8,720
edits
Changes
m
→Swapping Cabs
When browsing rigs, I like to save the Cab blocks of my absolute favorite rigs. These should have a great tone with little need to dig into the ToneStack or use Post-Stack EQ effects. Once you have a few stored, you should try these on rigs where the tone sounds off and tweaking isn't helping. You may find a rare amp profile get new life.
Keep in mind that the profiling process is not intelligent enough to completely segregate the characteristics of the real amp and cab. Much of the resonant characteristics of the power amp portion of the amp is tied to the cab being used, so by switching the cab profile, you are likely getting a sound that would not accurately match that same real amp paired with the real cab and mic setup of the new cab block. In most cases, the difference is somewhat subtle; and the tone of new Amp/Cab still sounds like a real rig rather than some digital concoction. This is especially the case where you are switching from similar cab profiles. For example, if the original rig used a '''''Mesa/Boogie''''' ''Rectifier 4x12'' particular model cab profile and the new cab profile used the same cab, the impact to the amp's tone should be negligible.
FW 3.0 may alleviate some of this. It allows the creation of "merged" profiles, where a DI profile (no real cab) is merged with a "full" profile (real cab was used). These calculate the difference between the DI and full profiles, and push much of the resonance that is characteristic of the power amp into the amp profile. This allows more of the amp's character to be retained when switching cab profiles.