fuzzyguitars
Active member
Just thought i would share a few thoughts on guitar iso cabs.
These are just my early opinions, as I have only really messed around with em for a couple of days.
I ordered the new mark 2 version of the grendel cab.
They had promised me that it would ship in 10 days. Instead it took 3 and 1/2 weeks.
It arrived ok, opened it up and had a few things wrong.
The cab door would not open until I removed the hinges and pried the door out with a chisel. Talk about an airtight seal. Seems to work ok now.
One of the hinges center pin fell out. But I was able to put it back on.
One of the neutrik jacks wont fit properly and click into place on the mic. The other works fine.
Last little niggle. The top Isolation foam has fallen down twice. Guess it needs a little more Mastic.
All these are little annoyances, I have emailed em, but have not heard back from them yet.
But overall build of the cab is very solid.
OK
Now for the real stuff!
I loaded the cab with a spare celestion v30 that I had. I usually hate this speaker in live cabs, but surprisingly enough, I really like the way the speaker usually records.
The first thing I did was load the cab with a shure sm57 and senn md421.
I set the mics at my usual non iso cab fav position pointed face on at the edge of the cone, right at the grill position.
Fired up my Diezel Herbert and set the amp for crunchy rhthym.
One thing I noticed as I listened with the headphones on. With the cab door open, the mics sounded very similiar to what I hear without the Iso cab. But......... As soon as you shut the cab door for full Isolation the sound changes drastically.
All of a sudden, what was a full, balanced sound, got transformed into not so pleasant. For starters, the low end and bass dropped of like i had shelved the eq. the highs became more pronounced. And there was definitely a feeling of compression.
I have to play with the eq a bit to see if the highs really became accentuated or if it just felt that way because the low end was lost.
The normal positions i use for micing sounded like poo. I ended up moving the mics to about halfway towards the speaker edge and that was a lot better, but not perfect.
I listened to a playback with both mics on, and the sound was pretty good with some gentle eq. the mics solo'd didnt sound to good.
It seemed funny that I now needed two mics to get the sounds that i had been getting from a single sm57 on a non iso cab to get the normal thickness that I am used to.
My conclusion right now, is that the iso cab is gonna stay with me for now because if i want to record anything at home with my wife and new baby, it will have to do, but I MUCH prefer the sound of open micing.
I really do think randall has something with their silent sister thing. If they have licked the problem where the speaker can do its normal excursion, then I think they will have a pretty good iso cab. But at double the cost at 1000 bucks it seems very very pricey.
These are just my early opinions, as I have only really messed around with em for a couple of days.
I ordered the new mark 2 version of the grendel cab.
They had promised me that it would ship in 10 days. Instead it took 3 and 1/2 weeks.
It arrived ok, opened it up and had a few things wrong.
The cab door would not open until I removed the hinges and pried the door out with a chisel. Talk about an airtight seal. Seems to work ok now.
One of the hinges center pin fell out. But I was able to put it back on.
One of the neutrik jacks wont fit properly and click into place on the mic. The other works fine.
Last little niggle. The top Isolation foam has fallen down twice. Guess it needs a little more Mastic.
All these are little annoyances, I have emailed em, but have not heard back from them yet.
But overall build of the cab is very solid.
OK
Now for the real stuff!
I loaded the cab with a spare celestion v30 that I had. I usually hate this speaker in live cabs, but surprisingly enough, I really like the way the speaker usually records.
The first thing I did was load the cab with a shure sm57 and senn md421.
I set the mics at my usual non iso cab fav position pointed face on at the edge of the cone, right at the grill position.
Fired up my Diezel Herbert and set the amp for crunchy rhthym.
One thing I noticed as I listened with the headphones on. With the cab door open, the mics sounded very similiar to what I hear without the Iso cab. But......... As soon as you shut the cab door for full Isolation the sound changes drastically.
All of a sudden, what was a full, balanced sound, got transformed into not so pleasant. For starters, the low end and bass dropped of like i had shelved the eq. the highs became more pronounced. And there was definitely a feeling of compression.
I have to play with the eq a bit to see if the highs really became accentuated or if it just felt that way because the low end was lost.
The normal positions i use for micing sounded like poo. I ended up moving the mics to about halfway towards the speaker edge and that was a lot better, but not perfect.
I listened to a playback with both mics on, and the sound was pretty good with some gentle eq. the mics solo'd didnt sound to good.
It seemed funny that I now needed two mics to get the sounds that i had been getting from a single sm57 on a non iso cab to get the normal thickness that I am used to.
My conclusion right now, is that the iso cab is gonna stay with me for now because if i want to record anything at home with my wife and new baby, it will have to do, but I MUCH prefer the sound of open micing.
I really do think randall has something with their silent sister thing. If they have licked the problem where the speaker can do its normal excursion, then I think they will have a pretty good iso cab. But at double the cost at 1000 bucks it seems very very pricey.
