Guitar Amps VS Cabs - Which Matters More? 

Yeah, for high gain sounds like in this video, I'd more or less agree with that! I think the amp and especially guitar go a little higher up in clean and light crunch sounds, but still probably the same order of importance!

@@BetterMixes yeah for sure!! I definitely agree on that. That's just my philosophy for aggressive tones (im record more of a hard rock/metal) The reason why I have it like that is not because I think the amp or guitar don't matter because they 100% do, but because with guitar Especially if a guitar is thicker sounding than others or not bright/too bright you can always pre-eq the sound before going to the amp, (Recording wise). Granted it's always best to get the source right from the very start but I'm just thinking money wise and best bang for buck from my experience at least. Edit: also appreciate you taking the time to reply to my comment 👍

@@JedrekRyker Makes total sense! Yeah, I'd always recommend a great cab with great speakers (bonus points for multiple different great speakers!) as the first upgrade to make.

Haha I know, right?! I'm glad you liked it.

Me too! That's been my go-to for rhythm tones lately. That Vox cab is pure magic!

yes 100%!!

I do love that Mesa! I think all three amp brands absolutely have their place, and I use them all while recording, but yeah, I hear ya, I definitely have always loved the Mesa sound! But anyway, thanks for watching, and I'm glad you found the video helpful!

I'm glad I could help! Thanks for watching!

That's true! Thanks for watching!

even cheaper to change speaker, also microphones can make a masive difference

Yeah, but cabs take up several times more space than amp heads.

That's true, although a couple 2x12 cabs don't take up TOO much space. OR you get a 412 with 4 different speakers to get more mileage out of a single cab!

Yeah, that mesa/vox combo is one of my favorites!

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it!

Absolutley! And yeah, how the guitarist plays it is a huge part of it!

so true

Thanks so much! I'm glad you liked it. Yeah, like you said, everything definitely makes a difference, but man, the amount of change you get from a cabinet/speaker upgrade is massive!

"Clean" sounding distortion is exactly how I describe the Mesa as well! There's just somehting special about that amp!

Haha no earthquake, I just had my camera on the wrong setting so the auto-focus was freaking out. I'm glad you liked the video though!

The same thing applies with IRs though! Finding some good IRs will go a LONG way in getting you great guitar tones. But as far as real cabs, even if you have one cab, if it's a 2x12 or 4x12, you can try putting different speakers in it to get more tonal options. Like my Vox cab currently has a Greenback, a Creamback, a Vintage 30, and a Fane F30 to give me 4 different options with one cab.

Absolutely! I'm still planning on making a video at some point comparing the exact same speaker in multiple different cabs to show how much of the sound is the speaker vs how much is the cab, but yeah, a great sounding speaker is huge!

This was an sm57 going into an Audient ASP 800. Oh, and the DI signal was through a Radial JDI into the ASP 800. And yeah, I love that Vox! It's something special for sure.

Hahaha I think one other person mentioned it so far! I had just bought a new lens, and turns out the autofocus doesn't work so well on it which I didn't realize until I was editing this video.

Haha Cooper doesn’t have a steady hand man. It’s hard without thumbs.

Shhh science is happening

Ok I thought it was my shrooms kicking in😂

Absolutely!

Oh yeah, speaker upgrades are often one of the best things you can do with a combo amp! You can get a ton of cool sounds that'll compliment the one you already like by trying out different speakers!

It's definitely a great sounding combination!

Good move!

Yeah, Mesa definitely knows what they're doing when it comes to cabs! In the US at least, that's kinda become "the" cab for recording rock music.

That's great! I'm so glad my video was able to help!

It doesn't get much more rock n roll than Marshall!

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it! I thought about putting up a photo of the mic on each cab, but after taking the first photo, I felt like you couldn't really tell too much from it since you can't actually see the speaker itself, but they were all pretty close to where the cone and cap meet towards the inside of the cab. They were all within probably three quarters of an inch or so of that position.

Thanks so much! I'm glad you found it helpful!

it probably would if you re recorded it , that thing the camera is doing is very distracting

Interesting! I don't think I've ever heard of them. I'll have to look them up. But I also feel like that's saying Marshall is a bit American since they were initially inspired by Fender Bassman designs, and I definitely would not call Marshall American at all!

@@BetterMixes Certainly true of Marshall, there is an influence from Fender - though not of Vox, Hiwatt, Orange, Selmer, HH Electronic and countless other British Amps ...

Thanks so much! I'm glad you liked it!

I'm glad you liked the video! The song was just something I wrote for this video.

@@BetterMixes it’s a great song, keep up the great content!

Thanks so much! I'm glad you liked it!

Glad it was helpful!

Thanks so much!

Haha yeah, that's true!

Only one way to find out...

Strong head + weak cab = bad Weak head + strong cab = not ideal but nothing will be damaged

Yup, a high powered head into a low power cab can blow speakers if you crank it up too much, but it's no problem at all the other way around.

It's a killer amp!

So the head is the actual amp. It's got all the tone controls as well as the actual power amplifier. The cab is the box that holds the speakers. And a combo amp would be both of those things together in a single box. I hope that helps!

In my experience, the character of the amp or cab doesn't really change with different combinations, but that's not to say that there's nothing to the pairing of the two. For instance, Mesa Rectifier heads have a TON of low end, so they might not work as well with a cab that also has a ton of low end. Or I recently got a Vox head that's fairly bright, so it's often easier to dial in a great sound when using a cab that's not also super bright.

Yup, exactly! I had just dialled in something I thought sounded cool on each amp as opposed to trying to get them to sound as close as possible, so by cranking up the treble or presence, I could have gotten the Marshall a little closer EQ wise. It would still have the more aggressive sounding character to it, but there was definitely room left in the EQ to make it brighter.

We like the dark sound of the Marshall, lol,but I actually throught the mesa cabinet and head sounded the best with my ears and this recording,,,nice approach and the cabinet can be the biggest change in tone sometimes 👍

@@frankorobinson1540 My favorites are constantly changing, but the Mesa through the Mesa has been my go to for rhythm guitars lately!

That's a tough call! They're both solid cabs, and I don't think either is necessarily better than the other, just different. I only have a tiny bit of experience with both of those, but I liked them both! I seem to remember the EVH sounding more "modern" for lack of a better term, maybe a little thicker, a little more scooped, and the Freidman being brighter, a bit leaner, maybe more in your face. But like I said, I liked them both!

No problem! I'm happy to help. Thanks for watching!

Thanks so much! Glad you liked it!

Yeah, I remember being shocked how close they were when I first tested this!

I think I saw that one! I remember it being pretty good. I'll have to check it out again though, cause I can't remember all the conclusions he came to in that video.

Thanks so much! I'm glad you liked the video! And the music here is actually just something I put together real quick for this video, so it doesn't have a name!

@@BetterMixes But it's sounds really nice, so put that in a song. :)

@@Manuel_Manzotti Haha thanks! Listening back, it is pretty cool! So I just might have to do that.

@@BetterMixes Absolutely! 🎵🔥

Oh absolutley! I THINK I mentioned (or I at least meant to!) in the video that this is really just when comparing amps of a similar style (in this case high gain amps).

Thanks so much! Glad you enjoyed it!

🤘🤘🤘

Probably? I don't know if I've heard people refer to it as an enclosure before, but I assume that would refer to a cab!

They're all...medium wattage maybe? The Orange is 30, the Mesa is 50, and the Marshall is 60. But yes, all three can do clean, crunch, and high gain. I just chose to play with distortion in this example.

@@BetterMixes okay makes sense, the reason why I am asking in such a weird way was because I have read that the higher watt amps ~50+ are supposed to be somewhat useless for home usage because they would be too loud. I am just trying to finde some combination that would work for home use and doesn’t cost 3k to buy

@@tigerfisch157 There is a little bit of truth in that, but it's mostly a myth (the needing a low wattage amp for home thing). The majority of modern amps have a master volume and are designed to get anything from clean to distorted sounds at pretty much any volume. Like all the amps in this video can sound great at fairly low volumes. Where that myth comes from is with older amps from back in the day, the only way to get more distortion is to turn up the volume. So if you wanted a crunch sound, it' be pretty darn loud, and if you wanted a higher gain sound, it'd be INSANELY loud. I have a few amps from the 60s and 70s, and they sound awesome, but I had to buy a seperate power attenuator so I could use them at not-insane volumes. Most new amps won't have this problem (with a few exceptions, like the Marshall Origin for example. What kind of style do you play/what kind of sound do you like? I might be able to recommend a good amp for a reasonable price.

@@BetterMixes that would be awesome, thank you. Great tip, the Marshall origin was basically top of my list right now. Thank you for your help, it’s all kind of confusing if you don’t have a teacher. Sound wise I like to listen and play neo soul guitar a good example would be shotaro miyamoto but I like harder stuff from vast to nirvana too. So it’s kind of all over the place just not really really crazy metal I guess.

@@BetterMixes and it’s crazy that this misconception is so big on the internet. I got this info from multiple sources so I obviously believed it. Thank you for clarifying this.

Low end or bass frequencies

Yeah, that's the tricky thing! What sounds best in solo isn't always best in the mix.

It's a classic for a reason!

Haha my bad! That's one of MANY things I'd change if I was making this video today. But it's a pretty similar story with clean tones, maybe to s slightly lesser extent, but still, swapping speakers will make a bigger change to the tone.

What parts aren't you understanding, I'd be happy to try to explain it better, or maybe even make a follow up video or something.

I've got more guitar amp/cab/speaker related videos coming soon that'll have some nice clean bits, crunchy power chords, and heavier riffage to cover a little more ground!

Nvm that was the amps. The cabs are clearly different

@@freetime2freeminds Haha yup! That sounds about right.

They make tube combo amps w/ speakers included. An amp head like in this vid will require a cabinet to pair.

Sorry for the slow response, but yeah, what AbsenseOfEnvy said. Heads don't have speakers in them, so you need an amp AND a cab OR a combo amp which does have both.

That's definitely not the point I was trying to make. I might not have made it clear enough in the video (that's something I've specifically tried to get better about in my videos in the 4 or so years since I made this one), but the point I was trying to make was just that the cab/speaker, which is oftentimes overlooked/not prioritized, often makes a bigger difference in tone than the amp itself (when comparing similar styles of amps, as in like all high gain amps in this example. Obviously a Fender Deluxe Reverb isn't going to sound anything like a Mesa Rectifier regardless of cab and speaker). The amp totally makes a difference too! That's why I own something like...10 different heads maybe? I just see a lot of people with a bunch of amazing heads and then a single cheap cab with terrible speakers. Like I said, I probably didn't do a great job of communicating that in the video, but I just wanted people to stop underestimating the importance of good cabs and speakers!

@@BetterMixes I get that and understand they play a huge part. My problem is half of your comment section is making it seem like the amps don't matter at all and that they all essentially "sound the same" under a microphone using the same cab. There is a similar discussion going on in a FB group and it's exhausting. *You* and I understand that they sound different in person but people that don't have multiple amps and cabs, maybe for their own dignity, are literally saying that the amp almost doesn't matter at all. I have 9 amps and 4 cabs myself so I know better. I think people are watching too much Glenn Fricker.

Yeah, I feel that. Between the Glenn Fricker videos where he goes on about guitars all sounding the same and some other guy who's name I can't remember making videos about guitars and microphones and whatever else not making a difference (while missing some major points of those arguments), I've been kinda thinking lately that I HOPE in this video and in a couple more recent ones where I talked about mic preamps being less important than a lot of the other aspects of the signal chain, that I made it clear that I was saying that these things make LESS of a difference than people often think, and not that it makes NO difference, cause this trend of "nothing matters, everything sounds the same" is really bumming me out. I've been wanting to make a video on this topic, but I haven't figured out how I want to approach it yet.

Haha yeah, I probably should have grabbed some B-roll, but I promise they're there 😆

Short for speaker cabinet, the part of an amp that holds the speakers.

Out of curiosity, what about it sounds weird to you? Listening back 2+ years after making this video, it's definitely not the greatest bass tone ever, but it sounds like a bass to me 🤷‍♂️ It was PROBABLY just a P Bass into the Darkglass plugin with some compression afterward.

Haha oooook. The point of this was definitely not to pick fights or prove how smart I am. I see a lot of studio owners and guitarist constantly buying more and more heads looking for new or different sounds, but then they'll be playing all these killer amps through a crappy cab with crappy speakers. The point of making this video is to encourage people like that to invest in a couple really nice cabs as well, or if they don't have the cash for a bunch of amps AND cabs right now, to consider focusing on getting a couple solid cabs/speakers if they're looking for tonal variety. I'm not suggesting that every amp sounds the same, you can hear that they're different in this video, and I own something like 10 amps for a reason, they're all best at slightly different things. And yeah, some do pair better with different cabs, that wasn't the point of this video either as I wasn't trying to show which amp was "best". I could have played every amp I own through every cab I own, but one, that would be a pain in the ass to do for a video, and two, it would still show the same point I made in this video, that swapping between the different amps will make a small to medium sized difference, but that swapping out the cab will make a medium to massive difference in the sound.

You can make amps sound bad by pairing them with the wrong cab with the fault entirely being the bad cab. The cab has MASSIVE characteristics that can't be altered by EQ of the amp. Likewise the amp adds characteristics that the cab does not have but is way less likely to totally ruin the sound the way a bad cab can. It is obviously a combined effort of amp and cab to produce a good sound but the cab DOES matter more. Take any of the amps in this video and play them through a crappy 1x12 with no name speakers. They will all sound pretty bad. You won't be able to hear what the amps are fully capable of doing dynamically because the sound has been masked by a poor cab and speaker. Now reverse the scenario and use a similar style amp (high gain or low gain etc) but cheaper and lower quality through a great cab. The sound is not as good yes but it will still be WAY better than a poor cab. Bottom line? The greatest amps will ALWAYS sound terrible through bad cabs no matter what but a great cab can make a mediocre amp very usable and will allow a great amp to absolutely shine like the sun. What I am saying is not up for debate it's the truth. Not because I say so, but because scientific experiments PROVE so. You disagreeing cannot change reality. Experiment with what I've told you. I'm not saying any of this to prove how smart I am at all, I'm just a guitar player who cares about tone speaking the objective truth that I have discovered. If you take it that way that I'm pridefully trying to prove my intelligence then get a reality check because you have your own insecurities you need to deal with instead of judging the motives of other people when you have no clue what they are truly thinking.

Just skip ahead to the playing 🤷

Yeah, and without a cab, the amp would be silent. The point of this wasn't that you only need one or the other.

But in reality, they're not indistinguishable. This is poor people logic.