Quote:
I love the amp, but I'm looking for a little more bass response from my guitar (Fender Mustang) and amp. Fender sells a 1X12 speaker cabinet with a 1x12" Celestion G12P-80 speaker.

I'm thinking of purchasing one to give my sound a little more "punch". Anyone tried this or have some thoughts


Absolutely... More than one time I have plugged up a larger speaker for that very reason. The bigger the cone, the more air you move.....add more cones and you move more air.... why do you think the 4x12 cabs are so popular? They can move lots of air.

Since it's got a dual tube output section, you can plug up the celestion and now you are running a totally different sounding speaker and one that is larger as well.

I noticed that the amp only has one speaker jack in the pics I could find... so you are relegated to an "either/or" situation. In my years of club gigs and playing on all sorts of amps.... generally, tube outputs are more forgiving of impedance mis-matches than solid state outputs. I would be very cautious about dropping the impedance of a Solid State amp below it's rated limits.... but for an eight ohm tube amp.... I would consider wiring another jack into the amp or the extension cab so you can run them both..... I've done that and the difference in the sound is quite nice. You get more bottom end in the sound. After all, you're moving almost twice the air....and as long as you're not running the amp wide open, you won't have any problems with it overheating or anything else.

My stage setup in the last band I played live with...a house band gig for two and a half years was as follows.

I use a Mesa Boogie Studio 22... it outputs 22 nominal watts into a 12" 8 ohm speaker. I plugged in a Jenson 15 in an old Fender single speaker cab from the amp.... that gave me a 4 ohm load on the Mesa. From the line out, I ran a signal cable into a DCA 800 Carvin stereo power amp that had a jumper to feed the same signal to both sides of the stereo amp. Each side of the amp could deliver 400w to 8 ohms. Each side powered a Lab Series 4x12 cabinet rated 8 ohms and 200w. The DCA was never turned up more than 30% to 40%. This was more for the ambiance on stage as opposed to filling the room. Everything was mic'd into the PA. The cabs were split...one on my side and one on the other guitar player's side. He could adjust the level of the cabinet on his side to the level he wanted to hear.

That was a sweeeeet sounding rig...and my favorite of all the amps and speakers I have ever used live. I could crank the little 22w Boogie to get the tone and growl I wanted and it wasn't loud... With the Jensen at the front, I could hear my guitar and could easily get some sustained, controlled feedback as I needed...again, without being loud. And for stage fill volume, I simply dialed up or down the DCA channel A. That 4x12 cab provide lots of thump and low end response without having to part people's hair in the first 12 rows.

Yep.... more cones = better low end response.

Do it!!

Last edited by Guitarhacker; 03/02/15 03:02 AM.

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