Does anyone still gig with a 4x12?

llew

I might have the opportunity to pick up a 1973 marshall jmp50 head as trade with one of my amp's. I haven't played marshall for years and when I did I always preferred the 70's one's. The trouble is the thought of it sitting on anything other than a 4x12 doesn't sit right in my head. So my question is does anyone still gig pub's with a 4x12? At present I gig a Dr z maz reverb and 2x10 cab which is great. But it isn't an old marshall half stack impractical as it is.

Danny1969

I use a 4 x 12 in stereo ...... Completely unnessacary as I'm mic'ed up anyway but there you go
The bass player uses an Ampeg 8 x 10 which is even more rediculouse

John_P

I sometimes use 2,  it's rare these days though and I"m more likely to use a 2x12 most weeks.    Once in a while if there is space I'll use the big cabs though just because they are nice.

Drew_TNBD

Yes.

llew

I miss the way my trousers used to flap standing in front of one.

fretmeister

Only if it's a small gig.

Sassafras

Only if they want lumbago.

llew

Really want the sound,really don't fancy the dragging it around the pub's Bit.

John_P

Mine are on wheels - I can't get them in the car so that's a pain but if it's a van gig then I wheel them out and only when a venue has stairs is it any more hassle.

ElectroDan

Nearly, I use a JCM900 2x12 combo with a 1x12 Duotone on top of it, so it's a 3x12! I'm always mic'd up so it's purely for idiotic reasons.

 

\m/

benvall

This may sound a little ridiculous but at a recent rehearsal I took my 1x12 HDRX. I sat it on the 4x12 in the practice room, and when looking at it I thought it didn't look 'that' much bigger. It made me consider getting a 4x12 again.

p90fool

A 4x12 doesn't take up any more space on stage than a 2x12, and you can actually hear it.
I "downsized" for a while to a 2x12 and had an overwhelming urge to lie on the floor while I was playing.

In order to hear anything you have to put it on something 2x12-sized, so you may as well put it on two more speakers and put all four in the same box.

I always run 4x12s open-backed too, you can play quietly and still hear it everywhere but you still get that lovely cabinet "thud" on damped low notes.

Transport is no problem either, only something truly shit like a Smart car will not take a 4x12.

Reverend

Not sure I could use anything less.

Gassage

^ this.

xscaramanga

I never have, mainly because I am preternaturally weak for an adult male and would seriously struggle with the load in/out on my own.

Also I figure fewer speakers should mean slightly less volume, so I can push the amp harder. That said, when I bought my Zilla 1x12 I tried it out side-by-side with a 4x12 at home (at high volume) and I didn't think there was that much difference. Either 4x12s are massively overrated, I have terrible ears, or you need to get further away to hear the differences.

xmrchi

I have only ever used one amp to gig which is a HH Performer 80r, 1 Celestion seventy 80 speaker, and sounds devine, never really needed anything bigger for gigs due to always being DI'd or mic'd.

Im sure a 4x12 or a better amp would be great but I have always been really happy with the tone of the H/H

viz

I use two 4x12s even when we're doing school productions in a gym with small groups of primary school children singing un-mic'd along with us. I have to turn it down to 0.0001

llew

I think it's going to happen

ICBM

jonnyscaramanga said:

Also I figure fewer speakers should mean slightly less volume, so I can push the amp harder. That said, when I bought my Zilla 1x12 I tried it out side-by-side with a 4x12 at home (at high volume) and I didn't think there was that much difference. Either 4x12s are massively overrated, I have terrible ears, or you need to get further away to hear the differences.

You won't hear as much difference in a small space. On a big stage it becomes pretty apparent - even the difference between a 1x12" and a 2x12" does. I'm not really sure exactly why, presumably just due to the way the sound interacts with the surrounding walls etc.

p90fool said:

A 4x12 doesn't take up any more space on stage than a 2x12, and you can actually hear it.
I "downsized" for a while to a 2x12 and had an overwhelming urge to lie on the floor while I was playing.

In order to hear anything you have to put it on something 2x12-sized, so you may as well put it on two more speakers and put all four in the same box.

That gave me an idea…

If you're going to do that you could actually make the bottom half a completely different cabinet. (I know Mesa already do this, although the idea is still to run both from the same amp.) So if you put the right speakers in, you could make that a bass monitor. Then I had another idea - if you divide it again so it's four separate 1x12"s, you could have one of the top ones for guitar (and leave that one open-back if you want), the other for a PA vocal monitor, and the two bottom ones as a bass monitor and a PA drum feed or some other combination.

Since part of the charm of a 4x12" is the way they look, and that stage space is often at a premium, this would possibly fix a lot of monitoring issues in one go while looking the part and actually not being that hard to move and set up.

It does require the cabinet to be fully divided and isolated internally, you can't do it just by putting four different speakers in a standard 4x12" or they will all interact, but otherwise it should be fairly easy to build.

Tell me this is a stupid idea .

p90fool

It's not a stupid idea at all.

On a slightly different tack, I'm getting nostalgic for the Marshall 4x12 PA columns I used to gig with, they were the most consistent and easy to set up small PA I've ever gigged with and I never had placement or directionality issues with them.

I've often thought of building something similar, but with the bottom pair as a guitar cab.

ICBM

p90fool said:

On a slightly different tack, I'm getting nostalgic for the Marshall 4x12 PA columns I used to gig with, they were the most consistent and easy to set up small PA I've ever gigged with and I never had placement or directionality issues with them.

I've often thought of building something similar, but with the bottom pair as a guitar cab.

I've rebuilt a few of those old columns as more modern full-range cabs - just for PA rather than splitting them like that - using either 'whizzer' cone speakers in the top two positions and bass drivers in the bottoms, or by blanking the top hole and fitting a tweeter, replacing the second speaker down with a high-power modern 12", the third speaker with a blank with a port in it, and a bass driver in the bottom. The idea was to give modern performance but traditional looks for tribute bands, but they actually sound great anyway. The principle of line source columns is very sound, and is why they weren't directional. I've used Marshall, WEM and Hiwatt columns (which are truly huge, not very practical) and all worked well.

They come up for sale fairly often and usually don't sell for much. Of course you can sell the valuable original guitar-type drivers for enough to make the whole project just about cost-neutral too . Assuming they haven't been blown or pinched already, of course.

In fact I've just asked a friend whether he still has the old Marshall 2x10" mini columns I sold him a few years ago and if he still wants them...