OK – another quick post as I work on this project. I’ve found the best speaker for the job on the new KittyHawk M1 head-to-combo conversion. Since it’ll be a 1×12 combo, I used an old 1×12 combo cab from my 1963 Fender Brown Deluxe to approximate cabinet size for frequency resonance. After trying a Celestion V30, a Weber high-powered Chicago, and an Eminence Swamp Thang, the winner is….
Eminence Swamp Thang
The response is natural, the frequency resonance is full but not without highs, and the efficiency pulls the real power of the amp out. It’s not quite as meaty as my 4×12 Carvin cabinet, or my custom 4×12 with V30s in it, but for a 1×12, it has the most fatbottom I’m gonna get, and I’m thrilled tht it doesn’t lose the presence in the process. I purposely tested all phases of its tone, from clean to high gain, with a Tele. My thought process is that if the high gain tones are thick with a Tete bridge pickup, a rock guitar with humbuckers should be huge. Tele bridge pickups are not known for huge fat bottom end, so this test is a true response reading for the capabilities of this future amp in a live setting with me at the helm.
In this video, you can see that I’ve added new, matching, vintage Fender style knobs. It gives it a nice boutique look – if you can get past the broken head cabinet it’s currently in. The new cabinet from Mather should be here in about a month, so stay tuned for the completed rig (prior to sending it off to the shop for the transformer and potentiometer overhaul in early 2012) by the end of 2011!
