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Marshall's great sleeper amp - the Artist 3203/4203
Marshall's great sleeper amp - the Artist 3203/4203
Possibly the best Marshall
deal out there? The Marshall Artist 3203
(head) and 3204 (1x12 Combo). Great Marshall
crunch, superb Fenderish cleans, and best of all, they can usually carry a very
reasonable price tag. Photo courtasy of Elderly Instruments
If you’re like me, you love the amazing crunchy power that only a full Marshall stack can
deliver, but how often do most of us wind up on a stage where we can crank a
JTM 45 through a full stack? In my case,
nearly never! That, my friends, is why
I’m so crazy about the 3203; read on and I’ll make my case for this...
Wiring a 4x12 cab- UPDATE!!
Wiring a 4x12 cab- UPDATE!!
Hi everybody! I decided I needed to post this update to my earlier
blog about wiring a four-speaker cabinet. Sometimes a man has got to
admit when he's wrong - and this is one of those times. An extended member of
the WGS family has done a fantastic job of dissecting the pros and cons of the
two methods of wiring a 4-speaker cabinet ... and I want to share it with
you! In a few days I’ll be bringing you the
best Marshall sleeper amp of all time - this is the amazing deal you all want! Until then, read on for some valuable, and extremely well
thought-out info on...
A Thanksgiving Blog
A Thanksgiving Blog
Okay gang, I’ve been keeping my wandering little artsy-fartsy brain in check
and doing a pretty good job of keeping this blog on the topic of speakers,
tone, guitars, amps, and that kind of stuff.
But it is Thanksgiving this week after all, and Dave just posted a blog
on Hash brown Casserole ... so I figure I deserve a little poetic license to blog
about whatever in the heck I feel like this time around. I feel like talking about Thanksgiving. Let’s go!
I darn sure don’t act like it, but I’m more-or-less what you would call a
middle-aged man. I’ve lived long...
Dean's Secret Recipe
Dean's Secret Recipe
You may not be aware that a very dear member of the WGS team is our
production manager Dean. He's a great guy and we wanted to introduce
the blog readers to him. Dean has decades of experience cooking up
great speakers like all the WGS crew. As it turns out, he also has a
few tricks up his sleeve in the kitchen! Last year about this time I
convinced him to share his hash brown casserole recipe with all the WGS
staff. Everyone went home and made some for their family's Thanksgiving feast. This year I twisted his arm even harder and convinced...
The not-so-standard pairing!
The not-so-standard pairing!
Hi fellow tone seekers!
This week I received an email from a WGS devote who was putting together
a cabinet with a 12" and a 10" driver; he wanted my input as to which 12 to pair up with the G10C he planned to use in the cab. That question really got me to
thinking! Now, we often respond to questions about
loading up 2x12, 4x12, 2x10, and 4x10 cabinets and combos, but I
hadn’t thought about a more unusual pairing like this in a long time. In the golden amp days of the 1950’s and 60’s
there were a number of 10/12 combos made, and even a few 10/15 models. I...
Sleeper Amps part 1 - the Randall RG80ES
Sleeper Amps part 1 - the Randall RG80ES
Hi amp lovers everywhere!
This week I want to start a discussion about "sleeper amps". This is the crusp of what WGS is all
about. We are folks who really love to
take the road less traveled, and we are often rewarded with aural nirvana not known
to the masses. We’re not going to waste
our time saying all the same old stuff about all the same old amps - no way,
baby! We’re talking about
diamond-in-the-rough amps that can really deliver some serious tone, yet have
largely managed to fly under the tone radar up to this point. I hope this will become...
How to properly wire a 4x12 speaker cabinet
How to properly wire a 4x12 speaker cabinet
So, this week I received an email from Scott, a WGS
aficionado who was inquiring as to how he should wire his Marshall-style 4-12
cabinet. To be honest, I hadn’t given
that one any thought in a couple of decades, and it made me think. In essence, there are two ways to wire up a 4
speaker cabinet that both wind up with the cabinet having the same impedance as
any one of the individual drivers, or in other words, a cabinet with four 8-ohm
speakers that ends up with a total cabinet impedance of 8-ohms.
The two main methods of arriving at this means are as
follows:...
The Fender Champ Amp & the WGS G8C
The Fender Champ Amp & the WGS G8C
Hey ya all! This week
I’m doing something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, audition the G8C in my
Fender
Champ Amp. I’ve been excited
about this speaker ever since I found out that WGS was making a speaker
specifically for the Champ. I tell ya
what, I won’t waste any of your time, lets get right down to the video! I hope you all appreciate that I set up some
good mics for this little shoot-out.
Panned to one side is an AKG 414 as a distant mic and on the other side
is an Audix D1 close up to the grill. Read on for the video shoot-out!
Here is...
Capitalism and Market Economics
Capitalism and Market Economics
Amp designer and manufacturer Bob Burriss and me.For more than a few weeks now, I’ve kept this blog pretty
much on the topic of speakers and guitar tone.
I warned ya all that every now and then I’d be off on a wild tangent, and
I think I’m overdue. Let’s talk about
American vs. World manufacturing, and just so as we don’t stray too terribly
far, we’ll keep it in the arena of guitar and amp manufacturing. This will be kinda like a David and Goliath
story; pitting a huge multi-national company against an American
micro-manufacturer (what we in the guitar biz like to...
Make Your Reissue ROCK!
Make Your Reissue ROCK!
Hi everybody! Several
of last week’s testimonials were by folks who had purchased modern
reproductions of classic amps. As folks
warm-up to the sound of vintage tube amps (sorry, couldn’t help the pun), both
Fender and Vox have re-issued some of their most sought after models. As long as we don’t get into a big discussion
on point-to-point hand wiring and stuff like that, I think we can all agree
that the modern repros are some pretty decent amps. The weak link, as is usually the case these
days, is that they cut corners on the speakers included with the amps....