Hola!
Got a set of UK made Vintage 30's of Ebay a month back or so, which were supposed to go in my Silver Jubilee cabinet. The only problem was, that the amp sounded horrible with the speakers... So I put them in my Zilla Modern 2x12" instead, where they sound very good! Brightens it up a little bit, such a massive cab could get a little bit dark with the Creamback 65Ms but I would never have exchanged them if I didn't have some V30s looking for a new home. This did of course lead to another issue, that the Creambacks needed a new home! This was initially a cab I almost randomly ordered hoping that Paul had the time to make it fast, because I didn't have the time to wait because I will be leaving in two weeks. The cab is a Small Vintage with rubber feet on the short side, so it is meant to be vertical. I decided to go with green tolex hoping it would look good with my Kemper on top. The cool thing is that the colours are almost identical, and it kind of looks like a vintage 70's toaster or lunchbox from NASA standing on top of a PA speaker from about the same time.
The other cab I got was a ported Thiele 1x12" cab, which was delayed due to some misunderstandings and I was supposed to get it quite some time back as a portable alternative to the Modern for band practice. The first thing I thought when I got it was "god it's heavy!", and it is not a flyweight at 17.4kg! Still not the heaviest 1x12" made (I believe ENGL makes some that clocks in at more than 20kg), but it is certainly the best sounding 1x12" I have ever heard! Loaded with a Creamback 75H speaker, there is some serious tone coming out of this relatively small cab. Playing palm mutes, it actually shakes the house more than the V30 loaded Modern, which is the biggest and heaviest of them all. I was a little bit disappointed by the weight and size of the cab, which is very big for a 1x12", and it is barely 2kg lighter than the Small Vintage, but according to Paul a smaller size would degrade the tone significantly without taking away that much weight. So after all it is worth it! If you want a kickass 1x12", you don't have to look further!
Even though both cabs sound great, I expected the Ported 1x12" to sound great, and I have had good experiences with ported 1x12"s before. I didn't quite know what to expect with the Small Vintage, and I had the impression that it would be a serious downgrade in tone. To my surprise, it certainly was not! It is quite a bit shallower than the Modern, and the backplate is quite close to the speakers. Still, the bass response is very good and it does not sound even a little bit thin. The Creamback 65Ms are a very good match for this cab I think, bringing some bass to the table that might have been a little lacking with say V30s. That said, I would love to try a Creamback 75H together with a 65M, but the speaker in the Ported cab has a different resistance (ohm).
Zilla have been my go-to cabs ever since I migrated from FRFR, and I have honestly never been so satisfied with my guitar tone as I am now! The Kemper is just such an amazing piece of gear, that I cannot even begin to describe it! It would be one of those 2000 words reviews you never want to read... I have never felt 100% confident about owning a digital preamp as my only amplifier, neither with the Axe FX Standard nor the unpowered Kemper rack, but with the Powerhead I feel confident that I can play both miced and unmiced gigs without any issues! At a miced gig I know that the tone from the PA speakers is just as good as the tone coming from my cab, and at an unmiced gig the poweramp destroys most 100w valve heads!
If you own the Powerhead, Powerrack or the regular Head with an aftermarket poweramp I highly recommend you to check these cabs out! Any other regular "factory" cab just feels vastly inferior to any of the Zilla cab, and I would much rather bring my 1x12" Zilla rather than using the shabby Marshall 1960A at the gig (perhaps unless it was a 1960AV). Both 2x12" destroy any newer Marshall cab though.
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