Scott Henderson Discussion

[dizzy]

Hey Scott
Hope all is well.
You like vertical orientation for your 2x12 right?
I just started flipping my cab verticality and it is so much better.
Wish I had done this a long time ago. Much clearer and fuller—and I can hear it:)
My head sticks off the edges of the cab but it is pretty solid(hopefully)

Do you know the sound difference between oval open back vs traditional open back? I was thinking of having an oval open back made because that seems to make the most sense with a vertical 2x12.

Thanks Scott!

[Scott Henderson]

You probably don't like the horizontal 2x12 because you're getting reflections off the floor. I've never had a horizontal or vertical 2x12 - my Kerry Wright is a square cabinet with diagonal speakers. In my opinion 2x12's don't sound good with a closed back because the speakers need some breathing room to work correctly in that tight of a space. However if it's too open - like combo amps - it might sound OK in a club, but on an outdoor stage it can sound like speakers mounted on a board - no ambience whatsoever, and you can hear all the fizzyness of the speaker that you don't wanna hear.

My cabinet has two openings in back, side by side, about 5" from the bottom. Both are 9 inches wide and 5 inches tall. That seems to be a happy medium and I like the way it sounds, especially since I put two 16 ohm Greenbacks in it.

[dizzy]

Thanks.

I hear you about closed back non 4x12.
In the 90s I had a great rig with a cae 3+ and I could never figure out why It was so small and beamy. I was running it out of 2 of those mesa 1x12 closed back cabs with ev speakers.

I saw you in Boston in the 90s with 2 mesa 2x12 cabs—half open and half closed—sounded great.

[Scott Henderson]

I never owned any Mesa cabs so those were rented. In Tribal Tech I was using two 2x12 cabs in stereo, so actually I did own vertical 2x12s, but I never used one by itself.

Some of the Landau live albums were recorded with a 2x12, but I have a feeling some bass was added in the mix. He's such a great engineer, he can easily EQ something to sound even better than the original tone.

I used a 4x10 cab on the title cut of Well to the Bone. Of course it had way less bass than all the other tracks recorded with a 4x12. When Mike mixed the album, he added 10db of 100Hz to the guitar on that track - I was like, can you do that?? Sounds great to me, probably because he was using a very high quality EQ.

[dizzy]

I just listened to that track again. I can hear that—it’s a more “traditional” blues tone but with more bass then a 4x10 normally would have.

An engineer was telling me that when an eq is really good you can do extreme boosts and it sounds good. He was saying that with worse eqs you run into phasing issues if you do extreme things. I don’t get how phasing and eq relate though.

[Scott Henderson]

I don't get that either, but I've run into un-natural tone issues when boosting too much. I use the Waves VEQ and it sounds great for a plug-in, but I don't do anything extreme with it.

On the Hillbilly in the Band solo, I made some terrible decisions and the tone really sucked ass. I ended up having to use all 4 bands on the EQ to fix it. Mike dug the tone, then I played it without the EQ - he laughed because it was so bad, but he complimented the way I fixed it. Still learning, but I'm pretty good at turd polishing.

[dizzy]

I just listened to that one too. I can’t tell—it sounds badass.
What did you do to fuck it up initially?

The thing that always gets me is picking in the wrong spot.
Especially on the neck pickup. I get this woofy sound that for some reason I don’t hear when I’m tracking and then I come back and hear it.
Then I try to do the 3k trick to brighten it up but it just gets brighter AND woofy.

Actually that’s one advantage of irs over micing—you can change the cab to get different eqs. —finish that new ir technology Scott!

[Scott Henderson]

I used a different amp which I wasn't used to - I think it was the clean channel of an OD-100, and I normally use the crunch channel. I had the guitar tone up too much so the treble was awful and spiky sounding, with no bass at all. I used a Tube Screamer, which already has a honky midrange, so the result was a large darkish-brown turd of a guitar solo. Thank goodness for EQ!

I've had that problem too, where you think everything is sounding crisp when you're playing, but on listening back it sounds woofy - that's hard to fix, because it's not about bright or dark, it's the character of the note itself. Take #2!

[Rolly]

Scott, does your KW cab have a sound post in it? If you press on the back is it rigid or does it flex? I have a similar sized cab but it’s closed. I may try to make a panel with openings like yours has.

Thanks!

[Scott Henderson]

Yes, it has a post in the middle - I'm not sure how that effects the sound. Maybe it makes the cab vibrate more?