Hi everyone, Paul here, welcome to my blog.
This is my first post so I'll apologise in advance. I haven't really mentioned this but we will be relaunching the Youtube channel in a couple of months, and I'd like to add a blog post to each new video we do to add a bit more context and more geeky stuff to those who are interested... the kind of stuff that would get complained about if we put it in the videos but the kind of stuff I'd want to know. Â It's going to be pretty informal, there may be spelling mistakes here and there but I know there are some of you who'll enjoy this so here we go.
I thought to get started I'd talk through some of the old videos that we have posted.
One of my favourite jobs over the last few years was a Two Rock Studio Pro 35 combo conversion that we did for a customer. I've linked the video below and I'd recommend putting the video on and listen to Joe's great playing. We took the amp chassis from the combo and put it in a custom head shell as well as convert one of our large ported 1x12 cabs to sit underneath it. The customer wanted to add a bit of ambience to the sound, like what you'd get from the combo but still keep some depth of sound.... normally this cab would be closed back so you'd lose a bit of that more open airy feel, the closed back would also help pronounce the low end a bit more but with the cab being open back, or actually in this case having the oval ported back we lose most of what the ports are doing. As I remember the customer wanted the option to go closed back as well, so the ports would kick in and give more low end, but in this video we used the cab with the oval ported design.... There were effectively two backs made one for each of these situations.
I actually really like these cabs with the oval back, the cab itself is quite rigid (in regards to construction) and made from an 18mm birch ply, it also isn't that small for a 1x12 so does carry a fair bit of low end, so the general loss in a controlled and increased amount of low end with the closed back is rarely a big concern for me as you get some cool combo like vibes when open.
One thing to note here is we used a Tul G12 mic.... some people will notice it is pointed directly at the dust cap of the speakers, which for most mics isn't a great idea, but the Tul G12 was designed to work this way.... don't ask me how it works, I don't know but it does sound cool and being able to point directly at the dust cap makes things a bit fairer when testing multiple speakers as we don't get issues with mic placement, or at least it isn't as big of an issue.
For those in the know the G12-65 is a clear choice for Two Rocks and for edge of breakup playing, it can be hard sometimes to steer away from it. It's got a nice warmth to it but there's some grit too, and is generally a nice speaker for open back 1x12s as its not lacking in low end. Some of the early tones Joe went for are touching on the rocker side of things and the G12-65 can really cope with these too but he quickly went in to the edge of break up stuff, it's just easy to lead in to this when playing the G12-65, it always seems to push me that way.
Right, I'm going to sign off by saying this is a test, I really want to know what you guys and girls want to read in a blog, the kind of length and what you want to take away from it so please leave me a comment. While we're still working on videos I'll keep putting these blogs up on old videos for a bit of practise, but until next time, stay cool, hang tough and riff hard.