Chris-From-The-Band is bringing his newest project-creation to rehearsal tonight. An old Marshall 1982 (model, not year) 4x12 with a birch back loaded with Weber Blue Dogs and Silver Bells... to run with his Diezel. Yeah, an old Marshall full of higher-wattage versions of vintage alnico Vox and Fender speakers to run with a modern high gainer.

I will report back on awesome/not awesome. I suspect awesome.

I love my band's occasionally bizarre gear choices.

Hmm. Odd. I wouldn't expect to enjoy that.

I don't much like alnicos though. And what i have heard of Diezels, i have disliked also, actually for a similar element in the upper frequencies. It isn't quite fizz i think, but it is related to fizz.

I actually find V30s much more pleasant than pushed alnicos.

You will have to repoart with your findings.

You might actually like it more than you think. It's definitely a contrast to the Mills with G1280s. He did dial the presence back quite a bit on Herbie, from about 1:30 to 10:30. A surprising amount of low end- that's the Silver Bells; the Blue Dogs are... well, they're 50-watt Blues. Draw your conclusions there.

I wouldn't call it fizzy at all- actually quite warm, very old-school. He busted out some AC/DC riffs on channel 2 with the PRS and quite frankly it's not "modern" sounding at all, even with 200w of German pain sitting there. Cleans were chimeychimey- they'd damn well better be considering those are essentially old Vox & Fender speakers beefed up a bit.

Though admittedly neither of us run much gain really save for when I'm being an asshole with a bitcrusher or something, so fizz isn't likely to happen in the Guy With A DIezel On HCAF sense. Even on channel 3 he's not running any more than I am with an OCD/AC30 + singles. We're more volume than preamp gain in this band. Chris is a big Tool fan and that's about the level of high gain his high gain tone is- in the grand scheme of things, not that much. (Another sound that's more loudamp/Les Paul than anything.)

I'd like to make some clips; he has it there for the duration and I'm at the 'Drome every day working on something, so I will ask his permission to do so- not like he'd care but it would be polite. I could also do a couple with the AC30 and Recto, which would be interesting. The Diezel through Alnicos is snobbery writ large. The Dual Rec would just be fucked up.

I spent most of my rehearsal focusing on my vocals and Chris probably spends more time on synth actually, so I can't give as detailed a review I'd like. But it sounded really goddamn good. Very... refined. It certainly sounds expensive. Whether that's good or not is a subjective thing, but as well as I can describe it, it sounds like boutique gear. It is not raw at all. It sounds like something some dicksmack on the forums paid a stupid amount of money for, and I love the fact we're using it for neither bedroom metal or blues-lawyer lightrock.

Definitely clip it up if you can.