Hey Glenn, I am a high school science teacher and this video is an excellent example of practical applications of the scientific method. Data and evidence is much better than uninformed opinions. Thank you for all the work you did for this video.
It would be great if he can do triplicates! One single curve isn't scientific enough to prove/disprove anything. Since tiny variations such as vibrations displacing the microphone some millimeters can be the responsible for the changes observed in (11:48). The valleys and the peaks of sounds waves can be easily affected by tiny vibrations. More even if the mic used is a double mic (double input), or there are two source of sound waves (a 2x12 cab). These factors can lead to constructive interference (increase of the amplitude). Once you have triplicates from amp A (you can average them), and compare that against the average of amp B. In this way, Glen will be able to establish whether those changes (11:48) are or aren't statistically significant (not only attributable to other factors, such as constructive interference due to using two inputs (2 mics), or 2 sources of audio (2x12), or mic positioning, vibrations, etc). I am not an audio engineer, just a dumb scientist.
@@bartoskulasek8481 Are you familiar with Manfred Zollner's epic book Physics of the Electric Guitar? If not, check it out. It's available free on the internet.
If most guitar players had been paying attention during their highschool science classes they wouldn't do dumbshit things like walk onto a stage with their amp, place it on the floor right next to them and proceed to point it at their KNEES while complaining "Hey soundman, I can't hear myself, can you put more in the monitors". 🤦♂
That moment when you spent thousands on your bass amp and cabs, haul it all in the studio and the engineer then just DIs your signal straight into the interface.
@@zachisebimy engineer was going to mic up a bass amp, I wanted to use my pf500 going into his SVT 8x10…and then it crapped out the moment I turned it on, so I had to go DI anyway. Got the head fixed under warranty and and reamped it at home through the same head and my SVT 4x10, so pretty much the same results
From the perspective of a Sound Engineer… THANK YOU for this! I’ve just been sending my guitar-playing friends to your channel rather than trying to convince, I’m letting you argue for me. Great job!
I agree, in 2014 I bought a JCM800 2203x, the reissue model, I tried various 2x12 cabs with different speakers, but still couldn't get that 80's metal tone I had in my head. Until it dawned on me that to get that 80's metal tone, I needed to have a speaker they actually used in the 80's. Eventually by pure luck I stumbled upon an early 80's JCM800 2x12 cab with Celestion G12-65's in it. And that was it! There was that Judas Priest and early Metallica sound!
I only use the 65's. And again you will notice a vast change in tone if you switch to the 4X12. Try to drive the 2203 with less preamp and more volume and see if you like it. The 65's partner really well if you drive some volume through them, they are made for that. When i found that sweet spot i threw all my pedals out, the tone was already there.
Imagine the CEO of Celestion sitting at a desk, his hands making the “ triangle of doom”, muttering “goood...good....” like Mr Burns from Simpsons....?
The Matamp factory has a "speaker tester" corner where you can plug your amp in and switch between several different speakers, and decide which works best for you. It was one of the most useful and educational things I've ever seen, and I wish that more places (eg. music stores) had something like that.
We had an Ampeg amp and cabinet switcher in our bass room at GC many moons ago. All their cabinets in production at the time, all the current head on sale at the time, it was great; even if the room they were in sucked.
Things like matamps and fuzz are the reason this video is wrong. Not all amps can take fuzz and doom the same, I guess that has more to do with response than sound though
It's crazy. When my eyes are in the equation, i could hear a slight change in eq, more "meat" in the mesa mids and more fizz in the 5150 highs. Without the benefit of eyes, didn't even really notice the change mid clip. Awesome video as usual Glennjamin!
I was thinking about that. I agree what Glenn says and we have the results as well. I wonder if distortion pattern makes that difference like the way signal gets distorted rather than the eq difference.
@@onuryuksekol Nah it's probably because of pre EQ. You can make a 5150 sound as flabby as a dual rec just by putting a low shelf on your DI before it hits the amp.
I definitely heard the difference when it witched from the first clip to the second clip. At which point i thought the second clip sounded better. Then watching the example where it shows the change mid-clip i'd definitely say the first half (i.e. the 5150s) sounded better... which makes sense if i thought that the beginning of the second clip sounded better than the end of the first. all that said, i only ever noticed the difference when i was looking for it... i didn't even notice the change mid-clip until i was told it was there.
It's not as crazy as you think. If you have an idea of what sound the visuals represents, you know what to look for. And when you're told something changes, your brain will also do its best to accommodate too. Even to an extent where you hear crap that isn't real at all.
I enjoy your fact reporting videos. I'm 60 and playing guitar is a hobby I love. With that I've never dropped tons of cash on anything and have always looked for the best thing I could get testing and comparing everything I have. I have played many expensive guitars and read everything about what they were made of. I looked for less expensive quality stuff that basically was made with the same materials. You do wonders with a less expensive acoustic guitar by simply replacing the plastic nut and saddle with Tusq version. I play everything from metal to country to blues and I just love it. Spending time with the knobs on any gear you have can really get you good results. You can save a ton of cash by just learning some simple care and setup adjustments. You do good work Glenn. Thank you.
Been an amp tech for 25 years. I’ve told every player looking for a “mod” to change the speaker first. Most high gain amps are either a Marshall/Soldano clone to a small varying degree. Sure you get fancy channel options and switching, but the gain structure is the same.
I don't get it and 10 minutes on this video I don't see anything valuable; when he seems to begin to explain something useful, he interrumpts to ramble on "dudes spending millions blabla", could you explain? I also gotta tell you I didn't spend thousands of dollars in amps. 23 years playing and I swear do you I didn't even spend 500 dollars. I hate extremely loud and powerful sounds and find amps with more than 20w useless so I only bought small cubes, probably 3 as far as I remember. I'd buy what Ralph Macchio used in Crossroads if I found one. Anyway, yea, different brand, different sound. I already played in more powerful amps, I set them up the way I wanted (and I always do the same) and they did sound different of each other. I found Peavey much better than Marshall. It was probably a 50w Peavey or so and it was the only amp over 20w that I ever liked the sound.
@@samaldiniAmplification is a VERY straightforward operation. You take a signal, and you increase it. There's literally nothing more to it. If it does something else, it's not doing its job right. If you want coloration, there are much better places in a chain to get that.
Like most players, I've been guilty of falling for marketing and hype, but I've also spent much of my playing years feeling either confused at my inability to hear the massive differences that others heard, or shunned because I felt confident enough to speak out against them. Hearing my guitar heroes talk about how their pickups and their choice of woods influence so much of their tone, or listening to the "tone is in the fingers" argument from people that I admired as musicians...it always left me feeling deflated, wondering why I couldn't hear what they heard. Here we are now, years and years later, and Glenn is confirming most all of the things I've always felt and thought I knew. Turns out, I wasn't crazy or or totally lacking in Golden Ears after all. Thanks for all that you do, Glenn.
Maybe. There are things that sounded different to me over time. I think a lot of it is our perception at a given time with contexts. Knowing any piece of gear and not deeming something “useless” but really getting to know it in as many contexts and configurations it can be applied to and actually taking mental notes helps with things. Not just buying blind because the demo of words raving . I’ve learned to really buy with as specific intentions as possible to avoid buying shit that won’t get utilized. It’s helped quite a bit.
It's basically the same as when you play your CD through different sets of speakers. The original signal is the same. It's the speakers that will change that signal into the sound. I have had same speaker system with different amps, the results were insignificant to human ear. Changed the speakers, the sound changed significantly. I just go with Hill Billy assessment but it works every time. There's a role amps play in the sound but it's the power they can feed the speakers with. Underpowered means shitty sound, overpowered means shitty sound.
@@nikdrownWellll... A good amp is good, and a tranny head might have a slightly different sounding distortion than a valve head. But in a live micced up situation or in a studio in a mix, the rest is almost all speakers. And simulators in a mix are sometimes detectably different than a miked amplifier... But the last ten or fifteen years has revealed that you will almost never point at one or the other after the fact and say "That sucks - it's an amp sim." They're just too good, and in a mix, the differences just don't take "subtly different" and turn it into "bad". Devin Townsend has been running Sims almost exclusively for a good 15 years or more both live and in the studio.
it’s usually the professional and advanced musicians that talk about tone woods. That’s because they do have golden ears. They spend their lives honing their craft and listening for discrepancies in their sound. Getting it dialed to their liking. However, 99% of people couldn’t tell the difference. So you really shouldn’t worry about it. They worry, because as players, we play better when we sound how WE want to sound. And that is fairly different for everyone.
I thought most ppl into guitar even on an occasional hobbyist basis were aware that speakers vary quite a lot, even among the same dev. Changing from a V30 to a Jensen would be the difference between earth and The Horsehead Nebula.
I actually heard a difference in the 5150 and Dual Rectifier but only noticed it on the "Amp B" clip. I went "wait why does it sound bassier midway through?", but the difference is really small and I missed it in the "Amp A" clip. Keep up those trick questions though! Edit: I just got to 11:23 and I am shocked how similar the graphs are.
Your preaching of speaker performance and its effect on tone was really something that I hadn’t really considered through the years. Like you say, I would always be chasing the next “best” amp to get “the sound”. However you’ve really opened up my ears. While I have several amps and cabs, I’ve recently moved into the world of amp and cab sims and that’s where you really hear the difference. I love having almost any cab and Mike available to me for recording. Your in-depth testing with proof of the sound change is great stuff. Thanks dude🤘.
I've been seeing more and more people talk about speakers in the last couple months. It's a slow process, but I think you are breaking through! Keep up the good work
For anyone still doubting this, I can confirm AS A BASS PLAYER that the speaker is absolutely the most important part of your sound. I use 2 channels to get my bass tone, much like Billy Sheehan's setup. I have a lot of distortion on one channel, and the difference in sound goong through a cab vs going direct is night and day. Listen to this man! SN: Can you do a video on bass cab speakers? 4x10 vs 1x15, 2x15, etc? Plenty info on guitar speakers, but not much info dor bass. Thanks, from your neighbor in Detroit!
I'm a guitar player but I use a bass amp combo. It's surprising how little there is with speaker comparisons. Guitar speaker comparisons flood UA-cam but I usually find the same five bass speakers and even then not that many in the context of a comparison. Heck I've seen forums and such that claims that changing a speaker in a bass cab won't make as big a difference as changing a speaker in a guitar cab.
@@lukasb2790 I have used both peavy and GK. Both are very different. GK is in short super scooped twang and boom. Peavy is boom with articulate but less harsh treble
@@nerdyneedsalife8315 you would be very surprised to know that some amps that have a Peavey "blues" speaker in a guitar combo are peavy blue marvel's. A bass speaker. You can tell by the fat treble that you would have hell to make an ice pick out of
The speaker/cab real or virtual combined with the mic/preamp and position whether it is virtual or real makes the biggest difference in terms of gear. Once you down the rabbit hole of parametric eq after the preamp in conjunction with different types of boosters you can get one amp to sound like many others thus reducing the unnecessary expenditure you often speak of. You could nudge an amp within its general category in almost any direction. We are taking of gain stages as well as frequency response which is why as you have numerous times described the speaker will make the largest impact in the timbre quality. I might be biased somewhat being a music teacher but even above the gear the one thing I see most guitarist don’t invest in would be their education. With the students in our orchestra and chamber music program we see them invest in master classes, private lessons with visiting artists or attend festivals where they would study under an intensive program. This is all in addition to their music education in college and what they did before that to be able to get to a level in which that is possible. By and large many of the “tone chasers” can’t accompany, play changes and are lacking in fundamentals such as articulation, pulse and rhythm. Perhaps before buying the next iteration of the 5150, how about downloading a metronome and getting some lessons? Maybe a fretboard harmony course ?
Thank you Glenn! I have been applying a lot of what I learn here to my rig and recording set up and you have saved me tons of time and money. Your work is very appreciated.
I've learnt so much. Your social awareness programme on money saving with music recording really helps me so much. Really weird when there are those who still didn't understand your messages through your useful experience. Let them sink with their egos. Thank you Glenn for showing us the economical path and shortcuts to make our lives easier when recording. ✊🏽
so basically, bringing this thinking to digital modelers like an axe fx, helix or quad cortex, we now learned, if you need to change your favourite tone to fit a mix, try changing the IR fiirst 👌 thank you glenn!
That and throwing an EQ after the preamp to finetune the frequencies that hit the IR and/or real speaker. I must say though, IR’s can be somewhat of a rabbithole when searching for something that matches not so common used speakers, a cabsim with a good EQ and a broad mic selection plus their placements can actually be easier and cheaper to get there faster. Quick example, Blackstar made a Dept 10 Dual Drive and Distortion, most demos and reviews don’t even bother to look at the tweakability that the cab sim has on those two, they are actually just ignoring it and then state “not as good as”. With some time spend on tweaking, especially the frequency response EQ for the speaker sim itself result is close to quite a few good IR’s. But it’s easier to go with the flow….
Great production on the video! This is so cool Glenn, thanks to you and the team as always. I always felt it when I played with my Headrush mx5, the difference in the amp really gets overshadowed by the cab/ir
Glenn : I took the SAME amp and used a few different speakers. I had an old 12 inch Scorpion, an older greenback, a v30, an older full range EV12... Amp settings were all the same, not a knob adjusted.. they ALL sounded different! Its amazing how the same amplifier without changing a thing can go from a bluesy tone to classic rock to early metal sounds! They were all placed in the same 1x12 cab.
I've been sticking distortion pedals and EQs in front of solid state and tube amps since the mid '70s. You're 100% correct, the amp matters very little most of the time. Edit: I made this comment before you mentioned the EQ and distortion pedal before the amp. Seriously a lot of people don't know that you can use an EQ as a booster or distortion pedal all by itself. With more control over the shape of the sound than either of those.
Yup, i have an MXR eq i throw in front of my deluxe clone for distortion and flexible eq when i actually use it, which is not very often because i mostly just use my Kemper because its just easier, lighter, more reliable etc etc. The tube amp is honestly pure nostalgia in todays current climate, so many modelers for bugger all coin that are absolutely more than good enough. Plenty will disagree, mostly because they just cant admit that 10's of thousands of $ worth of temperamental vintage tube amps are no longer relevant as anything other than collector pieces. In 20 years nobody will want real amps and they will be essentially worthless i bet.
@@dunxy A lot of players don't use tube amps anymore, whether they're using a Kemper style thing or a Line6 POD - even the Behringer V-Amp sounds awesome. I use a tube amp at my house because yeah, I like tube sound and at home I play merely for pleasure. If I ever go on a gig or have to go to rehearsals again, I'll get a relatively cheap POD like thing (I do not need a Kemper, more parameters than I want to use live) and go thru the console, it'll do the job perfectly. And they're still "real" amps, just different tech.
I am so glad you mentioned microphone placement in this. As I’ve always thought that once you have a mic, changing the position is the easiest (and honestly a kinda interesting) way to change your recorded guitar sound, rather than buying new gear. Tbh always felt it’s a little under represented😅
Such a clever question! It highlights an unstated but important scope limitation: a similar number of saturation stages. Glenn alludes to this when he mentions solid state amps being a bit different, and that is due to differing saturation arrangement. The same applies to vastly different tube saturation strategies.
None. It’ll sound like a Vox either way. I agree speakers effect sound but the amp still matters regardless. You can’t make a Marshall MG sound like an AC30
I was talking about how dumb guitarist have gotten and wondered if it’s always been like that and the internet just made it more noticeable or if it’s just coming into bloom. I seriously hate talking to guitar players about shit and I one but some of them can get ridiculous. I get a lot of dudes amazed at the fact none of my guitars are really expensive or high end but they will ask how I get my sound lol. Well……it’s a number of things that you’re not going pay enough attention to nor really consider…….SO WHY FUCKING ASK!? Lol
@@nikdrown By the time I started learning to play guitar in Argentina, 20 years ago - where things are harder and more expensive to get, back then most of them got here ten years later, nowadays you can get most of the stuff but it seriously hurts your wallet - we used to get good built, cheap guitars - Squier, Samick, Epiphone and that kind of thing - and mod them if needed. As guitars became more available and we had some more money friendly years - gone for now - people started expending money like idiots and yes, the internet - which also came here a bit later than it did to the first world - potentiated the phenomena. I'm a sound tech - not a studio oriented one, though I can jump in if needed - and I've always modded my guitars to sound like I want them to. Got a lot of Squier haters to say: okay, yours is amazing, the others still suck. Truth be told, any Squier with the work mine has on it would sound that good. I've sold the more expensive guitars I had because it hurts me more to mod them when they don't do what I want them to do, so I only get cheap guitars that look good to me and are well built and then mod the shit out of them if I don't like how they sound. As for the chats with fanboys, I don't have them anymore because the exact same thing that happens to you, happens to me when I do. Regards.
It does! I have a GB x CB combo in a Marshall 2x12 that sounds killer. Very balanced and warm without being too loose. Well, maybe too loose for metalcore, but more than tight enough for the dad rock and thrash that I play 😂
😮 maybe the second most important video on REAL TONE ISSUES I've ever seen. Right behind the guy who remove all tone wood and set up strings and a pickup between two workbenches proving the pickup is the biggest factor in the guitar. So now between these two videos I've seen that the pickup and the speaker are probably the biggest factors. And of course Mic choices and placement. Well done sir.
i have seen that as well, eye opening stuff. The same guy tracked down what makes the biggest change in tone in an amplifier and in a cabinet. If you haven't watched yet check them out
I chase a high headroom western swing to nearly as dirty as vintage grateful dead. Everything you said and demonstrated in this video is absolutely critical chasing clean tones as well. Excellent presentation. Liked and subscribed. Plus you are entertaining as hell - and the editing on this is exemplary.
Holy shit Glenn, you really knocked it out of the ballpark with this one. That test was fucking textbook and it really shows how much effort you put into helping (stupid) musicians get the most out of their gear and/or save money. I still can't get around the fact that there are people calling you a fraud or dismissing your evidence, but I have gained massive respect for you just seeing the lengths you got to demonstrate your methodology and tools. And don't get me wrong, I've always been on your side and I agree with your points made, it's just that this was an outstanding video really. Keep it up, much love from Mexico.
People still tend to go a little nuts when I even suggest changing speakers would make a bigger difference than changing their tubes. I once got a lecture on filament material, glass thickness, etc. The glass thickness thing cracked me up.
That's crazy. Even in the 90s, I knew that speakers made a bigger difference than tubes, lol. I learned that when I bought a Valvestate and paired it with a cheap cab. It sounded like ass, so when I put my JCM 900 cab on it, it sounded way better, so I paired the cheap cab with my Ampeg VH140C, and suddenly, it sounded like ass, lol. That was when I learned that the speakers were incredibly important to tone, lol. I've owned tube amps, too, and changing tubes never really changed the tone.
Guitarists are more conservative then the Taliban, for Leo Fender and Les Paul got it right the first try, everything else since is just heresy. And more gullible then audiophiles with their chrome plated anti-matter coated cables and gold plated digital to analog converters.
Especially, since most of the tubes are made in the same factory ....the only change is the label they put on it, don't get me wrong some sound better than others....just like anything else.
As a guitarist (first)/engineer/producer of over 40yrs, I can attest this guy is f'kn spot on. I can match any amplifier with the right pedal combination. The speakers are the secret sauce for the right harmonics, and shaping. Sure you can tweak EQs for a moment and "change the sound", but the right speaker will actually give you the proper response. Hence the IR revolution. But nothing beats actually pushing air. p.s. Without the right mic(s), even with the right speaker, you're still doing good, but with the right mic it could be great. Great video!!!
Hey Glenn. One thing this video made me think of is "product families" I bet most guitarists who own a 5150, Soldano or D.Rectifiers want to own all three. Perhaps such people would benefit from getting a completely different style of amp, or not. Eitherway, a good video would one that classifies amps (and other products maybe) into families that sound too similar to each other to warrant the purchase of more than one. That way, people could save up, buy the one they could afford/find, rely on the rest of signal chain and on EQs when trying to reach the sound they want.
@@rainsticklandguitartalk9483 If that's what you've taken from Glenn, maybe one of us is misunderstanding him. Almost everything in the chain affects the sound, to different degrees varying between massive (different speakers) to mostly inaudible (different humbuckers with distortion). The speaker is an eq placed near the end of the chain (along with the mic) so it has the most impact. But different amps do sound different, just check out his next video, he mentions that. Now yes, they sound different for different reasons than what most people think (see the Jim Lill video), but you can't attach anything to a greenback and then expect it to sound the same. Just think about this: tweaking the eq section of your amp, that on its own makes a massive difference. Same with where the distortion happens in the amp (amp design). Yes the speaker is making the audible sound, but it's making it based on something fed into it, otherwise all you'll hear is something similar to pink/white noise.
Facts. Not only the speaker, but also the mic makes a huge difference. Speaker placement, eg proximity effect, closer more bass, further away less bass, more toppy. On axis vs off axis, yet again different. Etc… Then also remember, a mic is basically a tiny speaker used in reverse! Same huge difference different speakers gives, so huge differences using different mics and placement. Finding that ultimate sound is spending time not only in speaker selection, but also to find the ultimate mic. The whole signal chain ultimately determines the end result though.
Your starting to approach that Kyuss tone. One problem the consumer has is videos that promise an artist's tone on a budget and thier all based on gear. They more than imply the more expensive the gear the closer you can get.
@@JimBoom92Nice, I thought so. Those guys were broke high desert punks so they were definitely making the most of what they could get. I'd say great metal tone can also be had with a Randall RG head with MXR EQ to act as a tonal shaping tool and buffer. More money doesn't always equal cooler sounds 😊.
I have a question though. I'm not gonna be pretending that I know more than you, just something I saw a lot online and wanna see what you'd have to say about that. A lot of people argue that, besides the mic and its placement, the biggest thing affecting your sound at least almost as much as the speaker, is the cab itself. The way it is built, the materials it is made of, the size and shape of it, whether it has beams or weights inside, whether is has an opening (not necessarily a proper bass reflex but just a slit at the front), etc., etc., as it will make the speakers behave differently, the air moved by the speakers differently and then that air will affect speakers back, and so on. It makes a ton of sense to me and I wonder how you'd comment on that. That's especially important to me as I recently bought a used 2x12 tube amp combo and I kinda want to buy a pair of creambacks 12H to replace the stock eminence rockdrivers, but a pair of these would cost as much as I paid for the entire combo (or more!) and I'm afraid nobody will want to buy the rockdrivers for me to recoup the costs and also that these speakers will not be able to shine in their full potential due to the limitations of the combo cab. So I considered also buying a cheap empty 2x12 cab (the cheaper the better, I can't afford to be fussy) and putting the Creambacks there, but again I have the same worry that it will be a waste to use such nice expensive speakers in a crap crappy cab. Finally I was thinking to buy both a cheap empty cab and the Creambacks, and put the creambacks to the combo and the rockdrivers to the empty cab and then sell the cab with the speakers hopefully getting back the entirety of the cab's cost back and the value of the rockdriver speakers on top of it, maybe even more since it's already in a cab... I assume the last option is the best idea, given it makes sense to replace the speakers in my combo at all... I am not considering a nice cab with creambacks loaded by the manufacturer cause I just can't afford it, if I could I wouldn't have bought a combo but a head...
Great video! But I think this is more a communication problem than anything because we're talking about two different things. There is the sound of the guitar (i.e the combination of player, guitar, amp, speaker + mic) and then there is the sound of the distortion, which can be very unique and is mostly determined by the amp. I agree that the sound in its totallity is most influenced by the speaker and mic but the tone of the distortion is not affected by either of those. The tone of distortion between a recitifer vs 6505 vs VH4 can be big, depending on what and how you play. I know since I have those amps and am able to switch between them through the same cab and it can make a huge difference. But of course if all you play is some palm muted high-gain power-chords, then yes there is not much of a difference. But if you play something more nuanced the difference becomes more pronounced as well. IMO most guitar players are more interested in the tone of the distortion, since that is what actually impacts how the guitars "feels" and hence how you play. The sound itself is, at least to me, not as important. Sure a cab with V30s sounds much different than Greenbacks, but it doesn't affect how I play all that much. However I play much differently through a 6505 than through a Rectifier since the amps distortion is different, the amps react differently hence you play differently. The speaker does not change how the guitar feels or behaves, it just changes the voicing while the amp actually changes how you play. At least for me. Maybe I'm weird but talking to other guitarists it does not seem that I am alone with this.
@@SpectreSoundStudios Here you go: ua-cam.com/video/7dA9fwnY0uY/v-deo.html A comparison of 5 typical metal amps where you can clearly hear the difference of the sound of distortion. If someone can't hear the rectifier from a mile away then that person must be either deaf or not into metal, because it is clearly unique in how it sounds. And no I don't mean the mid-scoop which they perhaps could've adjusted a bit better for the sake of the comparison. And I can replicate that comparison at home with my own Recti & 6505. Switching between them is a night/day difference, while the difference between the 6505 and VH4 is more subtle (to me at least). And that is over the exact same setup (Closed vert. 212 /w V30, SM57/LCT 140 + M160) and just switching between them (or even an Axe-FX). What I'm saying is, while I agree that for recording purposes the cab/speaker/mic have a huge impact, the amp has an impact as well + and an additional impact on the player and sound of distortion, not necessartily sound of the guitar as a whole. But again, it depends on what is being played. Playing simple palmuted high-gain riffs, it probably doesn't matter as much, but playing something more versatile the differences become more obvious and more important to the guitar player.
While I agree with you that speakers make a huge difference, I’d be interested to hear the difference between amps that aren’t ripoffs of each other, for example, a Marshall DSL vs a Dual Rec, 5150 or SLO, or even a Mesa Mark Series vs a Marshall or SLO-type amp. Also, thank you for pointing out Mesa & Peavey ripped off Mike Soldano, I think more people should know this. I’ve been aware of this since the early 2000’s, I heard the rumor and did an A/B comparison of a Dual Rec and Hot Rod 50, I could easily dial them to sound the same. Anyway, keep up the great content, and as always, Fuck You Glenn!
I wanted to make a very similar comment. Please could you do your tests with very different amps? I know some of them are not meant for metal but I'd be still interested in the result.
@@jamesdaigle8690i think it is called "1 riff, 14 amps" or something. there are SOME differences, and 2 or 3 amps sound a lot different, because they are much fuzzier in their distortion or just are built completely different, but for the most part.... it is all the same.
@@MrMockigton @SonicDriveStudio has some great amp comparison, and yes you can hear some differences but also it's tricky because I guess if you want to really compare there are so many parameters to take into account (and to match) between EQ, Gain, Presence ...
You're spot-on about the speakers making a huge difference. Years ago, I replaced the stock speakers in an Ampeg 4x12 straight guitar cab with Eminence Texas Heats and that cab not only sounded better for what I play, but seemed to go noticeably louder before starting to distort. Keep preaching the truth man!
I've been playing since 92. I've always thought "Tone wood" was non sense. I've collected a number of guitars over the years, nope; I've found humbuckers sound one way, and single coils sound another way. You make wicked videos, and you've only solidified what I've already known in that regard. Just discovered you recently and subbed. Keep on trucking my friend, cheers from Northern Ontario.
Honestly can't wait for the video of you making the crate amp sound good with a better speaker. Although personally I think Crates sound fine, but I'm also a fan of Jensen speakers which many crates came with.
I used to have a dirt cheap Watson 10w bass amp yyyears ago. Sounded shite in the room, so much sothat I barely used it. Then I read of producers like Massy and Robinson and how they suggested that mic placement could change everything. I found ways to make that amp work just through mic placement after that. I guess this is how good producers and engineers help bands achieve despite the shitty equipment.
I think the thing to consider between amps is the features, not the sound. Nowadays, everything can be tweaked with pedals, digital fx, etc. Differences in tone between amps can be squashed with a boost in front, eq in the fx loop, etc. Amps are a huge purchase, while FX processors are minor in comparison. However, if you need a direct cab-sim out, or a built in attenuator, or more power for live gigging, or 4ohm support, etc, these are things that can put one amp over another. For example, you might get a 6505II over a 6505 original not because of the “tone”, but because of the individual 3-band EQ per channel as opposed to the global EQ on the original. Or you might go for an Invective due to the built in “modern” features. All the while these amps have more-or-less identical tonality with a bit of tweaking.
I've got 61 Bassman that I've used for 20 years. The only thing I ever change is the cab . It makes huge difference on stage. I even use it for bass on soul gigs with a 8x10 Ampeg. Glorious ! Great video.
Hey Glen, Just wanted to thank you for all the great advise. Your testing has has been such an eye opener. Unlearning what I think I know is not easy. All the best to you.
Thanks for reminding me it's not the amp that sucks, it's me! Seriously badass video, thanks for the insight; I'm not super into tone chasing, but it was cool to see how just recording the same amp in a different way can get you all sorts of different of sounds 👍🏽
Learning a lot from your content, I'm so glad I found this channel. Proving and explaining the technical reasoning behind tone is definitely the best part of what you share here!
to be fair , the reason for this is because the speaker is the last thing in the guitars signal chain and is nothing more than a permanent set EQ at the end of the chain. if youre in a DAW and set up an EQ with drastic frequency curves at the end of the signal chain, youd get a similar result, and thats that what you hear is dictated by that drastic frequency curve at the end of the chain. if its EQ'd in a bright way, then you will eternally have a bright sound. if it is EQ'd in a dark way, you will permanently have a dark sound. however there is much more to a guitars tone that just a speaker with a set EQ curve. yes all high gain amplifiers will sound the same through the same cabs, thats because theyre all more or less designed for the same genre of music and same style of guitar playing. compare amps that have totally different circuits like a single channel marshall and you have completely different textures and feel and response that can stillchange regardless of what the final EQ curve is on the speaker itself. you may try to use the audio of a DAW to draw scientific experiments , but the reality is that that audio does not capture or reflect 100 percent of the players experience. really comparing different types of metal amps and being surprised they all sound the same is like comparing a bunch of different running shoes and being surprised they all feel comfortable to run in. your issue glen , is that you talk in this subject in absolutes. that all amps absolutely sound the same if theyre all through the same cabinet and that is why you keep stirring this pot for debate because that is not true in an absolute way.
Finally someone who knows something. Thank you. This guy is hanging his hat on the speaker alone as if it’s news. We all knew the speaker makes a difference when we got our first car at the age of 16 and put Jet Sounds in there. Glen figured this out when he turned 60 and can’t shut up about it.
There is an another thing what is important with different amps. It's gain character (or structure). For my ears it's one of the most important thing in high gain sound. Every of these amps has own inbuilt eq what it goes to distortion section what you can't change (except mesa marks etc.) but we can modulate it with stomp boxes placed before the amp. Even if you use matched eq on the final sound and the curve will be exactly same for our eye you can (easily) hear the difference of the gain character.
Awesome video, really enjoyed it. My personal experience told me the same thing. I used to own an old Silvertone 1484 with the original 2x12 cabinet. I tested and recorded it with three different cab setups and I couldn't believe how different it sounded with each one - almost like it was three completely different amps. Rock on Glen!
O, wow, I could actually hear the difference between the two amps! Didn't expect to. Good to know that my hearing can still pick up subtle changes like that ;) I expected the speakers to be different, but honestly didn't expect to be able to heat the amp differences with my cheap PC speakers. It's normal for speakers to be wildly different. Even if a lot of musicians don't want to admit it. After all there are many different parts of a speaker that have a filtering effect. The air resistance, the weight of the diaphragm, dimensions of the coil, type of wire in the coil, open or closed center, force of the magnet, dimensions of the magnet, material the magnet is made of, elasticity of the mounting rings for the cone etc. etc. Same goes for mics, since they do more or less the same thing, nut in reverse.
Now I know why I rang the bell for your videos...by far the best one so far I am not a player at all more of a technical guy The two tools you spoke to the reamp box and the analyzer software should be a no brainier for all musicians and tech guys like myself...bravo
T11:50-Can those minor differences between 5150 and mesa be explained by the variance in amp eq potentiometers themselves? Can you get both signals to overlap with minor tweaks in settings?
It's so true. The speaker cab can often be overlooked in how important it is in the equation for achieving the tone that we are chasing. I know, because I've been there. This is not only a great reminder, but it's proof of how much difference speakers can make. Thank you.
I watched the videos of others who did the same comparison. Based on those videos, The Dual Rectifier and the 5150 did not sound the same. Did Glenn dial in both amps to make it sound identical, then record? 🤔
Did they reamp the same part? I went to extreme lengths to ensure the ONLY variable was the amp. How many of those other tests took frequency response graphs?
I tend to not watch your videos due to the screams and clickbait thumbnails. But I gave this one a try and it was worth the watch. Very useful information. Thank you for putting it together.
I think that there is some missing context here. You mentioned that you have used an EQ and that anybody else can do as well, but I might have missed the section where you point out how much of a change was made. Sure, you can argue that you could use the cheaper option and then use a matching EQ, but how would you know what EQ match is necessary without having the primary source to compare toward? I think the entire logic to buy cheap and then add falls apart at this stage. All in all, I think it's safe to say that you can make both the 5150 and the Dual Rec sound incredibly similar. It's also fair to say that speakers do a big difference in tone. But when do things start to sound different actually? After all, we only hear the very blanket statement that speakers change the sound, and amps don't. But that is grossly oversimplified. A VOX AC30 will, without external things extending the circuit (boosts, distortions and preamp pedals) will never sound like a Peavey 5150. What makes the difference? The gain stages, the tone stack, the power amp design and the negative feedback loop, all of these things do make amplifiers sound different, and these effects cascaded are vastly underrepresented in your comparisons and blanket statements. I am all in for a bargain. But at what state is there a real saving here? Dual Recs and 5150 are similar priced, depending on where you are globally, and these are two top notch amplifiers playing in the highest league. Also, from what I heard (not compared the schematics, YET) the 5150 is a loose derivation of the Soldano SLO, just like the Dual Rec is one, so they do have similarities, although the power amp design seems to be way different, being important for the negative feedback loop, which "is an EQ", thus shaping the tone! And then there's a thing to say about the make of the title and thumbnail, but I get, that you have to garner attention in order to pay the bills.
Im currently costing the build and kitting out of my home studio and the Lewitt 640 rex is actually such a cool hack! Love to see a full breakdown on diffrent mics by you
I absolutely love tricks like your A/B comparison clips at the start. Not because it supports what I believe but the opposite. Its a smack in the face and wake up call that is like saying "Dude just use you're fuckin ears and listen dumbass." Which isn't necessarily fun to accept but then its just a huge relief that I can finally get a sense of knowing what I ACTUALLY need to do in order to get the result I'm looking for and not be constantly doubting every little decision and wondering if one more piece of gear will be the thing that gets me what I want.
I put a 2x12 cab together with a V30 and creamback and I love it. This is really eye opening video about the differences in the amps I had no idea they were so close together.
1) the difference is not huge (especially compared to tweaking cabs/speakers/mics/mic positions), but there is definitely a difference, and EQ spectrum is not the entire thing to look at / listen to. There is also the envelope of the sound (how loose or tight the amp is when palm muting), etc. This affects of the amp feels when playing it and how you play it. 2) tone is not all about listening to final mixes... What about when you play alone in your room, or at band practice or during a live show on cabs when people hear mostly the direct sound from the cabs instead of the miked tones in a FOH mix ? You will hear the differences between amps more in these contexts than when listening to recorded tones in a final mix. 3) you can get amp A to sound closer to amp B, but if you want the characteristics of amp B, then it's better to use amp B than trying to get amp A to sound like amp B. If i want a recto sound (because such a thing exists), I'd better use a Recto than try getting a JCM800 or a 5150 sound like a Recto
I own a SLO, a Triple Rec, and a 5150 block logo. I have re-amped all three through the same cab setup, and while there are variations, I’d be hard pressed to figure-out which was which if things aren’t well labeled. Trying to blend them together was a total waste of time.
I can't claim to have conducted the amount of experimentation that Glenn has, but I've noticed two things in my years with several different heads: 1) tone testing by reamping my Triple Rec and my solid state Ampeg VH140C yielded shockingly similar results (SM57 on cabs with v30s and with Eminence Legends) 2) I can't seem to make these amps sound the same in the room. I know my ears are fallible like anyone else's, but couldn't there be something cumulative in small differences across the full range of several different speakers in a 4x12 at once that impacts what we're hearing? I'd love to see some tests of stereo pair mics further away from the cabinet, in a more typical listening position. P.S. Can you share the EQ settings you used to match tones on the Dual Rec and 6505? I also wonder if they have greater disparities that emerge at different points in their various EQ settings.
What you said at 2:22 is absolutely true. If I recall from my Psychology class last semester people on average only can remember a sound accurately for 3-5 seconds. I can get up to 15ish seconds if I really focus on remembering it which still isn't long enough to do easy A/B comparisons. This is why at least an A/B box should be used for comparing amps or speaker cabs.
This is a personal strength of mine, with my personal experience being I can remember sounds for about 15-30 seconds relatively easily. Despite this I always use an A/B. Why would I want to have to use my brain when I can use my ears?
It would've been interesting to see and compare the settings on the amps. It wouldn't change the outcome of the video, but I'm curious to see how different the knobs are to produce a similar sound.
Another fine vid Glenn. In the mid 90s an engineer taught me to change speakers and pickups before changing guitar and amp. Her advice has saved me so much cash. 🤘🏼
I wonder if there’s a difference in the grain of the amp. Like a disto will not sound the same on an amp vs another. Is the guitar directly plug in the amp? I also wonder how much a single pedal can annihilate any differences between two amps. I kind of get much more similar results by just adding a tube screamer in front of any high gain amp with the same can, even when they don’t have the same eq. I’m new to this prod thing, I noticed very quickly how much the cab impacts the sound, but I still don’t understand so many things 😬
I have several very different tube amps. The topography between them is radically different. Each has a sweet spot that is far different than the others. But, I can still dial them in and get about the same tone between them all. But for two of them I wanted different voicings. (The Silverface Princeton Reverb I left bone stock) The option of course was to try various speakers. What a rabbit hole and money suck THAT can be! I was fortunate to have access to some demo cabinets with 4 different speakers in each. I could punch a knob and change from voicing to voicing in real time. In the end I ended up with a 12" Wizard in one single open back and a 12" Delta Blues with a Peavey Black Widow in a closed back cabinet. Any one gives it's own unique voicing regardless of which amp is plugged in. (My favorite guitar amp/speaker combination of all time is a SS Leslie 710 with a Trek LFO1 to make it single channel and run slow or stopped with a Leslie Combo Preamp pedal.)
G'day Glenn!!!! This is possibly a really stupid question (when I get to it). I've been on massive tone quest for years and have accuired a huge amount of different speakers and cabs, and have pretty much settled on closed back 2x12's (my favourite is a Marshall slant 2x12 2061x I got second hand) with a mix of Creamback M, H and Neo's. I mainly use a Marshall SV20H or a Mesa Mini Rec (Both sound pretty ballpark through the same cab to be honest - and I have recorded both with a looper pedal and a Captor X to test). The question: What are the mics you have used that give the closest sound to what you're actually hearing in the room (taking into account mic placement etc)? I absolutely love the guitar sound I have and struggle to have it sounding the same when recorded. Sennheiser e906 or the Lewitt you're currently using maybe? HELPPPPPPP!!!!!! Thanks mate, love the content and f-you from Australia! Cheers.
Why did my brother never bother to get a tube amp? Because his Marshall MG50 had a 12” speaker, whereas my Marshall MG30 had a 10” one. I wasn’t satisfied with the latter, so I went up to the JVM. I don’t regret it, but of course, I assume the majority of the sound comes from the 4x12 cabinet I bought along with the JVM. If I use the JVM Kemper profiles, they don’t sound bad, but certainly “colder” than what comes out of the 4x12 cabinet. I guess I’d have to test the JVM with a Torpedo Captor, to see how much of the sound difference does come from using a real tube head instead of a Profiler vs. from the mere fact that the JVM is going through a 4x12 cabinet while the Kemper isn’t…
Idk how or why someone would try and fight the speakers and mics wisdom, I play an HX Stomp into my interface at home and it's so obvious. I genuinely can't remember which presets use a 5150, Recto, ENGL, or Bogner bc you can basically get the same end result with any of em with the right boost/drive and post EQing, I can spend hours dialing something in only to find an IR that instantly gets me where I've been trying to go way quicker. THE SPEAKER IS THE ACOUSTIC INSTRUMENT YOUR GUITAR IS CONTROLLING IT'S WHERE THE SOUND COMES FROM
Also a fascinating note. Typically, a speaker behaves omni-directionally at frequencies below the one calculated by taking the speed of sound and dividing it by the driver circumference of the driver. For example, a “12 inch” speaker has a driver radius of approximately 12 cm, yielding a circumference of around 0.75m. Take the speed of sound and divide by that distance and you get something around 500 Hz. What does that mean? Well, below 500 Hz, the speaker behaves according to predictable parameters based on the mass of the driver, compliance of the soft parts, etc. Above 500 Hz, the speaker behaves directionally, where different areas of the speaker radiate and beam these high frequencies out at different angles, some caught by a mic and some not. This is why hi-fi systems typically use two or three different speaker sizes for different frequency bands. The beaming is also affected by cone/dust cap material and shape. I’m confident that if you look at the response curve of a 12 in driver taken with different mic positions, you’d see most of the difference occur after 500 Hz.
Glenn you make a really good point there. I have a Marshall VS8100 that came with the original 4x12 budget Marshall cab that it was selling with at the time. I was kinda happy with the sound, but could use improvement. I swapped the original speaker for (gasp) Crate 4x12 which actually sounded better but was lacing low end so I swapped all the speakers to two Eminence and two GT12M-70 and padded the back - packed big time with acoustic foam and almost got there. Then I went to a friend's practice studio and plugged into his old ratty early 1970s Marshall cab that came with his Plexi...and it was an absolute "wow" moment. It was essentially the recorded Chuck Schuldiner sound. He wouldn't part with that cab for anything :) We also swapped our bass player's guitar amp Crate combo speaker for a second hand Celestion that he got for cheap and that took the amp to a totally different level.
I like these myth buster videos you’ve been doing recently. It’s taught me that my free amp sim is good enough (I use Ignite Emissary and NadIR as of now) and I have no need to buy neural dsp or the other “big giants” to get good tones. Just a good IR
Hello, Glenn! For some rescent years, i've got almost all the same conclusions about guitar gear as you. Done dozens of blind tests for my friends, miced crappy wideband speakers which sounded pretty well in the mix, matched them to some IRs and they sounded even better and so on. BUT! Few days ago i was in our studio with my brother to test some DIY loadbox i've made, and we've got some very interesting results i wasn't expecting. We've got Marshall DSL20 and Peavey 6505 Mini and they sound VEEEEERY different through the loadbox. Also the signal in very different, i think due to schematics topology and stuff - Marshall has very assymetrical signal, presence and resonance aren't doing much on Marshall, and cranking up the output knob on Peavey above halfway doesn't rise line input signal. First time working with loadbox and will definetely make some more tests of how other tube amps will behave. Still i don't think it even matters - either you like the result or not, doens't matter how it was achieved.
Thank you for spending so much time to teach people about music. I learn a lot from you and don't know how to repay you other than to click "subscribe". Also, stay metal, dude. You rock.
I could not agree more, and this comes from someone who builds amplifiers and speakers. And one thing all the tests I've done show two things are important; the speaker/s and the _cabinet_ it/they are in. Good branded speakers can fulfill the wishes of the owner IF they are in a cabinet which is "suitable". The stereo speakers which I built and live in my living room only produced the goods with one out of 4 sets of speakers I that tried. The time an amplifier really shows a difference is when it the preamp is overdriven or especially when the output stage is driven into clipping.
I recently built a 9v amp using an lm386 chipset....probably £5 in parts, runs off a pp9 battery. I have a lot of kit lying around and found an old bell and howell cinema projector speaker cab with a 12" speaker in it from the 50s. Sounds Godly...perfect tone. Bright, chimey, brittle, responsive...just what i was looking for. I was originally gonna build a champ 5fe type tube circuit to put in that speaker but whats the point? If i had the amp hidden you'd never know the difference. In this instance its hard to see the sound as much other than nearly 100% speaker....because the only bits that arent a speaker is the circuit topology (erm, its essentially just three transistors) and an lm386 chip. So i try to keep an open mind :)
Ive been playing for 35 years and always knew this, to a point. WOW what an eye opener!!!!!!!!! thanks for investing time to do this.. fantastic!!!!!!!!! Love ya channel
really great video- really shows the reality...one of my major "a-ha" moments in the past 2 years was the realization that everything we set-up sound-wise as guitarists for live/recording get affected by the speaker, but always a microphone...
The video makes some good points on the impact of speakers and mic placement. And it shows that with some EQing and tweaking you can make two similar sounding high gain amps sound indistinguishable within a mix and with compressed sound quality from youtube. However, the point of having different amps is to get different sounds that other amps are not capable of producing. Especially when it comes to clean and edge of breakup sounds I don't think a 5050 or Rectifier will give you a Vox or Orange sound.
Hey Glenn, I am a high school science teacher and this video is an excellent example of practical applications of the scientific method. Data and evidence is much better than uninformed opinions. Thank you for all the work you did for this video.
Exactly my point of view as a physics teacher in Germany! 😂
Glenn is the electric guitar myth buster extraordinaire.
It would be great if he can do triplicates! One single curve isn't scientific enough to prove/disprove anything. Since tiny variations such as vibrations displacing the microphone some millimeters can be the responsible for the changes observed in (11:48). The valleys and the peaks of sounds waves can be easily affected by tiny vibrations. More even if the mic used is a double mic (double input), or there are two source of sound waves (a 2x12 cab). These factors can lead to constructive interference (increase of the amplitude). Once you have triplicates from amp A (you can average them), and compare that against the average of amp B. In this way, Glen will be able to establish whether those changes (11:48) are or aren't statistically significant (not only attributable to other factors, such as constructive interference due to using two inputs (2 mics), or 2 sources of audio (2x12), or mic positioning, vibrations, etc). I am not an audio engineer, just a dumb scientist.
@@bartoskulasek8481 Are you familiar with Manfred Zollner's epic book Physics of the Electric Guitar? If not, check it out. It's available free on the internet.
If most guitar players had been paying attention during their highschool science classes they wouldn't do dumbshit things like walk onto a stage with their amp, place it on the floor right next to them and proceed to point it at their KNEES while complaining "Hey soundman, I can't hear myself, can you put more in the monitors". 🤦♂
That moment when you spent thousands on your bass amp and cabs, haul it all in the studio and the engineer then just DIs your signal straight into the interface.
That being said, I love my Ampeg PF50-T.
Or they plug in a Dark Glass pedal and say go.
It used to annoy the hell out of me. Got a bass butler and never looked back.
@@zachisebimy engineer was going to mic up a bass amp, I wanted to use my pf500 going into his SVT 8x10…and then it crapped out the moment I turned it on, so I had to go DI anyway. Got the head fixed under warranty and and reamped it at home through the same head and my SVT 4x10, so pretty much the same results
Geddy Lee gave up amps decades ago. Like 30 years of shows with no amps. Just di into the main board.
From the perspective of a Sound Engineer… THANK YOU for this!
I’ve just been sending my guitar-playing friends to your channel rather than trying to convince, I’m letting you argue for me. Great job!
I love it when he gets angry and starts screaming. Depends on what mike he's screaming through though.
I just learned this last night...Once I started customizing my cones it could make apple airpods sound like a triple rectifier with all knobs halfway.
I agree, in 2014 I bought a JCM800 2203x, the reissue model, I tried various 2x12 cabs with different speakers, but still couldn't get that 80's metal tone I had in my head. Until it dawned on me that to get that 80's metal tone, I needed to have a speaker they actually used in the 80's. Eventually by pure luck I stumbled upon an early 80's JCM800 2x12 cab with Celestion G12-65's in it. And that was it! There was that Judas Priest and early Metallica sound!
I only use the 65's. And again you will notice a vast change in tone if you switch to the 4X12. Try to drive the 2203 with less preamp and more volume and see if you like it. The 65's partner really well if you drive some volume through them, they are made for that. When i found that sweet spot i threw all my pedals out, the tone was already there.
This is one of the most comprehensive videos I have ever seen. The amount of time and effort you put into this demonstration is priceless.
Thank you.
Imagine the CEO of Celestion sitting at a desk, his hands making the “ triangle of doom”, muttering “goood...good....” like Mr Burns from Simpsons....?
Excellent!
That only happens in Eminence, Kentucky.
Hahahaha!!!!
The Matamp factory has a "speaker tester" corner where you can plug your amp in and switch between several different speakers, and decide which works best for you. It was one of the most useful and educational things I've ever seen, and I wish that more places (eg. music stores) had something like that.
Chuck Levins in DC has that too
What Google search would I put in to see if anyone has this in my area. Denver Colorado
@@denverrandy7143 call wildwood that’s probly your best bet not sure if you’ll find on google
We had an Ampeg amp and cabinet switcher in our bass room at GC many moons ago. All their cabinets in production at the time, all the current head on sale at the time, it was great; even if the room they were in sucked.
Things like matamps and fuzz are the reason this video is wrong. Not all amps can take fuzz and doom the same, I guess that has more to do with response than sound though
It's crazy. When my eyes are in the equation, i could hear a slight change in eq, more "meat" in the mesa mids and more fizz in the 5150 highs. Without the benefit of eyes, didn't even really notice the change mid clip. Awesome video as usual Glennjamin!
I was thinking about that. I agree what Glenn says and we have the results as well. I wonder if distortion pattern makes that difference like the way signal gets distorted rather than the eq difference.
@@onuryuksekol Nah it's probably because of pre EQ. You can make a 5150 sound as flabby as a dual rec just by putting a low shelf on your DI before it hits the amp.
I definitely heard the difference when it witched from the first clip to the second clip. At which point i thought the second clip sounded better.
Then watching the example where it shows the change mid-clip i'd definitely say the first half (i.e. the 5150s) sounded better... which makes sense if i thought that the beginning of the second clip sounded better than the end of the first.
all that said, i only ever noticed the difference when i was looking for it... i didn't even notice the change mid-clip until i was told it was there.
Guitar players don't know how to use EQ knobs lol. Jim Lill pretty much made Fender, Marshall, and Vox amp sound the same. Just turn the fukin knobs.
It's not as crazy as you think. If you have an idea of what sound the visuals represents, you know what to look for. And when you're told something changes, your brain will also do its best to accommodate too. Even to an extent where you hear crap that isn't real at all.
As obnoxious as this guy can be, I really appreciate the brutal honesty. He's just trying to help us out.
What I've learned in life is to "take the wisdom from wherever you can"
Because right is right no matter whose mouth it comes from
Just a little less extraneous stuff might go a long way
I enjoy your fact reporting videos. I'm 60 and playing guitar is a hobby I love. With that I've never dropped tons of cash on anything and have always looked for the best thing I could get testing and comparing everything I have. I have played many expensive guitars and read everything about what they were made of. I looked for less expensive quality stuff that basically was made with the same materials. You do wonders with a less expensive acoustic guitar by simply replacing the plastic nut and saddle with Tusq version. I play everything from metal to country to blues and I just love it. Spending time with the knobs on any gear you have can really get you good results. You can save a ton of cash by just learning some simple care and setup adjustments. You do good work Glenn. Thank you.
Been an amp tech for 25 years. I’ve told every player looking for a “mod” to change the speaker first. Most high gain amps are either a Marshall/Soldano clone to a small varying degree. Sure you get fancy channel options and switching, but the gain structure is the same.
The recofire is a clone of the soldano preamp. But with a weaker poweramp?👍
I don't get it and 10 minutes on this video I don't see anything valuable; when he seems to begin to explain something useful, he interrumpts to ramble on "dudes spending millions blabla", could you explain?
I also gotta tell you I didn't spend thousands of dollars in amps. 23 years playing and I swear do you I didn't even spend 500 dollars. I hate extremely loud and powerful sounds and find amps with more than 20w useless so I only bought small cubes, probably 3 as far as I remember. I'd buy what Ralph Macchio used in Crossroads if I found one.
Anyway, yea, different brand, different sound. I already played in more powerful amps, I set them up the way I wanted (and I always do the same) and they did sound different of each other. I found Peavey much better than Marshall. It was probably a 50w Peavey or so and it was the only amp over 20w that I ever liked the sound.
Unless it's a clone of a Fender clone. Haha
@@samaldiniAmplification is a VERY straightforward operation. You take a signal, and you increase it. There's literally nothing more to it. If it does something else, it's not doing its job right. If you want coloration, there are much better places in a chain to get that.
@@gutterg0d Then why a brand sound different than another? Maybe the material used to incrase the signal?
Like most players, I've been guilty of falling for marketing and hype, but I've also spent much of my playing years feeling either confused at my inability to hear the massive differences that others heard, or shunned because I felt confident enough to speak out against them. Hearing my guitar heroes talk about how their pickups and their choice of woods influence so much of their tone, or listening to the "tone is in the fingers" argument from people that I admired as musicians...it always left me feeling deflated, wondering why I couldn't hear what they heard. Here we are now, years and years later, and Glenn is confirming most all of the things I've always felt and thought I knew. Turns out, I wasn't crazy or or totally lacking in Golden Ears after all.
Thanks for all that you do, Glenn.
Maybe. There are things that sounded different to me over time. I think a lot of it is our perception at a given time with contexts. Knowing any piece of gear and not deeming something “useless” but really getting to know it in as many contexts and configurations it can be applied to and actually taking mental notes helps with things. Not just buying blind because the demo of words raving . I’ve learned to really buy with as specific intentions as possible to avoid buying shit that won’t get utilized. It’s helped quite a bit.
There's a bit of true that part of the tone comes from the playing (from your fingers), of course not huge but it does impact the way you sound
It's basically the same as when you play your CD through different sets of speakers. The original signal is the same. It's the speakers that will change that signal into the sound. I have had same speaker system with different amps, the results were insignificant to human ear. Changed the speakers, the sound changed significantly.
I just go with Hill Billy assessment but it works every time.
There's a role amps play in the sound but it's the power they can feed the speakers with. Underpowered means shitty sound, overpowered means shitty sound.
@@nikdrownWellll... A good amp is good, and a tranny head might have a slightly different sounding distortion than a valve head.
But in a live micced up situation or in a studio in a mix, the rest is almost all speakers.
And simulators in a mix are sometimes detectably different than a miked amplifier... But the last ten or fifteen years has revealed that you will almost never point at one or the other after the fact and say "That sucks - it's an amp sim."
They're just too good, and in a mix, the differences just don't take "subtly different" and turn it into "bad".
Devin Townsend has been running Sims almost exclusively for a good 15 years or more both live and in the studio.
it’s usually the professional and advanced musicians that talk about tone woods. That’s because they do have golden ears. They spend their lives honing their craft and listening for discrepancies in their sound. Getting it dialed to their liking. However, 99% of people couldn’t tell the difference. So you really shouldn’t worry about it. They worry, because as players, we play better when we sound how WE want to sound. And that is fairly different for everyone.
I don’t even play metal, but I couldn’t agree more, it’s alllll about the speaker, once you figure this out it’s such a relief to know.
It's all about the mic placement
@@Vazaqin How do you place your mic?
@@millennialanimalUpside down and sideways, obviously 🙄
@@darksu6947 😁
@@darksu6947obviously
I thought most ppl into guitar even on an occasional hobbyist basis were aware that speakers vary quite a lot, even among the same dev. Changing from a V30 to a Jensen would be the difference between earth and The Horsehead Nebula.
I actually heard a difference in the 5150 and Dual Rectifier but only noticed it on the "Amp B" clip. I went "wait why does it sound bassier midway through?", but the difference is really small and I missed it in the "Amp A" clip. Keep up those trick questions though!
Edit: I just got to 11:23 and I am shocked how similar the graphs are.
Your preaching of speaker performance and its effect on tone was really something that I hadn’t really considered through the years. Like you say, I would always be chasing the next “best” amp to get “the sound”. However you’ve really opened up my ears. While I have several amps and cabs, I’ve recently moved into the world of amp and cab sims and that’s where you really hear the difference. I love having almost any cab and Mike available to me for recording.
Your in-depth testing with proof of the sound change is great stuff. Thanks dude🤘.
Hella lot easier to swipe speakers and amps with the mods and profiles lol
I've been seeing more and more people talk about speakers in the last couple months. It's a slow process, but I think you are breaking through! Keep up the good work
For anyone still doubting this, I can confirm AS A BASS PLAYER that the speaker is absolutely the most important part of your sound. I use 2 channels to get my bass tone, much like Billy Sheehan's setup. I have a lot of distortion on one channel, and the difference in sound goong through a cab vs going direct is night and day. Listen to this man!
SN: Can you do a video on bass cab speakers? 4x10 vs 1x15, 2x15, etc? Plenty info on guitar speakers, but not much info dor bass.
Thanks, from your neighbor in Detroit!
Yeah, big difference between GK speakers and peavy just to name one apples to oranges compare
That sounds interesting! Can you share a bit more details about your setup?
I'm a guitar player but I use a bass amp combo. It's surprising how little there is with speaker comparisons. Guitar speaker comparisons flood UA-cam but I usually find the same five bass speakers and even then not that many in the context of a comparison. Heck I've seen forums and such that claims that changing a speaker in a bass cab won't make as big a difference as changing a speaker in a guitar cab.
@@lukasb2790 I have used both peavy and GK. Both are very different. GK is in short super scooped twang and boom. Peavy is boom with articulate but less harsh treble
@@nerdyneedsalife8315 you would be very surprised to know that some amps that have a Peavey "blues" speaker in a guitar combo are peavy blue marvel's. A bass speaker. You can tell by the fat treble that you would have hell to make an ice pick out of
Best explanation yet Glenn. Not too many variables and all of it was well documented. Thanks!
The speaker/cab real or virtual combined with the mic/preamp and position whether it is virtual or real makes the biggest difference in terms of gear. Once you down the rabbit hole of parametric eq after the preamp in conjunction with different types of boosters you can get one amp to sound like many others thus reducing the unnecessary expenditure you often speak of. You could nudge an amp within its general category in almost any direction. We are taking of gain stages as well as frequency response which is why as you have numerous times described the speaker will make the largest impact in the timbre quality.
I might be biased somewhat being a music teacher but even above the gear the one thing I see most guitarist don’t invest in would be their education. With the students in our orchestra and chamber music program we see them invest in master classes, private lessons with visiting artists or attend festivals where they would study under an intensive program. This is all in addition to their music education in college and what they did before that to be able to get to a level in which that is possible. By and large many of the “tone chasers” can’t accompany, play changes and are lacking in fundamentals such as articulation, pulse and rhythm. Perhaps before buying the next iteration of the 5150, how about downloading a metronome and getting some lessons? Maybe a fretboard harmony course ?
Thank you Glenn! I have been applying a lot of what I learn here to my rig and recording set up and you have saved me tons of time and money. Your work is very appreciated.
I've learnt so much.
Your social awareness programme on money saving with music recording really helps me so much.
Really weird when there are those who still didn't understand your messages through your useful experience. Let them sink with their egos.
Thank you Glenn for showing us the economical path and shortcuts to make our lives easier when recording. ✊🏽
so basically, bringing this thinking to digital modelers like an axe fx, helix or quad cortex, we now learned, if you need to change your favourite tone to fit a mix, try changing the IR fiirst 👌
thank you glenn!
Exactly
That and throwing an EQ after the preamp to finetune the frequencies that hit the IR and/or real speaker.
I must say though, IR’s can be somewhat of a rabbithole when searching for something that matches not so common used speakers, a cabsim with a good EQ and a broad mic selection plus their placements can actually be easier and cheaper to get there faster.
Quick example, Blackstar made a Dept 10 Dual Drive and Distortion, most demos and reviews don’t even bother to look at the tweakability that the cab sim has on those two, they are actually just ignoring it and then state “not as good as”.
With some time spend on tweaking, especially the frequency response EQ for the speaker sim itself result is close to quite a few good IR’s.
But it’s easier to go with the flow….
Yep. Discovered this after using some of Resington bigfoot IRs after a Vadim Taranov Natas clone. Got blown away.
Hey Glenn do this test between a mesa dual rectifier and Mesa Mark 5. Please
Great production on the video! This is so cool Glenn, thanks to you and the team as always. I always felt it when I played with my Headrush mx5, the difference in the amp really gets overshadowed by the cab/ir
Glenn : I took the SAME amp and used a few different speakers. I had an old 12 inch Scorpion, an older greenback, a v30, an older full range EV12... Amp settings were all the same, not a knob adjusted.. they ALL sounded different! Its amazing how the same amplifier without changing a thing can go from a bluesy tone to classic rock to early metal sounds! They were all placed in the same 1x12 cab.
it is very funny to me that the speakers make such a huge difference that I can clearly hear it ON A PHONE SPEAKER
I've been sticking distortion pedals and EQs in front of solid state and tube amps since the mid '70s. You're 100% correct, the amp matters very little most of the time.
Edit: I made this comment before you mentioned the EQ and distortion pedal before the amp. Seriously a lot of people don't know that you can use an EQ as a booster or distortion pedal all by itself. With more control over the shape of the sound than either of those.
An Ibanez GE-601 has been on my pedal board since the late 80's. It is literally the only original pedal I still run after all of these decades.
Yup, i have an MXR eq i throw in front of my deluxe clone for distortion and flexible eq when i actually use it, which is not very often because i mostly just use my Kemper because its just easier, lighter, more reliable etc etc. The tube amp is honestly pure nostalgia in todays current climate, so many modelers for bugger all coin that are absolutely more than good enough. Plenty will disagree, mostly because they just cant admit that 10's of thousands of $ worth of temperamental vintage tube amps are no longer relevant as anything other than collector pieces. In 20 years nobody will want real amps and they will be essentially worthless i bet.
@@dunxy A lot of players don't use tube amps anymore, whether they're using a Kemper style thing or a Line6 POD - even the Behringer V-Amp sounds awesome. I use a tube amp at my house because yeah, I like tube sound and at home I play merely for pleasure. If I ever go on a gig or have to go to rehearsals again, I'll get a relatively cheap POD like thing (I do not need a Kemper, more parameters than I want to use live) and go thru the console, it'll do the job perfectly. And they're still "real" amps, just different tech.
0:47 glenns trickery knows no bounds! Well played mr fricker! 😁👍
He's not the engineer most wanted, but definitely the one we sorely needed. Phenomenal work, as always 🤟
I am so glad you mentioned microphone placement in this. As I’ve always thought that once you have a mic, changing the position is the easiest (and honestly a kinda interesting) way to change your recorded guitar sound, rather than buying new gear. Tbh always felt it’s a little under represented😅
Which speakers should I install in my VOX AC30 to get it to sound like a recto?
Such a clever question! It highlights an unstated but important scope limitation: a similar number of saturation stages. Glenn alludes to this when he mentions solid state amps being a bit different, and that is due to differing saturation arrangement. The same applies to vastly different tube saturation strategies.
None. It’ll sound like a Vox either way. I agree speakers effect sound but the amp still matters regardless. You can’t make a Marshall MG sound like an AC30
@@guitarflyer172 Haha. Yep. It was a bit of a tongue in cheek question. I think you got the point though.
"Why do guitarists insist on being this dumb?" I think you said it best in a previous video - they have to be No. 1 at everything :)
I was talking about how dumb guitarist have gotten and wondered if it’s always been like that and the internet just made it more noticeable or if it’s just coming into bloom. I seriously hate talking to guitar players about shit and I one but some of them can get ridiculous. I get a lot of dudes amazed at the fact none of my guitars are really expensive or high end but they will ask how I get my sound lol. Well……it’s a number of things that you’re not going pay enough attention to nor really consider…….SO WHY FUCKING ASK!? Lol
barrry9 is numbah 10
@@nikdrown By the time I started learning to play guitar in Argentina, 20 years ago - where things are harder and more expensive to get, back then most of them got here ten years later, nowadays you can get most of the stuff but it seriously hurts your wallet - we used to get good built, cheap guitars - Squier, Samick, Epiphone and that kind of thing - and mod them if needed. As guitars became more available and we had some more money friendly years - gone for now - people started expending money like idiots and yes, the internet - which also came here a bit later than it did to the first world - potentiated the phenomena. I'm a sound tech - not a studio oriented one, though I can jump in if needed - and I've always modded my guitars to sound like I want them to. Got a lot of Squier haters to say: okay, yours is amazing, the others still suck. Truth be told, any Squier with the work mine has on it would sound that good. I've sold the more expensive guitars I had because it hurts me more to mod them when they don't do what I want them to do, so I only get cheap guitars that look good to me and are well built and then mod the shit out of them if I don't like how they sound. As for the chats with fanboys, I don't have them anymore because the exact same thing that happens to you, happens to me when I do. Regards.
Well with glenn being a guitarist, I can take his word for it.
@@YTisGayUA-cam has definitely gotten bad lol.
But it takes one to know one-that's where wisdom comes from😉
I wanna hear how both the greenback and creamback sound blended in a mix. I bet they would sound amazing.
It does! I have a GB x CB combo in a Marshall 2x12 that sounds killer. Very balanced and warm without being too loose. Well, maybe too loose for metalcore, but more than tight enough for the dad rock and thrash that I play 😂
😮 maybe the second most important video on REAL TONE ISSUES I've ever seen. Right behind the guy who remove all tone wood and set up strings and a pickup between two workbenches proving the pickup is the biggest factor in the guitar. So now between these two videos I've seen that the pickup and the speaker are probably the biggest factors. And of course Mic choices and placement. Well done sir.
i have seen that as well, eye opening stuff. The same guy tracked down what makes the biggest change in tone in an amplifier and in a cabinet. If you haven't watched yet check them out
your fingers, playing style, tuning, phrasing, how you hold the pick, etc... are way more important than the pickup!
I chase a high headroom western swing to nearly as dirty as vintage grateful dead. Everything you said and demonstrated in this video is absolutely critical chasing clean tones as well.
Excellent presentation. Liked and subscribed. Plus you are entertaining as hell - and the editing on this is exemplary.
Western swing and grateful dead? Fantastic tastes
I have a orange micro dark and I just added an EQ pedal in the loop and an overdrive in the front and i think that it really opened that little amp.
EQ pedal is the trick to turning any amp into any amp 😂
The micro dark is a total monster! I love the shock when people realize it's the lunchbox I'm running through and not the amp lol
Holy shit Glenn, you really knocked it out of the ballpark with this one. That test was fucking textbook and it really shows how much effort you put into helping (stupid) musicians get the most out of their gear and/or save money. I still can't get around the fact that there are people calling you a fraud or dismissing your evidence, but I have gained massive respect for you just seeing the lengths you got to demonstrate your methodology and tools.
And don't get me wrong, I've always been on your side and I agree with your points made, it's just that this was an outstanding video really.
Keep it up, much love from Mexico.
Thanks man! Name calling doesn’t matter. Evidence does.
People still tend to go a little nuts when I even suggest changing speakers would make a bigger difference than changing their tubes.
I once got a lecture on filament material, glass thickness, etc. The glass thickness thing cracked me up.
That's crazy. Even in the 90s, I knew that speakers made a bigger difference than tubes, lol. I learned that when I bought a Valvestate and paired it with a cheap cab. It sounded like ass, so when I put my JCM 900 cab on it, it sounded way better, so I paired the cheap cab with my Ampeg VH140C, and suddenly, it sounded like ass, lol. That was when I learned that the speakers were incredibly important to tone, lol. I've owned tube amps, too, and changing tubes never really changed the tone.
I would just reply with "but how does it taste?"
Guitarists are more conservative then the Taliban, for Leo Fender and Les Paul got it right the first try, everything else since is just heresy. And more gullible then audiophiles with their chrome plated anti-matter coated cables and gold plated digital to analog converters.
Especially, since most of the tubes are made in the same factory ....the only change is the label they put on it, don't get me wrong some sound better than others....just like anything else.
@@travisspaulding2222I used to run a pig VH 140C into a Carvin 4x12.
It would completely devour the room
11:35 i love that you provide graphical proof for stuff like this. Whilst subtle to our human hearing ? The graphs don’t lie
As a guitarist (first)/engineer/producer of over 40yrs, I can attest this guy is f'kn spot on. I can match any amplifier with the right pedal combination. The speakers are the secret sauce for the right harmonics, and shaping. Sure you can tweak EQs for a moment and "change the sound", but the right speaker will actually give you the proper response.
Hence the IR revolution. But nothing beats actually pushing air.
p.s.
Without the right mic(s), even with the right speaker, you're still doing good, but with the right mic it could be great.
Great video!!!
Hey Glenn. One thing this video made me think of is "product families"
I bet most guitarists who own a 5150, Soldano or D.Rectifiers want to own all three.
Perhaps such people would benefit from getting a completely different style of amp, or not. Eitherway, a good video would one that classifies amps (and other products maybe) into families that sound too similar to each other to warrant the purchase of more than one. That way, people could save up, buy the one they could afford/find, rely on the rest of signal chain and on EQs when trying to reach the sound they want.
That doesn't really address the fact that it's the speaker making the sound, not the amp.
@@rainsticklandguitartalk9483
If that's what you've taken from Glenn, maybe one of us is misunderstanding him.
Almost everything in the chain affects the sound, to different degrees varying between massive (different speakers) to mostly inaudible (different humbuckers with distortion). The speaker is an eq placed near the end of the chain (along with the mic) so it has the most impact. But different amps do sound different, just check out his next video, he mentions that.
Now yes, they sound different for different reasons than what most people think (see the Jim Lill video), but you can't attach anything to a greenback and then expect it to sound the same. Just think about this: tweaking the eq section of your amp, that on its own makes a massive difference. Same with where the distortion happens in the amp (amp design).
Yes the speaker is making the audible sound, but it's making it based on something fed into it, otherwise all you'll hear is something similar to pink/white noise.
Facts. Not only the speaker, but also the mic makes a huge difference. Speaker placement, eg proximity effect, closer more bass, further away less bass, more toppy. On axis vs off axis, yet again different. Etc… Then also remember, a mic is basically a tiny speaker used in reverse! Same huge difference different speakers gives, so huge differences using different mics and placement. Finding that ultimate sound is spending time not only in speaker selection, but also to find the ultimate mic. The whole signal chain ultimately determines the end result though.
Your starting to approach that Kyuss tone. One problem the consumer has is videos that promise an artist's tone on a budget and thier all based on gear. They more than imply the more expensive the gear the closer you can get.
I wouldn't be surprised if Josh Homme using some Peavey solid state amps on their albums lol 😂. He's the antithesis of a gear snob.
He really did, its a fact.
@@JimBoom92Nice, I thought so. Those guys were broke high desert punks so they were definitely making the most of what they could get. I'd say great metal tone can also be had with a Randall RG head with MXR EQ to act as a tonal shaping tool and buffer. More money doesn't always equal cooler sounds 😊.
@@Napalm6b i agree. The Kyuss "tone" (if ever this exists!) is certainly not about expensive
@davidwang4364 Ah yes the fart to fabric ratio! The derivative of F delta fa! A very important test of tonal purity!
I have a question though. I'm not gonna be pretending that I know more than you, just something I saw a lot online and wanna see what you'd have to say about that. A lot of people argue that, besides the mic and its placement, the biggest thing affecting your sound at least almost as much as the speaker, is the cab itself. The way it is built, the materials it is made of, the size and shape of it, whether it has beams or weights inside, whether is has an opening (not necessarily a proper bass reflex but just a slit at the front), etc., etc., as it will make the speakers behave differently, the air moved by the speakers differently and then that air will affect speakers back, and so on. It makes a ton of sense to me and I wonder how you'd comment on that.
That's especially important to me as I recently bought a used 2x12 tube amp combo and I kinda want to buy a pair of creambacks 12H to replace the stock eminence rockdrivers, but a pair of these would cost as much as I paid for the entire combo (or more!) and I'm afraid nobody will want to buy the rockdrivers for me to recoup the costs and also that these speakers will not be able to shine in their full potential due to the limitations of the combo cab. So I considered also buying a cheap empty 2x12 cab (the cheaper the better, I can't afford to be fussy) and putting the Creambacks there, but again I have the same worry that it will be a waste to use such nice expensive speakers in a crap crappy cab. Finally I was thinking to buy both a cheap empty cab and the Creambacks, and put the creambacks to the combo and the rockdrivers to the empty cab and then sell the cab with the speakers hopefully getting back the entirety of the cab's cost back and the value of the rockdriver speakers on top of it, maybe even more since it's already in a cab... I assume the last option is the best idea, given it makes sense to replace the speakers in my combo at all... I am not considering a nice cab with creambacks loaded by the manufacturer cause I just can't afford it, if I could I wouldn't have bought a combo but a head...
Great video! But I think this is more a communication problem than anything because we're talking about two different things. There is the sound of the guitar (i.e the combination of player, guitar, amp, speaker + mic) and then there is the sound of the distortion, which can be very unique and is mostly determined by the amp. I agree that the sound in its totallity is most influenced by the speaker and mic but the tone of the distortion is not affected by either of those. The tone of distortion between a recitifer vs 6505 vs VH4 can be big, depending on what and how you play. I know since I have those amps and am able to switch between them through the same cab and it can make a huge difference. But of course if all you play is some palm muted high-gain power-chords, then yes there is not much of a difference. But if you play something more nuanced the difference becomes more pronounced as well.
IMO most guitar players are more interested in the tone of the distortion, since that is what actually impacts how the guitars "feels" and hence how you play. The sound itself is, at least to me, not as important. Sure a cab with V30s sounds much different than Greenbacks, but it doesn't affect how I play all that much. However I play much differently through a 6505 than through a Rectifier since the amps distortion is different, the amps react differently hence you play differently. The speaker does not change how the guitar feels or behaves, it just changes the voicing while the amp actually changes how you play. At least for me. Maybe I'm weird but talking to other guitarists it does not seem that I am alone with this.
So how does one measure “feel?” Seems like an awful lot of copium in this comment. Give us evidence, not excuses.
@@SpectreSoundStudios Here you go: ua-cam.com/video/7dA9fwnY0uY/v-deo.html
A comparison of 5 typical metal amps where you can clearly hear the difference of the sound of distortion. If someone can't hear the rectifier from a mile away then that person must be either deaf or not into metal, because it is clearly unique in how it sounds. And no I don't mean the mid-scoop which they perhaps could've adjusted a bit better for the sake of the comparison.
And I can replicate that comparison at home with my own Recti & 6505. Switching between them is a night/day difference, while the difference between the 6505 and VH4 is more subtle (to me at least). And that is over the exact same setup (Closed vert. 212 /w V30, SM57/LCT 140 + M160) and just switching between them (or even an Axe-FX).
What I'm saying is, while I agree that for recording purposes the cab/speaker/mic have a huge impact, the amp has an impact as well + and an additional impact on the player and sound of distortion, not necessartily sound of the guitar as a whole. But again, it depends on what is being played. Playing simple palmuted high-gain riffs, it probably doesn't matter as much, but playing something more versatile the differences become more obvious and more important to the guitar player.
4:20 says it all 🎉
Creambacks sound so tight I love it
While I agree with you that speakers make a huge difference, I’d be interested to hear the difference between amps that aren’t ripoffs of each other, for example, a Marshall DSL vs a Dual Rec, 5150 or SLO, or even a Mesa Mark Series vs a Marshall or SLO-type amp. Also, thank you for pointing out Mesa & Peavey ripped off Mike Soldano, I think more people should know this. I’ve been aware of this since the early 2000’s, I heard the rumor and did an A/B comparison of a Dual Rec and Hot Rod 50, I could easily dial them to sound the same. Anyway, keep up the great content, and as always, Fuck You Glenn!
I wanted to make a very similar comment. Please could you do your tests with very different amps? I know some of them are not meant for metal but I'd be still interested in the result.
ola did such a test years ago, and they still sounded all "pretty much the same". he tested like 15 amps of various circuits
No kiddin’? I’ll have to find that video, thanks for the heads up man. 👍🤘🏻
@@jamesdaigle8690i think it is called "1 riff, 14 amps" or something. there are SOME differences, and 2 or 3 amps sound a lot different, because they are much fuzzier in their distortion or just are built completely different, but for the most part.... it is all the same.
@@MrMockigton @SonicDriveStudio has some great amp comparison, and yes you can hear some differences but also it's tricky because I guess if you want to really compare there are so many parameters to take into account (and to match) between EQ, Gain, Presence ...
So glad someone else experiments like this. I've been playing for 20 years and I'm still learning new things.
You're spot-on about the speakers making a huge difference. Years ago, I replaced the stock speakers in an Ampeg 4x12 straight guitar cab with Eminence Texas Heats and that cab not only sounded better for what I play, but seemed to go noticeably louder before starting to distort. Keep preaching the truth man!
00:20 Don't call me Shirley!
I've been playing since 92. I've always thought "Tone wood" was non sense. I've collected a number of guitars over the years, nope; I've found humbuckers sound one way, and single coils sound another way. You make wicked videos, and you've only solidified what I've already known in that regard. Just discovered you recently and subbed. Keep on trucking my friend, cheers from Northern Ontario.
I'm from North Bay Ontario if you're wondering where in Northern Ontario I'm from.
Honestly can't wait for the video of you making the crate amp sound good with a better speaker. Although personally I think Crates sound fine, but I'm also a fan of Jensen speakers which many crates came with.
He tried it with a crate combo it didn't work crate sounded bad
Crate sounds fine imo, it might needs adjustments or one of those "peamp" pedals and skipping the Crate's drive stage.
I used to have a dirt cheap Watson 10w bass amp yyyears ago. Sounded shite in the room, so much sothat I barely used it. Then I read of producers like Massy and Robinson and how they suggested that mic placement could change everything. I found ways to make that amp work just through mic placement after that. I guess this is how good producers and engineers help bands achieve despite the shitty equipment.
I think the thing to consider between amps is the features, not the sound. Nowadays, everything can be tweaked with pedals, digital fx, etc. Differences in tone between amps can be squashed with a boost in front, eq in the fx loop, etc. Amps are a huge purchase, while FX processors are minor in comparison.
However, if you need a direct cab-sim out, or a built in attenuator, or more power for live gigging, or 4ohm support, etc, these are things that can put one amp over another. For example, you might get a 6505II over a 6505 original not because of the “tone”, but because of the individual 3-band EQ per channel as opposed to the global EQ on the original. Or you might go for an Invective due to the built in “modern” features. All the while these amps have more-or-less identical tonality with a bit of tweaking.
I've got 61 Bassman that I've used for 20 years. The only thing I ever change is the cab . It makes huge difference on stage. I even use it for bass on soul gigs with a 8x10 Ampeg. Glorious ! Great video.
Sir, your rational thought process and evidence has no business on the internet.
Hey Glen, Just wanted to thank you for all the great advise. Your testing has has been such an eye opener. Unlearning what I think I know is not easy. All the best to you.
Thanks for reminding me it's not the amp that sucks, it's me!
Seriously badass video, thanks for the insight; I'm not super into tone chasing, but it was cool to see how just recording the same amp in a different way can get you all sorts of different of sounds 👍🏽
Learning a lot from your content, I'm so glad I found this channel. Proving and explaining the technical reasoning behind tone is definitely the best part of what you share here!
to be fair , the reason for this is because the speaker is the last thing in the guitars signal chain and is nothing more than a permanent set EQ at the end of the chain. if youre in a DAW and set up an EQ with drastic frequency curves at the end of the signal chain, youd get a similar result, and thats that what you hear is dictated by that drastic frequency curve at the end of the chain. if its EQ'd in a bright way, then you will eternally have a bright sound. if it is EQ'd in a dark way, you will permanently have a dark sound. however there is much more to a guitars tone that just a speaker with a set EQ curve. yes all high gain amplifiers will sound the same through the same cabs, thats because theyre all more or less designed for the same genre of music and same style of guitar playing. compare amps that have totally different circuits like a single channel marshall and you have completely different textures and feel and response that can stillchange regardless of what the final EQ curve is on the speaker itself. you may try to use the audio of a DAW to draw scientific experiments , but the reality is that that audio does not capture or reflect 100 percent of the players experience. really comparing different types of metal amps and being surprised they all sound the same is like comparing a bunch of different running shoes and being surprised they all feel comfortable to run in. your issue glen , is that you talk in this subject in absolutes. that all amps absolutely sound the same if theyre all through the same cabinet and that is why you keep stirring this pot for debate because that is not true in an absolute way.
Finally someone who knows something. Thank you. This guy is hanging his hat on the speaker alone as if it’s news. We all knew the speaker makes a difference when we got our first car at the age of 16 and put Jet Sounds in there. Glen figured this out when he turned 60 and can’t shut up about it.
5:07 to 5:09 I'm cracking up during this part -- GODDAMMIT GLENN 😂😂😂
There is an another thing what is important with different amps. It's gain character (or structure). For my ears it's one of the most important thing in high gain sound. Every of these amps has own inbuilt eq what it goes to distortion section what you can't change (except mesa marks etc.) but we can modulate it with stomp boxes placed before the amp. Even if you use matched eq on the final sound and the curve will be exactly same for our eye you can (easily) hear the difference of the gain character.
Awesome video, really enjoyed it. My personal experience told me the same thing. I used to own an old Silvertone 1484 with the original 2x12 cabinet. I tested and recorded it with three different cab setups and I couldn't believe how different it sounded with each one - almost like it was three completely different amps. Rock on Glen!
O, wow, I could actually hear the difference between the two amps! Didn't expect to. Good to know that my hearing can still pick up subtle changes like that ;)
I expected the speakers to be different, but honestly didn't expect to be able to heat the amp differences with my cheap PC speakers.
It's normal for speakers to be wildly different. Even if a lot of musicians don't want to admit it. After all there are many different parts of a speaker that have a filtering effect. The air resistance, the weight of the diaphragm, dimensions of the coil, type of wire in the coil, open or closed center, force of the magnet, dimensions of the magnet, material the magnet is made of, elasticity of the mounting rings for the cone etc. etc.
Same goes for mics, since they do more or less the same thing, nut in reverse.
Now I know why I rang the bell for your videos...by far the best one so far
I am not a player at all more of a technical guy
The two tools you spoke to the reamp box and the analyzer software should be a no brainier for all musicians and tech guys like myself...bravo
T11:50-Can those minor differences between 5150 and mesa be explained by the variance in amp eq potentiometers themselves? Can you get both signals to overlap with minor tweaks in settings?
It's so true. The speaker cab can often be overlooked in how important it is in the equation for achieving the tone that we are chasing. I know, because I've been there.
This is not only a great reminder, but it's proof of how much difference speakers can make.
Thank you.
I wouldn't mind having that dynamic/condenser pair housed in one capsule. Pretty wild idea. Definitely works.
I watched the videos of others who did the same comparison. Based on those videos, The Dual Rectifier and the 5150 did not sound the same. Did Glenn dial in both amps to make it sound identical, then record? 🤔
Did they reamp the same part? I went to extreme lengths to ensure the ONLY variable was the amp. How many of those other tests took frequency response graphs?
I tend to not watch your videos due to the screams and clickbait thumbnails. But I gave this one a try and it was worth the watch. Very useful information. Thank you for putting it together.
Yeah that’s what 90% of these videos are, off putting at first but extremely useful
I think that there is some missing context here. You mentioned that you have used an EQ and that anybody else can do as well, but I might have missed the section where you point out how much of a change was made. Sure, you can argue that you could use the cheaper option and then use a matching EQ, but how would you know what EQ match is necessary without having the primary source to compare toward? I think the entire logic to buy cheap and then add falls apart at this stage.
All in all, I think it's safe to say that you can make both the 5150 and the Dual Rec sound incredibly similar. It's also fair to say that speakers do a big difference in tone. But when do things start to sound different actually? After all, we only hear the very blanket statement that speakers change the sound, and amps don't. But that is grossly oversimplified. A VOX AC30 will, without external things extending the circuit (boosts, distortions and preamp pedals) will never sound like a Peavey 5150. What makes the difference? The gain stages, the tone stack, the power amp design and the negative feedback loop, all of these things do make amplifiers sound different, and these effects cascaded are vastly underrepresented in your comparisons and blanket statements.
I am all in for a bargain. But at what state is there a real saving here? Dual Recs and 5150 are similar priced, depending on where you are globally, and these are two top notch amplifiers playing in the highest league. Also, from what I heard (not compared the schematics, YET) the 5150 is a loose derivation of the Soldano SLO, just like the Dual Rec is one, so they do have similarities, although the power amp design seems to be way different, being important for the negative feedback loop, which "is an EQ", thus shaping the tone!
And then there's a thing to say about the make of the title and thumbnail, but I get, that you have to garner attention in order to pay the bills.
Im currently costing the build and kitting out of my home studio and the Lewitt 640 rex is actually such a cool hack! Love to see a full breakdown on diffrent mics by you
I absolutely love tricks like your A/B comparison clips at the start. Not because it supports what I believe but the opposite. Its a smack in the face and wake up call that is like saying "Dude just use you're fuckin ears and listen dumbass." Which isn't necessarily fun to accept but then its just a huge relief that I can finally get a sense of knowing what I ACTUALLY need to do in order to get the result I'm looking for and not be constantly doubting every little decision and wondering if one more piece of gear will be the thing that gets me what I want.
I put a 2x12 cab together with a V30 and creamback and I love it. This is really eye opening video about the differences in the amps I had no idea they were so close together.
1) the difference is not huge (especially compared to tweaking cabs/speakers/mics/mic positions), but there is definitely a difference, and EQ spectrum is not the entire thing to look at / listen to. There is also the envelope of the sound (how loose or tight the amp is when palm muting), etc. This affects of the amp feels when playing it and how you play it.
2) tone is not all about listening to final mixes... What about when you play alone in your room, or at band practice or during a live show on cabs when people hear mostly the direct sound from the cabs instead of the miked tones in a FOH mix ? You will hear the differences between amps more in these contexts than when listening to recorded tones in a final mix.
3) you can get amp A to sound closer to amp B, but if you want the characteristics of amp B, then it's better to use amp B than trying to get amp A to sound like amp B. If i want a recto sound (because such a thing exists), I'd better use a Recto than try getting a JCM800 or a 5150 sound like a Recto
I own a SLO, a Triple Rec, and a 5150 block logo. I have re-amped all three through the same cab setup, and while there are variations, I’d be hard pressed to figure-out which was which if things aren’t well labeled. Trying to blend them together was a total waste of time.
I can't claim to have conducted the amount of experimentation that Glenn has, but I've noticed two things in my years with several different heads:
1) tone testing by reamping my Triple Rec and my solid state Ampeg VH140C yielded shockingly similar results (SM57 on cabs with v30s and with Eminence Legends)
2) I can't seem to make these amps sound the same in the room. I know my ears are fallible like anyone else's, but couldn't there be something cumulative in small differences across the full range of several different speakers in a 4x12 at once that impacts what we're hearing? I'd love to see some tests of stereo pair mics further away from the cabinet, in a more typical listening position.
P.S. Can you share the EQ settings you used to match tones on the Dual Rec and 6505? I also wonder if they have greater disparities that emerge at different points in their various EQ settings.
can REALLY hear the difference in speakers - really nicely recorded - Glenn what a legend!
What you said at 2:22 is absolutely true. If I recall from my Psychology class last semester people on average only can remember a sound accurately for 3-5 seconds. I can get up to 15ish seconds if I really focus on remembering it which still isn't long enough to do easy A/B comparisons. This is why at least an A/B box should be used for comparing amps or speaker cabs.
This is a personal strength of mine, with my personal experience being I can remember sounds for about 15-30 seconds relatively easily. Despite this I always use an A/B. Why would I want to have to use my brain when I can use my ears?
It would've been interesting to see and compare the settings on the amps. It wouldn't change the outcome of the video, but I'm curious to see how different the knobs are to produce a similar sound.
Another fine vid Glenn. In the mid 90s an engineer taught me to change speakers and pickups before changing guitar and amp. Her advice has saved me so much cash. 🤘🏼
I wonder if there’s a difference in the grain of the amp. Like a disto will not sound the same on an amp vs another. Is the guitar directly plug in the amp?
I also wonder how much a single pedal can annihilate any differences between two amps. I kind of get much more similar results by just adding a tube screamer in front of any high gain amp with the same can, even when they don’t have the same eq.
I’m new to this prod thing, I noticed very quickly how much the cab impacts the sound, but I still don’t understand so many things 😬
I have several very different tube amps. The topography between them is radically different. Each has a sweet spot that is far different than the others. But, I can still dial them in and get about the same tone between them all.
But for two of them I wanted different voicings. (The Silverface Princeton Reverb I left bone stock)
The option of course was to try various speakers. What a rabbit hole and money suck THAT can be! I was fortunate to have access to some demo cabinets with 4 different speakers in each. I could punch a knob and change from voicing to voicing in real time.
In the end I ended up with a 12" Wizard in one single open back and a 12" Delta Blues with a Peavey Black Widow in a closed back cabinet. Any one gives it's own unique voicing regardless of which amp is plugged in.
(My favorite guitar amp/speaker combination of all time is a SS Leslie 710 with a Trek LFO1 to make it single channel and run slow or stopped with a Leslie Combo Preamp pedal.)
G'day Glenn!!!!
This is possibly a really stupid question (when I get to it).
I've been on massive tone quest for years and have accuired a huge amount of different speakers and cabs, and have pretty much settled on closed back 2x12's (my favourite is a Marshall slant 2x12 2061x I got second hand) with a mix of Creamback M, H and Neo's. I mainly use a Marshall SV20H or a Mesa Mini Rec (Both sound pretty ballpark through the same cab to be honest - and I have recorded both with a looper pedal and a Captor X to test).
The question: What are the mics you have used that give the closest sound to what you're actually hearing in the room (taking into account mic placement etc)?
I absolutely love the guitar sound I have and struggle to have it sounding the same when recorded. Sennheiser e906 or the Lewitt you're currently using maybe? HELPPPPPPP!!!!!!
Thanks mate, love the content and f-you from Australia! Cheers.
Why did my brother never bother to get a tube amp? Because his Marshall MG50 had a 12” speaker, whereas my Marshall MG30 had a 10” one. I wasn’t satisfied with the latter, so I went up to the JVM. I don’t regret it, but of course, I assume the majority of the sound comes from the 4x12 cabinet I bought along with the JVM. If I use the JVM Kemper profiles, they don’t sound bad, but certainly “colder” than what comes out of the 4x12 cabinet. I guess I’d have to test the JVM with a Torpedo Captor, to see how much of the sound difference does come from using a real tube head instead of a Profiler vs. from the mere fact that the JVM is going through a 4x12 cabinet while the Kemper isn’t…
Idk how or why someone would try and fight the speakers and mics wisdom, I play an HX Stomp into my interface at home and it's so obvious. I genuinely can't remember which presets use a 5150, Recto, ENGL, or Bogner bc you can basically get the same end result with any of em with the right boost/drive and post EQing, I can spend hours dialing something in only to find an IR that instantly gets me where I've been trying to go way quicker. THE SPEAKER IS THE ACOUSTIC INSTRUMENT YOUR GUITAR IS CONTROLLING IT'S WHERE THE SOUND COMES FROM
1:15 listening through my studio monitors. Def a sound difference there Glenn. Cheers from NZ 😎🎸🤘
Also a fascinating note. Typically, a speaker behaves omni-directionally at frequencies below the one calculated by taking the speed of sound and dividing it by the driver circumference of the driver. For example, a “12 inch” speaker has a driver radius of approximately 12 cm, yielding a circumference of around 0.75m. Take the speed of sound and divide by that distance and you get something around 500 Hz.
What does that mean? Well, below 500 Hz, the speaker behaves according to predictable parameters based on the mass of the driver, compliance of the soft parts, etc. Above 500 Hz, the speaker behaves directionally, where different areas of the speaker radiate and beam these high frequencies out at different angles, some caught by a mic and some not. This is why hi-fi systems typically use two or three different speaker sizes for different frequency bands. The beaming is also affected by cone/dust cap material and shape. I’m confident that if you look at the response curve of a 12 in driver taken with different mic positions, you’d see most of the difference occur after 500 Hz.
Glenn you make a really good point there. I have a Marshall VS8100 that came with the original 4x12 budget Marshall cab that it was selling with at the time. I was kinda happy with the sound, but could use improvement. I swapped the original speaker for (gasp) Crate 4x12 which actually sounded better but was lacing low end so I swapped all the speakers to two Eminence and two GT12M-70 and padded the back - packed big time with acoustic foam and almost got there. Then I went to a friend's practice studio and plugged into his old ratty early 1970s Marshall cab that came with his Plexi...and it was an absolute "wow" moment. It was essentially the recorded Chuck Schuldiner sound. He wouldn't part with that cab for anything :)
We also swapped our bass player's guitar amp Crate combo speaker for a second hand Celestion that he got for cheap and that took the amp to a totally different level.
I like these myth buster videos you’ve been doing recently. It’s taught me that my free amp sim is good enough (I use Ignite Emissary and NadIR as of now) and I have no need to buy neural dsp or the other “big giants” to get good tones. Just a good IR
Hello, Glenn! For some rescent years, i've got almost all the same conclusions about guitar gear as you. Done dozens of blind tests for my friends, miced crappy wideband speakers which sounded pretty well in the mix, matched them to some IRs and they sounded even better and so on. BUT! Few days ago i was in our studio with my brother to test some DIY loadbox i've made, and we've got some very interesting results i wasn't expecting. We've got Marshall DSL20 and Peavey 6505 Mini and they sound VEEEEERY different through the loadbox. Also the signal in very different, i think due to schematics topology and stuff - Marshall has very assymetrical signal, presence and resonance aren't doing much on Marshall, and cranking up the output knob on Peavey above halfway doesn't rise line input signal. First time working with loadbox and will definetely make some more tests of how other tube amps will behave. Still i don't think it even matters - either you like the result or not, doens't matter how it was achieved.
Thank you for spending so much time to teach people about music. I learn a lot from you and don't know how to repay you other than to click "subscribe".
Also, stay metal, dude. You rock.
I could not agree more, and this comes from someone who builds amplifiers and speakers. And one thing all the tests I've done show two things are important; the speaker/s and the _cabinet_ it/they are in. Good branded speakers can fulfill the wishes of the owner IF they are in a cabinet which is "suitable". The stereo speakers which I built and live in my living room only produced the goods with one out of 4 sets of speakers I that tried. The time an amplifier really shows a difference is when it the preamp is overdriven or especially when the output stage is driven into clipping.
I recently built a 9v amp using an lm386 chipset....probably £5 in parts, runs off a pp9 battery.
I have a lot of kit lying around and found an old bell and howell cinema projector speaker cab with a 12" speaker in it from the 50s.
Sounds Godly...perfect tone. Bright, chimey, brittle, responsive...just what i was looking for. I was originally gonna build a champ 5fe type tube circuit to put in that speaker but whats the point? If i had the amp hidden you'd never know the difference.
In this instance its hard to see the sound as much other than nearly 100% speaker....because the only bits that arent a speaker is the circuit topology (erm, its essentially just three transistors) and an lm386 chip.
So i try to keep an open mind :)
Ive been playing for 35 years and always knew this, to a point. WOW what an eye opener!!!!!!!!! thanks for investing time to do this.. fantastic!!!!!!!!! Love ya channel
Man I love this channel.
Switching the amps mid clip. So cool
really great video- really shows the reality...one of my major "a-ha" moments in the past 2 years was the realization that everything we set-up sound-wise as guitarists for live/recording get affected by the speaker, but always a microphone...
Cool to see what I had suspected all along, finally demonstrated in the studio. That dual microphone is pretty slick, too.
How have I not been subscribed sooner. Thanks for your work.
The video makes some good points on the impact of speakers and mic placement. And it shows that with some EQing and tweaking you can make two similar sounding high gain amps sound indistinguishable within a mix and with compressed sound quality from youtube. However, the point of having different amps is to get different sounds that other amps are not capable of producing. Especially when it comes to clean and edge of breakup sounds I don't think a 5050 or Rectifier will give you a Vox or Orange sound.