Best cab for the GM36?

Today's project:
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And wouldn't you know - Like a dummy I forgot to take the obligatory mini stack photo!

So the Images above were from the swap. My original V30 TM112 resides in the lower half of my stack and the WGS ET-65 sits on top. I swear it's heavenly.

ConradK:

I see h and k use the same celestion vintage 30s in their cabs?  Can't see why any manufacturer of an amp would place speakers in their cabs which don't sound good with the Amps they make ?

I think the answer to that one is that some of us may not like it but the H&K boys genuinely do!  Remember they're German, and when I point that out I'm really not poking fun.  The type of music they will have voiced their amps and speakers for will reflect the tastes prevalent in their own country and target customer profile, and the ones we are using them to play may be a case of "well yes, you could use it for that as well, if you really had to".  What is your perception as to the type of customer who chooses a Fender amp as opposed to a Marshall?  Have you ever watched the YouTube reviews of the GM?  It amazes me how many of them are simply a one dimensional thrash fest using the Lead and Ultra channels with the Gain high.  Sure the amps sound good playing suitable material like that but they have much more to offer.  The fact that the GM is so good for other musical genre is testament to how good a basic design it is.

I have always maintained that the amp leans towards metal styles in its overdrive and distortion tones, or at least makes pretty damned sure to fully incorporate the most extreme of them.  I feel that this means that the Chinese valve selection is a bit coarse and the V30 speaker selection may be a bit strident but it isn't too much of an issue for that material.  That said, they may have some clever cabinet design which tames those V30s, I haven't seen any signs of that yet.  Despite the existing myths, (here he goes again   ), basic cabinet design is a pretty straight forward done deal now without too many ways of compensating for a driver's fundamental tone.  Once the approach is decided on, closed/open, sealed/ported etc, a box is pretty much a box is pretty much a box.  Keep the volume and proportions basically the same, keep to decent quality materials and brace well and Bob's your uncle, it's now down to the driver.  Basic cabinet features which then do affect the sound are errors due to poor implementation.  In other cabinets where I have used or heard them they are just too shrill and rough with the GM36 for my tastes. I've got 2 brand new ones here barely broken in taking up shelf room because of this.  I replaced them with G12 Greenbacks pdq!

So basically, they think the GM + V30 combination DOES sound good.  It's just that so many of us don't really agree!  (And of course, many of the "auditorily challenged" amongst us do.  Including those damned Jairmens.  Have you ever tried to listen to Wagner? ).

I am using 2 cabinets both 1x12" and 16 Ohms; 1st EVH 5150 III White Celestion Heritage & 2nd Blackstar HT Venue 112 Celestion Seventy80 with the Palmer PCABM cabinet combiner I'm able to use both in parallel. Those cabinets I had for a while using them previously with Blackstar ID60TVP Head and before that with a rack setup consisting of a Marshall 8008 Valvestate paired with Digitech GSP1101 Preamp. I will not part with these speakers, they sound great and looks like a little stack. The EVH gives a bright biting high and the Blackstar throws a lot of low end bottom.

I have just bought a 1x12 cab (for ease of transportation and the smaller gigs where we mike up) and i replaced the stock vintage 30 with a celestion creamback g12m 65 (16ohms).

Got to say its a vast improvement in tone. It s got a lot more bass (in fact i have had to reduce the bass on the amp) but no mid range spike - "slightly scooped in the mids" is my best description. I find using this with my guitar tone knob rolled right back (and my volume knobs at about 75%) has solved the shrillness problem completely for me. I was using an eq pedal in the effects loop and that also worked a treat but i have been trying to simplify my set up - hence this approach.

I also have an orange ppc 2x12 open back cab for the larger gigs and where we run a straight backline - this has the (celestion vinatge 30's) as std and now that they are broken in they sound fantastic (again using the tone control and volume knobs on my guitar as described above).

Wasn't like that in the beginning, i put up with that mid range spike for a VERY long time before they broke in!

EQUIPMENT AND STYLE OF MUSIC I PLAY

GM 36 Head (i run this in 5watt mode with the master volume at circa 12 o clock and this works best for me) I have tried 36 and 18watts and they are simply too loud AND they don't allow the sound of opening up the volume knob to 12 and beyond - i don't use much gain these days (rarely past 9 o clock and never more than 11, on most of my sounds) so i like the volume knob opened up

CABS:
Orange ppc212 open backed cab WITH Celestion vintage 30's
1x12 Harley benton cab with creamback G12M 65

MAIN GUITAR:
PRS SE Bernie marsden (stock neck pickup - about to buy a gibson clasic 57 for this position though) and an upgraded suhr doug aldrick (very hot) in the bridge

PEDALS:
OCD,
Mooer cruncher,
mini wah,
monster fuzz,
spark boost mini,
tuner (tc electronics mini noir)    
isolated power supply,

STYLE OF MUSIC:
I play rock, classic rock, hard rock and popular songs rocked up

Looking forward to mixing the celestion vintage 30 and the creamback in the orange ppc cab - ill let you guys know how that goes when i do it.

ConradK, that's exactly the definition for what I also hear, "shrillness". I couldn't quite find a word for it but that sounds just right. Being so dependent on solid state for so long and never having a tube amp, I'm unaware of how to work out particular sound results like this one. To reduce it I was trimming back the treble and presence, and I too was dropping the volume and backing off the tone on my guitars. Perhaps different tubes like JJ, sovtek, or groove tubes might change that?

Hi Stargazer

From the posts in this forum i have come to the conclusion that the tubes make a slight difference but still do not tame the shrillness so I'm going to leave mine as they are. Unless i see a WHOE LOTTA users saying it fixed the problem for them immediately I'm not interested in throwing any more money at this issue.

This IS a bright amp with a lot of treble BUT that can be solved BY:

using the eq, and /or an equal pedal (in the loop)

Using a decent mid scooped speaker,

using slightly mid scooped pickups (hence reason for trying the classic 57's) and

by rolling back the tone on the guitar.

At last rehearsal on some songs i had even rolled back the tone to 2! but it sounded great - gave me that vintage sound that I'm constantly chasing

This is a great amp and it responds well to the above so ill keep using it and in the future buy a darker sounding head as a backup and have the best of both worlds.

If you are in the market later on for darker sounding head you might consider the Orange Dark Terror, I tried it out as I was shopping around to buy my first tube amp and there was a lot of great reviews and youtubes on it, I picked one up at guitarcenter tried it out at home with my 2 cab. It was definitely loud for 15W and very natural, the equalization was just one shape knob and there was a distinct extra umph in the gain over other amps. It lacked switching channels as it has only the one. Plus a great little lunchbox all steel design. I decided against keeping it only because I prefer some mild fx chorus and delay and did not want to start looking into fx loops or pedalboards, being used to solid state with built in fx I never had to rely on external devices for fx.

But it was definitely darker sound than the Marshall DSL 15 which I also tried out as well and some others.

HA HA good recommendation - been there and done that!

Had one for about 8 months - changed to the GM36 as i was tired of using a "one trick pony" amp as it did not do cleans or crunch and i had a HUGE pedalboard with 17 pedals on it - i play in a covers band so i needed the versatility of an amp that does it ll hence why i bought the GM36

stargazer747 wrote:ConradK,  that's exactly the definition for what I also hear, "shrillness". I couldn't quite find a word for it but that sounds just right. Being so dependent on solid state for so long and never having a tube amp, I'm unaware of how to work out particular sound results like this one. To reduce it I was trimming back the treble and presence, and I too was dropping the volume and backing off the tone on my guitars.  Perhaps different tubes like JJ, sovtek, or groove tubes might change that?

do a favour to yourself, jj el 84 power amp tubes. And 2 jj 12ax7 and one tung sol 12ax7 for v1. Your gonna raise your presence and treble knobs.

Ignatios - thanks

What style of music do you play?
how long have you been playing for?
What type of guitar do you use ?

did this tame the treble?
did it change the voicing of the amp i.e. did it become darker or has it simply reduced treble and /or smoothed out the sound - how would you describe the change in tone?

what goes where - i have never changed tubes on an amp

ConradK wrote:Ignatios - thanks

What style of music do you play?
how long have you been playing for?
What type of guitar do you use ?

did this tame the treble?
did it change the voicing of the amp i.e. did it become darker or has it simply reduced treble and /or smoothed out the sound - how would you describe the change in tone?

what goes where - i have never changed tubes on an amp  

Music :whatever i like and can play
How long :32 years
Guitars:fender strats
The sound becomes better what ever that means,ask for a technician to replace them for you!


This is me


https://youtu.be/ai_pXnYcFwM
https://youtu.be/nq6Nddcju9A

I'm about two days from buying my Grandmeister 36. I have to keep the volume down when I'm home. I know I can play the amp at 1 watt but for how long? And I hear it can get pretty hot will that affect the long term wear and tear on the amp. That brings us to the Cabinet. I have been looking at the Eminence Maverick with the FDM adjustable magnet that is an attenuator on the speaker side. So I can run the Grandmeister at 36 watts and adjust the volume from the speaker. Help me out family what do you think?

don't know that speaker but have tried both celestion vintage 30's and the celestion creamback G12M 65 and prefer the creamback although i must say after the vintage 30's are broken in they are fantastic sounding as well !

5watt mode does not shorten the life of the amp - its designed to work at lower wattages - how?, i do not know but a number of guys have contacted H&K and they have confirmed it will not cause long term damage as it was designed for that purpose

I will say that when I first "came here" there was a lot of worrying done about this amp's response to heating.  Quite frankly, most of it was simply fabricating something to worry about and not based on anything either in real experience or in the engineering of the product!  If you look here: Posts 4, 5, 6 , and here: All posts, there is some of this discussion.

This is a well designed amp.  The numbers add up.  Everyone who is worried about this mentions the power soak without doing any analytical thinking on it.  The amp is rated as having a maximum power consumption of 200W.  With the exception of what is output to the speakers all of that goes out as heat.  Let's round this down to maybe 150W in normal use as that makes the figures look worse in power soak heat terms.  The power soak, when it is working hardest at 1W, is diverting only 17W of power.  That's about 11% of the heat that's being generated!  And that is the maximum power it can dissipate.  If you're playing at 5W it's only 13W, and at 18W it's not dissipating at all, one pair of valves is turned off instead.  It's also got to be considered that music is transient based signal, so musical power averaged out is a lot less than RMS sine wave power.  So playing music you're dropping those figures down a lot more.  The power soak is a non-issue!

As H&K point out, the amp is deliberately put into a ventilated metal case rather than the traditional wooden one.  This acts as a heatsink drawing out the heat and dissipating it to the outside over a large surface area.  The fact that it feels hot to the touch is only because it is metal.  Most of the heat is generated in the valve bodies themselves, and they are above the circuitry in a separate compartment, and heat pushed into the air likes to travel in which direction?  They have isolated the two areas, valves and circuitry, and set up heat extraction in a way few other amps bother to.  It is not generating any more heat than any other valve amp of its own power even with the power soak, and it deals with it in a very well engineered way.

If you feel worried about this, and it is something I considered when I first got my original TM36, have a look here for my own solution: Cooling unit.  It's made from a couple of ultra cheap fan units, a few scraps of leftover MDF and a wallwart I had lying around.  It took me a couple of hours in an afternoon.  While I still use this little unit all of the time to physically stabilise the amp on my cabinet, there are even times I forget to plug it in and the amp has never had a problem.

And the crunch point has to be, how many people have we had come through here who report any problems to do with overheating in real usage?  How many was that ?

CONRADK,Bordonbert Thank you for your detailed complete responses. I'm putting my order in today for the head,foot control and 2x12 cabinet.
No worries.
Bordonbert I'm going to look at your cooling unit I was thinking about something like that also. Bottom line this amp was built to rock the house so pedal to the metal. Thanks will post after I get it.

In case anyone is interested, JJ Tubes and Tung-Sol both have a complete 7 tube replacement kit matched for the GM36, you can find them on ebay or amazon just by searching Grandmeister 36, around $90 to $130. Bought the JJ tubes kit to keep handy for emergency, a guitar old buddy of mine who uses tube amps far longer than I recommended JJ, he has an EVH 5150 III 50W and had a Marshall DSL and considered them best. I hate changing things on stuff I buy right from the start, for now I will work with the tubes that come installed in the amp, even though they are China made, but if I feel later on that the tone can benefit greatly by using a better grade tube kit, then I'll install and post my opinion.

On another thread I posted about using a Korg Pandora as a Compressor in FX Loop VoodooJeff replied with a quick note on how to change my equalization a bit to compensate for what I was used to with solidstate amps. So I am tweaking around with that to get the best. But so far, I must say that I am liking tube tone now a great deal more than when I was starting to look around for my first.

One thing I would advise here is, if you get a standby set of valves, put a few hours of use on them from new in rehearsal/practice before you set them aside as your backup.  It isn't unknown for them to have a fault with manufacturing debris inside and this usually happens right at the start.  In fact we have a case in the threads at the moment where it looks as though new valves used for the first time burned out the output valve screen grid resistors and upset the TSC ( ).  After a few hours of use you can be fairly sure this won't happen when you need to swap the new valves in at a gig.

Some tubes suppliers (eurotubes and Tube Depot are two) will conduct a "burn in" period of like 24 hours when you order them. I think they charge about $1 extra per tube but you know the tubes are functional.

Just done a good deal online and got my hands on another pair of G12M Greenbacks. So now I have a new superweapon.

I still had my 1968 Marshall 4x12 with its all original drivers in. These are the glorious G12H-25 all still working in their original condition. Yes the amp sounds fabulous through them, makes me wish I had tried them out earlier instead of being too lazy to get the cab out of storage, but these speakers are such a strong symbol of my youth that I just don't want to give them a rough ride at their time of life. It's stupid but it's how you get as you get older. I'll keep them for home use and put the G12Ms out for gigging. In all honesty the sound is not obviously different between them given that I can't do a fair side by side comparison and I'm just relying on my memory for a before and after.

So all controls are now functioning, including Bass. I still have that strange interplay with Middle and Treble but I'm getting used to it and the honky mid hump is on tap and gorgeous. They are 16ohm, and I seem to remember Namklak (?) saying he preferred the sound of 16ohm as opposed to 8ohm. Well, I'm actually wondering the same thing now though again I can't compare fairly.

I also bought a Zoom H4n to record rehearsals and gigs for practice afterwards. It does a pretty good job so maybe I'll try to get a couple of soundbites with the different speaker options.

jwy, you have IMO the epitome of the perfect cab style: 2x12, vertical, wide, slanted. If I ever come across a good deal on one of those Mesa's, I'm pretty sure I'll have a hard time passing it up! Question for ya (or anyone else who might happen to know)... how would you characterize the Mesa spkrs? Are they similar to a V30? Greenback? Etc?

I roll ghetto-style by tipping my 2x12 on end. It's a CC212 cab w/greenbacks:

the cabinet comes stock with crème backs. Mesa boogie will build this to your spec. I love the sound, 2x12 is a good size for this amp. almost 4x12 height and angled. no stand required. I almost got the Marshall hand wired upright 2x12, but held out for the mesa.

gravydb, you have it set up in a rack which looks great. I am a huge rack fan from way back in the 80's. I recently got rid of it all in favor of going for a tube amp, but still miss having everything neatly in a quick open and close rack carry case, everything plugged in at the ready. I used to have an SKB 3u shallow rack,had my Marshall 8008 Valvestate head with Digitech GSP1101 and Alesis Powertrip-8 with lights (which I kept to use with GM36 and MS Surface). I would love to maybe get that again with this amp, tell me did you figure it all out on your own or reach out to guitar road tech?

I thought I can use a similar rack carry case as the one I had and make some sort of metal frame (brace) that would wrap around the amp top to bottom where the rack ears would be fastened to making it simple to mount on a rack. I would appreciate any ideas, thanks.

Ha yep I'm an 80's guy at heart too. Always will be I'm afraid I'm also a DIY sort of guy... here's how I racked my GM (all by my own self):

The case is a 6U medium-duty shallow (12" without the lids which is plenty, no need to lug around a deeper box!), which can be found all over ebay for $100 or so. The shelf is a Raxxess 10" deep, mine happens to be the perforated kind. I simply drilled holes thru it and mounted the GM using the 4 feet holes. To help with ventilation I used the rubber feet as spacers between the GM and the shelf, I just had to buy longer screws, I believe they are M3-18mm. I use patch cables that are as short as possible, heck even the GM's power cable is only 1-2' long. Everything is as streamlined and lightweight as possible.

My prior rig was a TM18 head with a TC G-System, the brain was racked where the Korg tuner currently sits. So, I've been using this setup concept for several years now and I've been very happy with it, no issues at all. However, for context, I'm not a heavy-gigging musician... if I were touring and/or my gear was getting thrown around during transport I'd probably consider a sturdier solution. But right now it's perfectly fine for my needs.

That's all there is to it. Like you said, it's great to be able to show up at a gig and have most of the gear pre-wired and ready to go!