Mesa Cab Sim - RV50 first thoughts

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Wired
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Mesa Cab Sim - RV50 first thoughts

Post by Wired » Mon May 28, 2018 4:28 pm

I took home a Mesa Cab Clone over the weekend and I'm not 100% on it yet... I'm running my Rockerverb 50 (mk1) through it, no room or ability to run a cab in my combo without eviction or waking the family... so a direct box is the way to go.

Here are my first thoughts on it:

Plugged it in, set it up and go. I set the amp to the same settings I used for my last band. It was a mid-gain tone with a good punch through the mix. Nice and crunchy but balanced. I remember it being a bit bright with my Les Paul, thick and creamy with my Es-335, and just well defined and punchy with my PRS. I had the cab clone setup for a closed back first, and was trying it with my new AM PRo Telecaster.

Starting with closed back mode the Tele's neck pickup tone was very fluety and had a very classic telecaster tone. Very defined, but not as much presence or chime as I expected it to have. Switching to the bridge pickup was lacking in top end bite, still very defined, but punchy with a good bottom end.

Switching to open back mode had a bit more mid range, but there were overtones I wasn't like it at all. Almost polyphonic overtones that were cascading into each other. I tried the phase inversion and ground lift but it didn't do much for it at all.

Vintage cab mode is where I ended up. The bottom got punchier, top end got a bit more refined, and more open tone compared to the other two settings. Overall this was the best setting for me. Felt pretty tight in response.


I started up Cubase and started laying some licks down to look at the wave forms. Still using the telecaster on the dirty channel I found the wave forms looked open. Normally when I see guitar signal in cubase when I live mic it it's just a steady block with some peeks and valleys. This was much different, the peeks and valleys were much more defined and had a tighter spread to them. I'm assuming its because of the lack of room noise. Going clean separated things even more. But there was still a hard ceiling to the wave form that looked like there was some artificial compression going on.

I switched out to my ES-335, which is my darkest sounding guitar. It was smooth and creamy as expected, but was lacking top end definition. The wave form got thicker for sure, and I had to tweak the EQ to get a more open sounding tone. This guitar usually has a fat bottom, but it was a bit loose here...

I then swapped over to my POD HD500 and recorded some accompanying tracks with the 335. Dare I say the POD almost sounded more organic than the cab clone?! I'm pretty shocked here. It felt more like a mic'd up amp than the Cab Clone did and I'd argue when listening to the two side by side the Cab Clone tracks felt lifeless in comparison.

I'm going to fire things up again later tonight and record some comparisons. I plan to setup a loop using my Vox Delay lab and just start sending them through each to figure out if I can salvage this thing...

I'm going to see if I can do the unthinkable and run the cab clone into the POD and use the speaker sims from the POD to get some tone back...

At first I was okay with it, but the more I jammed it along side the POD the more disappointed I am... and I went in with low expectations.


I'm thinking of a Bax banguitar pedal now for Orange tone direct to my recording setup...
-LK
RV50, Vox AC30, Gibson LP Trad '14, Gibson ES-335 '04, PRS Cu24 '10, Fender Tele Pro, Gretsch Powerjet

Jondog
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Re: Mesa Cab Sim - RV50 first thoughts

Post by Jondog » Mon May 28, 2018 4:49 pm

I wasn't sold on the cab clone speaker simulation, but It is a good load box set-up. Add a Mooer Radar.
https://youtu.be/t4oR13iZbFk
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Wired
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Re: Mesa Cab Sim - RV50 first thoughts

Post by Wired » Mon May 28, 2018 5:21 pm

Jondog wrote:
Mon May 28, 2018 4:49 pm
I wasn't sold on the cab clone speaker simulation, but It is a good load box set-up. Add a Mooer Radar.
https://youtu.be/t4oR13iZbFk
I was going to look into those actually. could help solve the puzzle.
-LK
RV50, Vox AC30, Gibson LP Trad '14, Gibson ES-335 '04, PRS Cu24 '10, Fender Tele Pro, Gretsch Powerjet

caldurham
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Re: Mesa Cab Sim - RV50 first thoughts

Post by caldurham » Mon May 28, 2018 6:44 pm

i'd definitely never use a cab clone for cab emulation. they are absolutely horrible when it comes to that.
that mooer radar for cab IRs is cool.

also btw if you are just using the cab clone as a load box and running the DI into cubase you should look into Two Notes Wall of Sound.

It probably has the best cab emulations I've heard. You can run it as a trial for 30 days. The trial has 2 really decent cabs for use.

And after 30 days if you want the full version you just need to buy one of their emulated cabs. Some of the cab IR's are extremely inexpensive and they have about any kind of cab that you could want, even some orange cabs. Once you get the full version of Wall Of Sound you can basically load any cab IR that you want. and there are a lot of free ones out there that are very good.



https://www.two-notes.com/en/wall-of-sound

Boy_Narf
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Re: Mesa Cab Sim - RV50 first thoughts

Post by Boy_Narf » Mon May 28, 2018 8:48 pm

Hey,

I had one of these in my hand dang near the day they came out. I will agree they sounded pretty bad recorded. Through my ATH-M50's it was alright but I had to have the amp pretty much cranked to get enough level as there is no volume control. Even with a headphone amp it wasn't brilliant. I will honestly say current modelling/Amplitube sounds much better.

Wired
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Re: Mesa Cab Sim - RV50 first thoughts

Post by Wired » Tue May 29, 2018 1:46 am

caldurham wrote:
Mon May 28, 2018 6:44 pm
i'd definitely never use a cab clone for cab emulation. they are absolutely horrible when it comes to that.
that mooer radar for cab IRs is cool.

also btw if you are just using the cab clone as a load box and running the DI into cubase you should look into Two Notes Wall of Sound.

It probably has the best cab emulations I've heard. You can run it as a trial for 30 days. The trial has 2 really decent cabs for use.

And after 30 days if you want the full version you just need to buy one of their emulated cabs. Some of the cab IR's are extremely inexpensive and they have about any kind of cab that you could want, even some orange cabs. Once you get the full version of Wall Of Sound you can basically load any cab IR that you want. and there are a lot of free ones out there that are very good.



https://www.two-notes.com/en/wall-of-sound
holy crap! the difference in sound from the Wall of Sound emulation to the what the cab crap produced is beautiful! Very usable. impressive.
-LK
RV50, Vox AC30, Gibson LP Trad '14, Gibson ES-335 '04, PRS Cu24 '10, Fender Tele Pro, Gretsch Powerjet

fiveightandten
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Re: Mesa Cab Sim - RV50 first thoughts

Post by fiveightandten » Tue May 29, 2018 2:26 am

Digital cab IRs blow any of the hardware units out of the water. I use Two Notes WoS, as posted above, and it's awesome. I'd challenge anyone to pick out the tracks I've recorded direct with WoS, vs. the actual mic'd guitar tracks on a recording. You simply can't tell the difference.

That being said, hardware cab sims can be useful in a live setting.

-Nick
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'71 GRO100 || '96 OR-80 || AD30 || '64 AC-50 || AC-30TBX || Hiwatt DR504 || HI-TONE HT30
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Boy_Narf
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Re: Mesa Cab Sim - RV50 first thoughts

Post by Boy_Narf » Wed May 30, 2018 3:49 pm

GFI systems has a pretty good one I've heard. Thing they are reasonably priced too.

Mooer has a super cheap one called the Radar Speaker Cabinet Simulator. Price is really good on that one. I believe you can load your own IR as well.

Wired
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Re: Mesa Cab Sim - RV50 first thoughts

Post by Wired » Mon Jun 11, 2018 5:01 pm

https://soundcloud.com/luke-kowand-lkye ... h-tracking


this has Orange RV50 through the Cab Clone and Torpedo Wall of Sound on one guitar track, POD HD500 with AC30's on another guitar track, and the bass is my PRS CU24 through the POD using an octave down and a fliptop Ampeg model.

very rough, kinda sloppy, especially the bridge.
-LK
RV50, Vox AC30, Gibson LP Trad '14, Gibson ES-335 '04, PRS Cu24 '10, Fender Tele Pro, Gretsch Powerjet

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