V30 vs EV Force 12

[7704A]

I could do a comparison if you really want one, but it would take some time to get everything set up?

It also depends on what types of mics you have and what exactly you would want to hear. I would most likely do a simple 57 on cone to show the differences or something, but there's a million clips of both on youtube - I guess I would wanna nail down exactly what you're trying to hear before going through all the effort of setting my stuff up. Just so I don't waste a bunch of time micing something that you could easily hear already on youtube.

Nah, no need to make new comparisons unless you want to. As to what I was looking to hear, I was just thinking about you describing what you liked or didn't like about the tone in whatever clip, pre-recorded/posted to youtube or not, and how using the V30 instead of the 12L or vice versa would change that.

 

[7704A]

Got some clips today without string noise, had the PS100 turned up a bit louder. Don't have time to upload and post them yet though, plus I want to swap cabinets and go again to see if that changes anything. The V30's are in a rear-loaded XXX right now, and the Force 12's in a front-loaded Carvin Legacy, and I'm starting to suspect that's not as small a difference as I'd hoped. Preliminary clips (to be posted sometime) suggest that the Force 12's have a much stronger mid spike than the V30's.

 

[7704A]

Aha! Big difference #1: speaker spacing. The Carvin places them so that there is about 12.5" between cone centers. The XXX is about 14.5". So when placed against the Carvin, each mic in the array is closer to being on-axis with it's respective speaker. I hypothesize that this is why the Force 12's sound brighter in the unposted clips than when they were in the XXX, as well as further from the off-axis sound I'm getting at my work desk than before. Will swap around at some point and see what changes.

 

[7704A]

Swapped the speakers around. The Force 12's are now in the XXX, and the V30's in the Carvin. I also noticed that the presence for the Force 12 channel on the PS100 was not on zero (I'm using separate channels to equalize volume), it was turned on just a wee bit. So that may have contributed to the brightness of the Force's, but a quick test seems to show that it's a barely audible difference, if at all. But, I'll record tests for that too. Not now though, too late to turn the amp up enough to drown out string noise.

 

[Mike Oxhuge]

I think he's doing some lower volume experiments as I feel like I'm hearing his strings acoustically in the first clips. IME the Force 12s get a bigger and more open sounding when you put the juice to them. I'd love to try some vintage 30's in my Twin but I'd likely smoke them in short order. Maybe I do need a Quad Reverb.

I have a made in China V30 that is killer sounding and has literally hundreds of hours getting pounded on its own in an isocab by a 1981 Marshall 4104 50 watter at max volume. Still ticking just fine. So70 watts or so?

 

[7704A]

Got some clips of the Force 12's in the XXX cab. They definitely sound less "on-axis" than the other clips I mentioned but haven't posted. For now, here are the V30 and Force 12 clips for the XXX slant 4x12. I think I need to start re-amping or looping a riff for this, playing variations like how hard I hit the strings seems to make a significant difference based on several takes I got, so that's going to obscure inherent speaker differences. Not to mention the slop.

For this pair I really like the Force 12.



I'm not particularly fond of either of these following clips. I think the V30 sounds mostly better, though the Force feels like there's just a little something missing for me to like it best. I think if I whacked the strings harder I would have got a "yowl" that completed things for me.




Rig was Schecter Reaper 6 into '82 2204: Pre 7, Master 10, Treble 10, Mids 10, Bass 0, Presence 5. I had a Fryette PS100 to tame the volume, and I had it up loud enough to not notice string noise on playback of the recordings, though I hear a little now. Cabinet was a Peavey XXX slant 4x12 "detuned", with each speaker pair getting put in the top slots and covered with mitchell donut beam blockers. Mics were a PZM wedge stereo array with the PZMs level with the cone centers. Only post-processing was an EQ bus to flatten out the PZM's HF peak.