So, last Saturday I hosted an activity down in the rock'n'roll basement that I called The Great Speaker Test. Over the past couple years I've spent a fair amount of time (too much time, possibly) on various music forums, reading and holding forth on various guitar- and bass-related topics. There is an immense amount of information out there but one must develop a good nose for bullshit and learn to filter the good information from the myths and hype. I've learned a lot about gear and about getting good tone, and I've noticed something interesting. While there is no shortage of opinions about which [thing x] is better---speakers, amps, tubes, guitars, guitar pickups, guitar hardware---almost nobody has actually had the opportunity to compare in any sort of meaningful A/B way any, much less most, of the available options.
If you play electric guitar, there are a whole bunch of factors that go into the sound you hear. First (and some say, most important) is the player---"tone is in the hands" is a common proverb, and its largely true. Then of course there's the instrument. The kind and gauge of strings matter; the woods (or other materials) from which it is made play a part, as do the bridge and tailpiece. Pickups (the parts that convert string vibrations to electrical signals) can be very significant as well. Then, after the signal leaves the guitar, the amplifier also plays a huge part in what it ultimately sounds like: whether it uses tube or solid state technology, and if it uses tubes, what kind of tubes, and even what brand of tubes. Circuit design and other circuit components affect tone as well. Some people claim to hear a difference between different kinds of resistors and capacitors. Finally, the speaker through which the signal re-enters the world can make as much of a difference as anything else.
Once you get more specific than "guitar" and "amp", an interesting phenomenon comes into play. People will virulently attack, or vigorously defend, the merits of various components, but almost nobody has experienced a controlled test. Different pickups are usually compared by hearing different guitars, which have lots of other factors that differ besides just the pickups. Different speakers are either compared with different amps, which makes the comparison almost meaningless. If they are compared using the same amp, it is often in different cabinets, which will color the sound, or if in the same cabinet, they are switched out which takes too much time for an exact comparison to be made---after a relatively few seconds, it's nearly impossible to clearly remember what the previous speaker sounded like to compare it to the next one. Gross differences may be apparent, but not subtle differences.
I like to think that I care about tone, so, I decided that if I was going to be honest with myself (which I try to do) I should set up controlled circumstances to be able to compare different speakers. I've accumulated a lot of gear but I had never really done any qualitative evaluation. I didn't know the actual characteristics of any of the speakers I had, or any of the well-known speakers that are popular on the music forums. Since the right speaker can make an amp, and the wrong speaker ruin one, it's a significant issue. Every day, people spend lots of money buying speakers they've never heard, based on a description they read on the web or "conventional wisdom" which is the collected opinions of a bunch of people who don't really know the difference either.
So I decided I was going to learn about speakers, to the extent I could. To that end, I bought two identical Avatar 112 Vintage speaker cabinets, and hooked them up to identical Epiphone Valve Junior amps. The Avatar cabinets are built in such a way that it's very easy to quickly swap speakers, and I made some short patch cords with alligator clips on them so wiring was nigh-instantaneous.
A few friends (including Mike from the recording project, both Dans, and Bill Tucker) came by, and some brought some other speakers, so all together we had 20 different models. It was really educational to hear side-by-side in that environment the differences between various speakers. The upshot of it was that I swapped some speakers around between my different amps and cabinets, and now several of the amps sound a lot better.
I won't take up a lot of space here with the blow-by-blow. I wrote up a bunch of observations in a thread on the GNet forum, so if you'd like more details, peruse there.
When all was said and done, I looked at the big stack of amps and speakers in my basement, and I realized something about myself, which might also be a more universal trait in humans: there are some things you can't be told, and just have to experience for yourself, but more specifically, what I've noticed is that although in theory I know that I buy too much stuff, it takes that one additional purchase to really drive home the "Oh man, I've got too much stuff." It comes as a form of buyer's remorse---not that the last purchase was something bad or a bad deal, but rather, all of a sudden a sort of "What am I doing?" kind of feeling. I reached that point with cars, and ended up selling all but one of my project Italian sports cars, and I think now I'm reaching that point with music gear. Well, guitar and bass gear, anyway. (I still need some good cymbals.)
But the thing is, if I had not gone ahead and bought all that stuff, I probably would not have reached this point. Whereas now I think my collection of stuff will start to shrink, I could not have been as happy if I had not gone through the experience of actually owning all this stuff. Part of it is the experience of learning what one really likes---if I hadn't had the chance to play a lot of different instruments and amps I would always wonder, "Well, maybe I should have X because it's supposed to be better."
This may sound like a truism to some, but I consider it something of a personal revelation---growth, if you will, and I'm happy that I can still learn stuff about myself and that I'm still growing and improving into my 40s.
While in theory now I'd like to reduce my stock of instruments and gear, I still pretty much like most of the stuff I've got, and I don't desperately need the money, so there's not a huge incentive to actually unload things. The main pressure is space in the basement, and, there still are a small number of things I'd like to try and in the interest of domestic tranquility I should get some of the old stuff out of the house before bringing new stuff in. So if you need a good guitar, bass, or amp, let me know and I can set you up.
The Fury, 2009 edition, featuring Kelly (aka Mel Content) (bottom row right).