a half stack real quick. If you want to fry your hearing stack your cabs. You can play at high volumes with the cabs on the deck and not blast your ears so bad. Even if I play through two cabs I will set one up behind me and one to the side of me. I never stack them. Another trick is pull the caster wheels and have the cab itself sitting on the stage. You get more resonance.

[Hardrock69]

Well the point here is, as I mentioned above, not to destroy my hearing, but just to be able to hear myself at all. With the slant cab pushing ear directly at my ears, I don't have to turn up so loud.

Though playing quietly through a Marshall is blasphemy in itself.

AND, not having a band, I am not going to be dragging a full stack around town that often, if at all, anyway, lol.

But who knows?

I could become the Love Slave of some hot female VP of A & R at some major label, and suddenly find myself in Development Deal Hell, where I would be able to have even MORE stacks, and have the label pay for a roadie to haul them around for me, lol.

Yeah, right. And monkeys gonna fly out my butt...

I recall a Calvin & Hobbes comic where Hobbes walks up to where Calvin is sitting on the floor with a small transistor radio. Hobbes asks him what he is doing and he replies something like "I am annoying my parents by playing elevator music". I forget what Hobbes replies but then Calvin says "And I'm listening to it really quietly too....".

[Nitro Express]

I've never tried it but one trick is you can put a hotplate on the top cab. Blast the shit out of the lower one and then use the variable resister in the hotplate to dial in the top cab to your liking.

[Hardrock69]

Good idea.

[Coyote]

This thread got me thinking about swapping the speakers in my old Behringer cab.
Currently, it still has the factory standard "Jensens", but I'm not a fan of 'em... It's a sturdy mo'fo, though...

Been thinking about Eminence Legend GB12's (greenback clones), but also been thinking about a mix'n'match set.
For example: 2 Legends and 2 bass speakers, in a X pattern, á la the Bogner Uberschall cab.

[ashstralia]

It creates, what I like to call my bubble. It's like my sound is all around me when the balance is right.

jimi, next time you've got some time at rehearsal or such, try splitting your signal into stereo and sending one half off to the p.a. and the other half into your amp. then your 'bubble' becomes this huge 3d sounding thing. it's magnificent. cheers!