LOADBOX vs MESA 4x12 guitar cab! THE whole TRUTH! 

Any other great sounding loadboxes out there? Which one should I try next? 🤔

What a great review, thank you Kristian! It's cool to have a proper A/B, nothing was made in so accurate way before this video. We definitely need to send you a Levi for a check ;). Take care buddy, cheers from Italy.

This is what i've wanted to hear for a long time, an actual apples to apples comparison. And the conclusion ia if you capture the IR well, it sounds the same. Thanks for doing this :)

I'm glad to see the loadbox/IR combo compared favorably to the real thing. I've been using a loadbox with IRs in my recordings the last few years simply because I have a bedroom studio and can't really crank a 4x12 in here. I've been happy with my results, but seeing a professional agree helps me feel good about what I've been doing. Cheers!

Thanks Kohle! Answered my questions about load boxes… Appreciate your time and effort as always!

I just recently found your channel and love the content. I'm learning quite a bit. Love the humor you add in the channel too. Thank you from AZ!

Great comparison, sick tones as usual 🤘🏼

That is how a comparison should look like! Nothing more to say than thank you (again)! I would love to see the Two Notes Torpedo Captor (not the X)! It's a very common loadbox I think and I'm pretty happy with it.

You unlocked the hidden SHRED 🤘 feature of our preamps.... nicely done 😎 Great video Kristian!

I was very surprised at the 'Reactive Mode' result. It was spot on to the amp/cab. I remember back in the early 80's when I saw my first load box. It was simply used to tame a fully cranked Marshall JMP 50 head in a studio I started working in, and you could fry an egg on top of it after the first song due to the heat it dissipated. Now they have progressed to IR loading and other whiz bang doo dads. Pretty cool stuff. Gotta get me one of those baritone axes immediately. That's some wicked noise right there.

Great video as always. I like the fact you are telling your honest opinion. Its really refreshing. Keep up:)

Oh dude FIIIIIINALLY a proper IR vs cab comparison, I was waiting for this for roughly 7 years... There are some others out there but far from this quality ! Thanks a lot

Really appreciate your videos! Always entertaining- Btw I use Camden preamps as well and find them really effective for room mics picking up a piano, or guitar cab

That's what I always wanted to do: record my own IRs and test them immediately against the recording setup so that I can match them as close as possible

A lot great information in this video, thank you! I also need that shirt to go with my Oh My Goat pedal!

I use the UAD OxBox and love it (please add more cabs, speakers and mic's!!!). I really like the blend of the room sound and the speaker drive as options. I've heard very good things about the Suhr reactive load an am considering that for adding my own IR's.

The differences are minimal, enough that the IR nuances will get lost in a full band mix. I've been loving this hybrid approach for years now and it makes having an apartment studio and playing n a metal band a truly feasible feat. This is one of the better comparisons out there, and I think the video is highly educational. Keep up the kick ass work.

Love your IRs from Bogren Digital--super cool to hear that you used the Lewit mic for those! I love that mic on guitar cabs. I feel validated hahaha

This is a great video, I've just bought a Captor (waiting for the delivery), and I was wondering how close I could get to the real thing, now I know.....thanks Kristian, by the way, my neighbours hate me.....horns up!

Great video man! Gotta love modern technology. I’ve been using St. Rock & Suhr reactive loads with your & Jens’ IRs on all albums, singles, recordings, hired gun work etc. for the last couple of years in my studio and works like a charm. I’ve sold all my cabinets except one (Fryette FatBottom) ’cos I didn’t need them anymore and the main reason I kept that one is ’cos sometimes you just wanna get naked and make the grandma & neighbours annoyed 😁. And it looks good too (the cabinet 😎).

Love that Fernadez man. Sucks man been dealing with Health issues. Has to sell everything and I had a good setup. I don't even have an acoustic right now. All I have is an Electric I redid with no hardware. Times are rough, Lol. I'm over here drooling over that Fernadez

Anyone else notice the change in sound, for the worst, when using the line out knob of the Amp Central anywhere else than at maximum? Great demonstration i love your channel man!!

The faces you make are absolutely perfect cuz I realize that I'm here making the same faces.

Thanks for this video man! Truth!

This was a great video man. I’ve been flirting with getting a load box for my 5150iii for such a long time.

Thanks for this nice experiment man, this was awesome. Very close to the amp sound indeed! Now i feel crap for selling my amp...🥲 Cheers! 🤘

Just ordered a Two Notes Captor X. Looking forward to try my Mesa Boogie Mk V:25 with your Rainbows & Chainsaws IRs!

Wow! This is realy close and usable! Maybe a video on how you make your impulses at some point if you feel like it. Thnx!

Great video, danke dude!

I love RedSeven. I have their chorus pedal, and it's incredible. But I've been using a Suhr Reactive Load Box lately and I'm tickled pink with it.

Excellent A/B brother, thank you

Happy new year Kohle!

Deliverance sounds so damn good. I tweaked my 120 to the point that it just blows minds through a MESA cab. The deliverance is hard to beat, for all out tonality.

I do love your methodology. Comparing things in an A/B comparison, giving both sides of the comparison the best chance of sounding good. Can you hear the difference in them today? Yes. Yes you can. However the difference isn't mix ruining, it's just there. Nothing about the IR sound is bad or unusable. I seem to recall this methodology changing the way I dial in tones because we had a bit of a disagreement over pushing the power section too hard. The end result of that talk was me doing an A/B recording my way and yours, and sitting here at my desk after going "Fuck... He's right." lol Well done, love everything about it.

My Suhr Reactive Load's impedence curve is moddeled after a Greenback, sounds rad.

Happy new year

I'm still using a rackmount Palmer PDI-03 and record the built in cabinet tone and the raw line out with IR's in my Daw and blend them both in my mix, to this day the Palmer still holds up

I'm out of the loop on this. But what happened to the 2 notes torpedo live rack mount? Weird that they stopped making it.

Hi Kohle. In our measurements the one and only loadbox that does a perfect job capturing the amp sound with an accurate impedance curve is amt pe-120. The suhr sounds brittle. The torpedo are all missing the low end resonance peak. Amt was the only device that sounded 95% as my t75 and v30 cabinets as a load. Just a 1.5db more low end on that peak. Spot on. The suhr is no good, less mids and noticeably more shrill

1 dB louder? No wonder I preferred the load box for a while... 😉 BTW. You should consider doing these shoot outs, with two left/right guitar tracks as well. Easier to get a feel of the small nuances that way, IMO. Often I find the low mids, in the real cap/mic, to retain a little more dynamics. Making them sounding slightly more wider in the stereo perspective. Anyways, that's just me. Great video as always and greetings from Denmark... 😀

I actually built a massive isobox that I can fit in a PPC412 cab, with 3 mics. Always set up and ready to go, always sounds amazing, and always quiet to play at night after the kids are in bed. 🤘🏼😁. I run Rockerverbs 100 in there! 🙂🤷🏽‍♂️

Naked on a BC Rich drunk jamming on riffs. You did get my contest video. :D

Man kann hier richtig schön sehen wie sehr die Interaktion zwischen Endstufe und Cab/Loadbox den Ton noch beeinflusst. Im reaktiven Modus bildet die Loadbox den Impedanzverlauf eines Lautsprechers nach, denn dieser ist keineswegs flach sondern variiert teils stark mit der Frequenz. Dieser krumme Impedanzverlauf kombiniert mit einer Röhrenendstufe bringt primär die Bässe und Höhen hervor, sodass es weniger flach klingt. Bei echten Boxen haben die Lautsprecher und auch die Gehäuse Konstruktion auf den Impedanzverlauf einen maßgeblichen Einfluss. Auch der Verstärker hat noch einen gewaltigen Einfluss auf das Verhalten, je nachdem wie hoch sein Innenwiderstand ist. Wenn du dein Video mit deinem Rectifier im Modern Mode gemacht hättest wäre der Unterschied (zwischen resistiv und reaktiv) noch sehr viel krasser gewesen. Im resistiven Modus ist der der Impedanzverlauf dafür ganz gerade und es findet nicht diese Interaktion zwischen Last und Verstärker statt. Es gibt durchaus Anwendungen dafür, wenn man z.B. einen Verstärker in die Loadbox arbeiten lässt und anschließend mit dem Signal (durch Effekte) in eine weitere Endstufe in seine Boxen geht. In den 80er wurden solche Setups gerne gemacht. Van Halen hatte vor dem Peavey 5150 solch ein Setup, wo sein Marshall auf 10 lief und nur auf einen Lastwiderstand gearbeitet hat. Mit dem Signal wurden anschließend Effekte und Endstufen angefahren, die dann seine 4x12 antrieben. Kirk Hammett hatte während der 90er/2000er auch so ein Rig wobei er einen Mesa Rectifier in eine Loadbox nutzte und anschließend über Mesa Strategy 400 Endstufen auf seine Cabs ging. Im Grunde genommen nutzt man dann seinen Verstärker nur als eine Art sehr großes Verzerrerpedal. Für Verstärker ohne Master ist dies auch der einzige Weg hinter die Verzerrung seine Effekte einzuschleifen. Bei den RedSeven Sachen habe ich ein wenig die Vermutung, dass es sich dabei um Amps handelt, die stark auf den Bognern Ecstasy/Überschall basieren. Zumindest was das Layout, Funktionen und die Frontplattenbelegung angeht orientiert man sich da offensichtlich stark an Bogner. Ein Vergleich wäre da auf jedefall sehr spannend. Bei dem Video mit Glenn hatte ich schon das Gefühl, dass die Klangregelung des Amps sehr stark einem Überschall ähnelt.

Reactive load boxes isnt anything new, but it may be as you say that most were resistive in the past. I have an old Marshall SE100 reactive loadbox/analog speaker emulator (rack unit) that is about 30 years old and it has an output without speaker emulation so that i can use it with IRs in the DAW.

I've been using plugins most of the time! But a loadbox it's really useful!

hi bro, i wanna ask some questions, your loadbox output to your microphone preamp? or go directly to the audio interface? line in or? thx u

I personally use a Two Notes Torpedo Captor (the regular one) that does a great job! Although, the Red Seven looks to be very good quality. I've been trying to research what levels I should record IRs at, but can't find information anywhere about how much level should be sent to the cabinet to capture an accurate IR. Is it a case of listening to hear what sounds best for the cabinet, or is there a specific level that is better for accuracy?

What is the average length of an IR? You mentioned that this unit was limited to 20 milliseconds. I believe and should be longer . Thanks great review. So many options out there these days.

I used loadboxes for a long time. Very nice solution, sounds good. It depends on which cab or a speaker you compere it to. Some may have very similar impedance curve and sound the same and some may not. Bot now I use a cab. Its just more fun.

I picked up a Captor X a while ago and don't feel the need to mic cabs anymore. I love my mid 80s Mesa halfback, but I get such great tones from IRs, it's just not worth the trouble. My mic preamps are all about the voodoo though.

I made my own LoadBox and my friends loved it 🤣

now the world needs a video on how Kohle makes IR

I'm nothing like a Kristian Kohle audio engineering guru, but the real cab still sounds like the desirable deal :) Though yeah the reactive mode was just killing it!

Fantastic Baritone🔥

i just bought a 5150 Block Letter, and i wanna use it for recording aswell, not just live. Since i have Neighbours, would this Load Box work for it since it's rated for 100W according to their homepage and the 5150 is 120W? Hard to find definitive info on this kind of thing 😅

could you please check out the 412 Synergy cab? the one with greenbacks and v30's, some say its the same as the Friedman but cheaper

Nice vid man!! A quick question: When you create an IR you record with mics at different cone positions (I assume to sample certain frequencies better). So I guess that the recorded signal contains sonic signatures also from the cab, cables and mic preamps used. In that case shouldn't they be understood more like cab/speaker/mic/preamp combo IRs instead of as "speaker" IRs (which I think is what most people believe IRs to be)?

Synergy preamp stuff always sounds good. I have heard mixed opinions about the power amp other places.

Excellent video and it answered some things for me, because I have been contemplating getting a loadbox for a while as I do really wanna use tube amps drunk and naked at 3am. But more than that I've just been stuck with amp sims for so long and really wanna record some cranked tube amps without the police visits! 😜

I have a dual rectifier and use it with a soldano jettenuator, but I don't feel it sounds good compared to the 4x12. I would like to see a video of you comparing them.

This is what I’ve been doing for my guitar tones as of late. Sounds better than any modelers and amp sims out there. Mesa badlander with the dv77 ir mixed with my mini nightmare and the same ir just insane tones.

the sandy distortion should be nice for desert rock...

Everyone knows that if you want to wake up your Grandma you play King Diamond.

can you use pedals in the effects loop with a load box??? Like a WAH pedal or an expression pedal foot switch?

ui hast du ne neue Kamera ? Die Farben sind plötzlich so punchy und schön :)

Thanks, Kristian. Grandma says hi.

Make this channel Great again! )))

Tone Captor X Is working great.

Hi Kristian, interessting what the Cranborne pre does to the guitar sound, and that it decreases the amplitudes in the lower mids frequency range when increasing the Mojo. With vocals the oposite should be achieved, doesn't it? Or in your video about the best budget drum mics, where the kick drum get a nice bottom end with the cranked mojo knob. Did you meanwhile did a video about preamps? I didn't find it at your channel. Maybe I overlooked it? Best regards!!

If you, who has knowledge in recording and guitar sound, have difficulty differentiate real cab vs IR, imagine us, mere mortal, who may never own a mesa cab. To me, when IR is made very carefully, then it's enough. No need to spend a huge chunk of money to buy a real cab and deal with space and loud volume. Btw, I enjoy your DV30 IR. It's brutal !!!

How’s the build quality of the RedSeven? Thanks.

Wundervoll!

Yrs there is a difference. Would it be apparent without the a/b? Nope. These things do bring another option to the table, capturing the dry amp signal before the cab. Can still send the signal to the cab at full power through probably most of these load boxes. What did you use for making the IR? Mostly the software signal processing side. Hardware you already said in the video.

yeah like all load boxes , the bass frequency punch isnt quite there, all of them are suffering from this proximity sound

I'm pretty sure that RedSeven uses an AMT Pangaea CP-16 module for IRs and that's why they are unable to use impulses with more length. But 20ms is more then enough. Anyway AMT has their own loadbox PE120, a pretty good one. Similar with Suhr schematic wise. Torpedo is not so accurate and doesn have the low resonance.

So how much better is it than the Captor X? Way better?

"Whenever you have bright switch - engage it". Omg, I just don't know a case when bright switch off ever worked out =)

Which loadbox/ir loader with a 200watt Randall amp?

There is a difference between the reactive mode and the real thing, mainly in the dynamic range and response. The load box is more compressed (like a brickwall limiter). Also, I feel it adds more unnecessary high frequencies

If you're in the market for a loadbox I can't recommend them. There's a few misleading things going on in this video. Reactive loads don't respond properly with the presence knobs on tube amps. You'll notice he's cranking a knob that emulates presence but doesn't quite get you there. If you like bright, sparkling, tone and higher presence settings that make your amp feel alive just stick with a tube amp and a speaker cab. There's a reason tube amps sound so good to us and it's because of the magic of power tubes, feedback circuits, output transformers and speakers all interacting with each other and all these direct boxes, kempers and amp sims STILL can't touch it.

Best thing you can do when you're new to the game. Real Amp into IR's

Has anyone compared the two notes captor to the load box used here? I own the two notes and it has been one of the best purchases for my home studio. For anyone who owns several tube amps a load box is a no brainer. Plugins are getting stupid good but everyone has the same plugins. I love neural dsp but its become a predictable sound. If you've invested time and money into your "live sound" this is the easiest way to capture it without waking the kids or grandma. Still is there a notable tonal or feel difference between the two notes and this model?

Sounds like the resistive mode gets rid of the impedance curve.

Awesome great music song rock. So sound. Great audio. Happy New Year 2022

Can you give us a load box shootout with the same custom ir? I'm in the market, but don't wanna spend 1k for an ir loader to get some good tone

But real cabinet is brighter and has less smothering lows. It's like a sound of guitar for the real cab+mic and a function of guitar for loadbox+IR. Maybe it's how IR convolvers work - don't know.

I have never understood the meaning of "feel." what does it mean?

mesa now has a reactive loadbox too

I love IR loader for how quickly I can plug in a guitar and be ready to play anytime a tube amp….but I hate so much that I have to chop most of my IR to 20ms….and most of them sound simply awful when you chop them, which leave you with just a few IR that you can really load #LONGERIR

9:53 Anakin: ¨I don´t like sand¨

what if you´re coming home slightly dunk at 3 am and your grandma is shredding away, amp set to 11? o.0

Im so upset i sold my cranborn pre to someones grandma before i saw you use it on guitar....thought it was just for her voice....blast it.

bad ass

Every single youtuber who has reviewed the deliverance never reads the manual: Gain 1 adjusts the voicing and gain 2 is the saturation. It's on page 1 of the manual.

I wish the IR length was longer than 20ms, prevents me from buying the ampcentral :( it would be the perfect product for me otherwise.

Hi metal heads! What makes you believe spending 400eu for reactive load is a good idea? Kohle proved that power amp overdrive is no good for metal while reactive loads make sense to capture that overdrive you don't use. So anybody ever tried if using 10eu resistor network and applying power amp freq response (captured between PA and speaker) would do the job?

Lol i live with my gma and i sometimes play my BC Rich , i use a the 2 notes captorX 😂 gma is happy!!

RIP Kristian's Omas

Haha, to be honest, most of your sounds have that sandy character in my opinion. At least when I compare you to other youtubers which have a certain "signature sound". So I found it rather very "fitting"! 😁

Shit, now I need a loadbox :(