Mesa CabClone vs H&K Redbox vs Torpedo C.A.B.

  • I want to get started profiling some of my amps/pedals next week and was wondering which of these (Mesa CabClone vs H&K Redbox vs Torpedo C.A.B.) would be the best for 'silent' profiling. The Condo I live in has pretty strict 'noise' rules and so I have to keep things as quiet as possible and so it looks like DI recording will have to suffice. Anyone have any experience with any of these? Any tips? Anything I should be aware of? Is DI profiling worth the effort or should I find a place where I can make some 'noise'? Will they sound as good as miked amps or is it a waste of time?


    Any and all advice would be appreciated!

    The older I get, the better I was.

  • I want to get started profiling some of my amps/pedals next week and was wondering which of these (Mesa CabClone vs H&K Redbox vs Torpedo C.A.B.) would be the best for 'silent' profiling. The Condo I live in has pretty strict 'noise' rules and so I have to keep things as quiet as possible and so it looks like DI recording will have to suffice. Anyone have any experience with any of these? Any tips? Anything I should be aware of? Is DI profiling worth the effort or should I find a place where I can make some 'noise'? Will they sound as good as miked amps or is it a waste of time?


    Any and all advice would be appreciated!


    Shadowjumper,


    If you plan on doing some silent Direct Amp (DA) recording, then you need a true loadbox. Neither the H&K Redbox nor the Toperdo C.A.B. are loadboxes. You need to look at something like the Torpedo Live, which is a reactive loadbox. I believe the Mesa CabClone would also work, but not as well, as it is a simple, resistive load box.


    P.S. -- Even as a DI box, you want to steer clear of the H&K Redbox, because it is my understanding that you cannot defeat/disable the built-in cab emulation. This will ruin a DA profile.


    Cheers,
    John

  • Keep in mind that the reactive load of the attached cabinet while profiling has a direct influence on the tonal result due to the high amount of interaction between the power amps output transpormers and the cab.


    Using load boxes instead of real cabs might result in a complete change of tone.

  • Gotcha! So I think the first step is in getting the output tone using the torpedo to be as close as possible to the output tone when NOT using it. Once I have the desired tone for profiling we should be good to go...


    Of course that is no doubt easier said than done...

    The older I get, the better I was.

  • from the Profiling Guide:
    "It’s true, the sound of the speaker will not be captured in this case, but the complex impedance behavior of the speaker is still needed to create those oft-mentioned interactions between the power tube-amp and the connected speaker cabinet. The DI box will ensure that there are real-life interactions for the profiling process to capture. Later, when the Profile is played back through the built-in class-D amp, or an external solid-state power amp, it will recreate the same impedance situation to the connected speaker-cabinet. This is the key to making our built-in power-amp sound like a tube power-amp. For this reason, we recommend that you don’t use any kind of power-soaks or power-attenuators, either as a substitute for, or in addition to, the DI box and true speaker. Those devices work mostly with simple resistors, which might inhibit the desired impedance interactions, thereby resulting in an inauthentic profile."
    FYI
    even if it is a reactive load that somehow mimics the interaction between speaker and power amp - it will not be equal to the interaction of the power amp and your speaker, but a generic one. Meaning: if you create a DA profile with a loadbox and then play this profile over your cabinet, it will sound different from your amp over your cabinet, in other words it will be inauthentic.
    Use a non-coloring DI box that can handle speaker levels and make a DA profile while your cabinet is connected to the amp and the result will be completely authentic.
    hth ;)

  • I've got a Fryette Power Station to play with as well... which is the most transparent attenuator I have ever run across, so it will be interesting trying that with the other options to see what I can come up with. There are just so many variations that can be profiled, so the options are pretty much unlimited. I'm just looking forward to having the reasonable facsimiles that the Kemper offers all in one place to bounce around between. I'm not expecting them to be perfect... but close enough is indeed close enough!

    The older I get, the better I was.

  • I have an holt Tube Town silent box, which is basically a wood cube with no holes with a 8" guitar speaker and some isolating material.
    It works better than my old palmer PGA04, but a direct profiling with a real cab is another story, seriously :)

  • Howdy!


    Although I don't have any experience profiling a real amp connected to a speaker cabinet properly mic'd, I can say for certain that I have profiled a Lil smokeys pocket amp ( the supro high gain version) with a h&k red box 5 a few times with some different options selected on the red box and got really surprising results!


    I think it sounded awesome, but it may have been just me but, I'd throw them against the rest of the profiles and I bet you couldn't tell me ,with a little tweaking (mostly definition and clarity) that it sounded as clear and heavy as the rest of them ;)


    I also did a profile of a dual amp set up from my old pod hd500 where I used an effects loop for one of the amp Sims and effectively used the red box to profile a 2X cab sim of an amp sim along with a single cab/mic sim and mix them toegther. Both that profile and a regular single amp/cab/mic sim profile of an hd500 sound even better after profiled them...


    Whenever you feel lost, remember, they profiled a drive thru speaker ;) hope some of this helps. In the future I'm gonna experiment with doing stacked pedals into the red box directly. I feel it could yield some at least decent ,usable tones. Cheers!