What a difference a cabinet can make. But what happened came full circle, as a better cabinet made amp tweaking work with many other cabinets. My usable collection increased tenfold.
Long story short (yes, I'm trying), I took one of my favorite Top Jimi JCM800 amp profiles and went cab hunting to see if I could find a "more natural" speaker/mic tone that made my amp profile sound like a great amp in a room without the close-miced filtered sound. Looking for vintage Marshall tones to work with JTM 45, Plexi, JMP, and JCM800...and more. After all, a great cab can work on almost anything, right? Around the same time I needed a headphone solution for nighttime use that sounded like studio monitors...something my old headphones weren't doing. I ended up with an awesome set of cans with the Avantone Pro MP-1 MixPhones that actually helped me shape tone that translated better than my monitors, but translated back to my monitors just fine, and are a real pleasure to jam with for hours without fatigue. They have two modes, one specifically for mixing, and one for general listening. The mixing mode sounds close to my monitors, and I use it most of the time, but the listening mode is also very good. I aim to sound good with everything.
I must have copied and saved two dozen cabs from the free offerings. Then I put that TJ amp profile through every one of those cabs until I heard magic happen. With a little tweaking I had the cabinet that was just what I wanted...old Greenback tone in a room. Perfect definition from lows to highs, and very natural sounding. BUT the big surprise was what happened when I locked down everything and started running all the amp profiles (amp only) through this cab with a refined EQ combo. Wowza! Many profiles I "passed" on a long time ago suddenly "came to life". I recovered somewhere around 20 amp profiles, and out of that bunch about half of them were stellar. What a difference! Even the Fender and Vox profiles I purchased sounded fantastic. It didn't end there. The amp EQ I dialed in is somehow working with multiple amps which are now working with many cabinets. How that's happening I can't say, but I'm in tone heaven!
So, what is this cab, and where did it come from? The cab is called "Mars" by M. Wienstroer and done at Studio 25 with an AKG 414 off axis. There are several variations of this setup, but I believe I saved the cab from the "Gundy - John6 For MM" profile by Gundy Keller on 2015-02-14 12:26:04 in Factory Content 5.1.
SPEAKER CAB TWEAKS (by Gundy?):
High Shift -0.7
Low Shift -0.1
Character -0.8
Pure Cabinet 0.0
NO Pure Cabinet on Output Page 5 (don't need it anymore).
UNIVERSAL AMP EQ SETTINGS THAT REFINE ALMOST EVERYTHING NICELY:
BASS 1.8
MID 3.1
TREB 2.7
PRES +0.0
And now that I thought about it, I just locked down my tweaked Top Jimi JTM-45 profile (another freebie...great Marshall amp profile!) with a gain level of 5.4 (same EQ settings) for everything except the cabinet and used Rig Manager to select all the M. Wienstroer and Dirk Baldringer profiles listening to all the different cabs. OMG! They all sound good! The method used to capture the cabinets with that AKG 414 was a brilliant effort. Very natural speaker cab sound. No "fizz" or "buzz". Thank you!
EDIT: I might have tweaked the TJ-JTM 45 Max-2 amp by setting Definition at 6.1 and Tube Shape at 3.3. All other deep amp settings are 0.0. As mentioned, gain is 5.4 for my Les Paul with hummies and single coil options. EQ Above.
And for those that have the Top Jimi Brownsound Pack, check out the Diver Down, Fair Warning, 1984 and VH II cabs for more open sound goodness with the authentic 20 Watt Celestion color that is vintage rare and unique. It's awesome!
Last night I ran the amp and EQ combo back through all the cabs in my Kemper and picked up several more cabs that work really well. So, what came first? The chicken or the egg? In this case the cabinet or the amp??? Whatever...it works! I have many more amp and cab tone choices that work better than the original profiles. That's a good thing.
EFFECTS I LIKE WITH THIS "OLD SCHOOL" STUFF:
STOMPS:
A - W WAH
CryBaby
Manual = 4.0
Peak = 7.5
Pedal Range = +31%
Peak Range = -43%
Mix 50%
Ducking <0.0>
Volume <0.0>
B - PPTC
Pedal Pitch (Whammy)
Heel Pitch = 0
Toe Pitch = 24
Mix = 100%
Ducking = <0.0>
Volume = <0.0>
C - OCT
Analog Octaver
Voice Balance = -50%
Mix = -5.2
Low Cut = 1.7
Ducking = <0.0>
Volume = <0.0>
D - COMP
Compressor
Intensity = 4.9
Attack = 0.0
Squash = 0.0
Mix = 100%
Volume = +0.4
EFFECTS:
X - GATE
Noise Gate 4:1
Threshold = 9.7
MOD - WIDE
Stereo Widener
Intensity = 2.7
Tune = 10.0
Ducking = <0.0>
DLY - LDLY
Legacy Delay
Mix = 40.0%
Note Value 1 = 4/16 (1/4)
Note Value 2 = 3/16 (1/8 dot)
Feedback = 19%
Bandwidth = 1.1
Frequency = 3.8
Modulation = 0.0
Ducking = <0.0>
REV - REV
Hall
Mix = 63.2% (set to taste)
Del+Rev Balance = +58%
Time = 4.0
Damping = 2.0
Predelay = 27 ms
Bandwidth = 5.0
Frequency = +0.1
Ducking = <0.0>
Volume = +1.6
A LITTLE (optional) HISTORY:
"Apr 28th 2012
Hi Players, here‘s some more info on the profiling session for the Rig Pack 01.
First I like to thank Markus Wienstroer and Dirk Baldringer for doing great work.
Markus brought in some hot stuff from his great collection of amps,
all these amps are fine tuned for reaching the max in performance and tone.
Some of these amps are hard to find nowaday‘s and some just one of a kind, their simply unique.
The S. Mehl amp, or the JCM from 1981, tuned by Dirk Baldringer, or the old S. Duncan Convertible amp.
Even the speakers used in the different cabs are really old vintage stuff, broken in well.
Christoph Kemper profiled a Leslie and added new local presets for the Phaser Stomp.
Dirk Baldringer of Studio 25 spent a great amount of time and passion, for getting the most out of every setup we took a profile of.
We really tried to push the whole thing a step forward and will do in the future.
One of our goals will be to release new Rig, Profile and FX Packs on a more or less regular base and make them available for all KPA Players.
By the way, I think the Rigs of this package are very „tweakfriendly“
so, give them a tweak.
Have fun and a good rockin‘ weekend.
G. Droid"