Pedal Head

Alrighty folks, I went a did something else that needed to be done.

The critical mass of a guitar's sound is the speaker, followed by the cabinet. Don't hesitate to try new speaker and cabinet configurations. Most amps benefit greatly just by plugging into a better volume box.

Made in house in a disorganized garage, I added custom made guitar cabinets sporting lovely Mojotone speakers.

This particular cabinet is a 2x12 open back angled front 50watt cabinet with a pair of Mojotone Watchtower speakers. The Watchtower are literally a private label Celestion Greenback identical to classic rock cabinets of yesteryear.

Since everything will be a one-off unit, I took a few liberties with it. It has 3/4" plywood box-joint shell construction, 1/2" plywood floating baffle, dark stain finish, leather handle, and a burlap grille cloth to complete a vintage style you could only find in stories of meetings at the crossroads.

That was all tech nerd gear head talk.

Basically, this cabinet is heavy duty, rock solid, gorgeous, and fills a room with midrange oppression so thick that you might just need to write a manifesto about it.

The angled front allows what your playing to be heard with your ears instead of your cankles. The Watchtower set on a floating baffle begs you to turn up the volume until the speakers are hanging on for dear life.

Some of the best recordings were made when everything was pushed beyond its limit. Hit the strings hard, push the preamp tubes until they saturate, drive the power amp tubes until they distort, run the speakers until they breakup, and don't stop until faces melt and eardrums bleed.

Or just or practice on the couch, whatever.

Price for this particular cabinet is $600 out the door tax included. Shipping is available. Cabinet is currently wired for 16ohm but can be rewired to 4ohm at customer request at no extra cost.

Let me know what kind of cabinet you'd like. 1x12, 2x12, 4x12, 4x8, bass cabinets, open back, closed back, airtight, vintage styled, modern metal, custom dimensions, shallow for traveling, oversized for sound, hippie fabric grille cloth, expanded metal, chicken wire, mesh screen, front loaded, rear loaded, custom head cabinets for your existing amp, made for home and studio, or made for the road, or even something whacky just because.

Cabinets built will be unfinished, stained, painted, or coated with truck bed liner.

One more batch of goodies.

We've been busy!

Lots of supplies for all your needs.

Let us know what you need. Delivery and shipping available.

If you need new strings and don't want to deal with it, cleaning and restringing your instrument is a flat $20 fee plus strings. Doesn't matter if it's a bass or a Floyd equipped 9string or a mandolin or a cello.

We can get strings and accessories for everything.

Or maybe you're gigging and touring and want bulk strings for the road.

We can help with that.

Postman cometh

Lots of goodies from Dadarrio and a surf rock star from Cort.

Let us know what you need and we can make it happen.

Have you ever seen something so beautiful?

It's hard to beat new speakers. Speakers are the biggest influence on your overall sound and these Mojotone speakers are some of the best in the business.

The BV30V are based on British made Vintage 30s except they do not have the miserable ice pick sound.

The Watchtower are designed with all the best classic rock tones of yesteryear.

I personally run a pair of BV30V in my designated recording cabinet and they are absolutely crushing. I play heavy riffs in Drop A and these provide killer tones without any of the drawbacks associated with common speakers. No mud, just clarity. No fizz, just brutality.

Whether you have a rehearsal space 4x12, a road warrior 2x12, a practice 1x12 combo, a tube head, a modeler, or a custom made cabinet like I made for myself... changing speakers is the best way to finally take the sound in your head and get it into your ears.

As your personal Mojotone dealer, it's a privilege to bring you American made speakers... the best speakers at the best prices.

Let us know if you'd like to give these eager speakers a new home in your rig.

Placing a Mojotone speaker order tomorrow!

So let me know if there's anything from their awesome catalog you need.

Me Oh My, look what arrived...

Today we have some spectacular Cort guitars.

Everything we sell comes with a full setup and ready for action at no extra charge.

These are excellent additions to any collection or upgrade for any player at any level.

The Green is a G250 going for $399
The seafoam green has a feint sparkle, seriously beach vibes, a classic tremolo, coil split switch, and locking tuners.

But the other one here is another step up in quality and has looks to kill. It's a G290 and they're currently on clearance. They are on other sites with a Minimum price of $799. But I can't advertise any lower than that...

The G290 is seriously a gigging level instrument with roasted maple neck, locking tuners, a vintage styled floating bridge, and excellent sounding pickups.

Message our shop for the best deals.

This is just a taste of the excellent guitars and basses from Cort and offered here at Pedal Head.

If you want one of these, get them while supplies last. Or let us know what else you might want.

Drop shipping anywhere in the U.S.A. is available.

Play Loud.

I did a thing.

Tldr: I built my own 2x12" guitar cabinet, stuck it in an isolated underground chamber, and use it for recording.

The idea:
Longing to record metal at home, I've often battled with issues like:
Where to setup my desk
Where to put an amp
How loud can I play
Will neighbors get mad
Do I wait till everyone else is out of the house
Can I play loud when my wife is home
How do I keep kids and dogs from messing with microphones
I want blankets over the cabinet for recording but not any other times
And who knows what else...

The environment:
My house is over a hundred years old. My office, desk, work area is in a lower addition to the living room. On the other side of the wall behind my desk is the crawlspace underneath my living room. It's completely sealed from outside and it's accessible from my basement through what used to be an exterior window. So the crawlspace is technically indoors although it has the dirt floor and very low headroom of any other crawlspace.

The perks:
I also run a very small guitar repair shop and retail store out of my house. It's a small town in North Dakota, I don't stock walls if guitars and amps but I'm literally the only person within a hundred miles that sells strings, pedals, straps, picks, and yes I can order big ticket items. This only matters to the story because I also recently became a Mojotone dealer and an Eminence dealer. For what it's worth, Eminence recently went through a major buyout and restructuring and they also wouldn't answer the phone or emails. I was torn between the Karnivore and BV30V and ultimately Mojotone's customer service response sealed the deal for me.

The purpose:
I set out to use what I had how I could use it. In a reckless daunting endeavor, I decided to craft a purpose-built recording cabinet permanently setup in my basement crawlspace under the floor of my living room. This solved almost every issue I had:
Recording setup is immune from mischief
Reamping can be loud without being offensive
Cable management is invisible
One cabinet for recording, one cabinet for general jamming and practice
Custom self built tinkering project at a significantly lower cost than buying name brand
Acoustic treatment is no longer an eyesore

The process:
I special ordered 3/4" marine grade plywood ftom Menards, consulted ChatGPT endlessly for design options, built a cabinet so tough that Panzer engineers converted to Judaism, loaded it with MojoTone BV30V speakers, hauled it into an underground bunker, took all my microphones along with it, ran all cables through the wall, built a PVC frame around the setup, and laid blankets all around for sonic properties and dirt exclusion.

The cabinet:
3/4" baltic birch plywood and an insane amount of bracing. Each piece of wood is now 100% permanent. Every piece is glued and screwed into place including the backplate and baffle. I remember an episode of Glenn Fu**er that claimed some engineers mic as close to the speaker as they can even removing the grille if they can, so I went with no grille whatsoever. I went with front-loaded speakers for projection and necessity with a glued baffle. There's a full sized window brace with a crossbeam going through it. Every edge has one, sometimes two braces. The baffle and backplate are in recessed cuts with bracing glued roundabout. The corners are lock-mitre joints and 100% of everything is glued and screwed everywhere. I went with external handles since this doesn't need to fit flush in a tour van and I didn't want big areas of thin metal on the cabinet. I line the inside of the cabinet with polyfil batting. For the exterior, I used truck-bed liner for durability. This cabinet is so sealed up that pushing inward on one speaker causes the other to bulge outward. This thing is heavy as a train and stiff as a wedding dick.

The setup:
Once in the crawlspace, I used child slave labor to pass me all the pieces.
I laid a moving blanket on the dirt
The cabinet sits on one large concrete paver
All the microphones sit on another concrete paver
The entire setup has a PVC frame around it to hold up three more blankets roundabout

The microphones:
Two SM57 in a Fredman technique setup on the left speaker
Two ZM57 (ultra cheap SM57 clones) in another Fredman technique setup on the right speaker
One MXL DX2 dual capsule microphone also on the right speaker.
Both Fredman setups are blended through a mixer that sends one Fredman out Channel 1 and the other Fredman out Channel 2 to my interface that also takes the DX2.
So it's six capsules, five microphones, three tones, that can all be blended or isolated for whatever sounds are possible. All perfectly physically time aligned.

The result:
The wood was an expensive special order but I have probably $250 in cabinet materials, $270 in speakers, $100 in setup materials, and whatever I already owned in microphones and recording gear. Definitely could have gotten out a bit cheaper and a lot easier if I went with bottom-dollar non-cosmetic used cabinet I could find or a Harley Benton. There's nothing for used market in my area and waiting for VATS and tariffs just seemed foolish. Plus I got to build something objectively better than I could find or buy for this purpose.

Most importantly, I was able to reamp guitars today while my wife listened to an audiobook and my kids played in the living room and never had to raise their voices. It's not a dead silent operation but it's quiet and muffled enough that it doesn't interfere with common conversation.

The tones:
I doubt I'll use all five mics at once but I figure it's best to always get all the information you can in case you want it later. So far, the Fredman setups both offer some excellent sounds with the SM57 set being the winner. The DX2 is an awesome and simple setup on its own that blends really well with the on axis SM57. In my opinion so far, be it from cabinet build or speaker choice, this thing sounds several orders better than my Bugera 2x12 that got a set of v30s a year ago, and the v30s were several orders better than the stock TurboSound speakers.

I even use the setup for the dirty tones on bass guitar.

Drawing on inspiration from many years of tutorials and setup explanations, I used the dead space I had with minimal expense, and custom tailored results for an awesome project that hopefully makes the recording part of the hobby that much easier.

Isolated cabinet
Blankets roundabout
SM57s (some things are hard to beat)
Mics blended through a mixer
Build what I couldn't find or buy

Post man cometh

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Line 6 Spider Valve MKII 40watt tube 2x12 combo amp.

Here's an awesome unsung hero.

This amp has a ton of amps modeled within it, another ton of crazy effects onboard, and a full tube power section.

If that's not enough, it has two Celestion Vintage 30 speakers.

This is the second version of the Spider Valve series and this particular one has the updated software that includes even more effects.

Loud and heavy, this thing is perfect for band practice, jams, or performance.

If for some reason the sounds you want aren't already here, it's a killer pedal platform with plenty of volume.

I put in a new set of tubes and biased the amp.