can a single 8" high quality guitar speaker "move air" or not?

[DeepEnd]

Marshall did this in the 90s with their ValveState amps...they sounded great but were unreliable for extensive gigging [don't ask how I know ].

 

I have to say that Quilter has somehow figured out how to get their amps to simulate tube clipping pretty darned well... I was a skeptic for years until I spent time with one...then I bought it!

I thought Marshall used their tube in the preamp rather than the power amp? I actually almost bought a used ValveState amp before I found my Roland Cube. When I pointed out that the reverb didn't work, the owner didn't want to take a chance it couldn't be fixed by just installing a new tank. I'm acquainted with Quilter's reputation but I haven't had a chance to try one.

[Mikeo]

Still made, but they are like a grand.

 

 

[video=youtube;5sW7n8TNv1c]

These are not, but you can find one for like 4-5 hundred.

[video=youtube;WAXQKAE8Tbc]

 

I have a Gibson GA5.

[video=youtube;J9-xnl4DbSw]

 

 

One of my fav lp's of all time was done on a champ.

[video=youtube;BKAYGVIkbok]

[daddymack]

I thought Marshall used their tube in the preamp rather than the power amp? I actually almost bought a used ValveState amp before I found my Roland Cube. When I pointed out that the reverb didn't work, the owner didn't want to take a chance it couldn't be fixed by just installing a new tank. I'm acquainted with Quilter's reputation but I haven't had a chance to try one.

 

Yes the tube was a 12AX7 preamp tube...as to SS pre and power/output tubes, that was MusicMan back in the 70's...https://www.vintageguitar.com/12887/...hd-130-reverb/

great amps, heavy to haul...I see them around on occasion, but not often.

[WRGKMC]

 

Marshall did this in the 90s with their ValveState amps...they sounded great but were unreliable for extensive gigging [don't ask how I know ].

 

I have to say that Quilter has somehow figured out how to get their amps to simulate tube clipping pretty darned well... I was a skeptic for years until I spent time with one...then I bought it!

 

Marshall uses the tube in the front end. They use Mosfets in the power amp which use a drain and gate which are operate closer to a tube then a standard transistor amp.

 

Only the larger Valvestates have the preamp tubes. The smaller ones don't. I've had one of the 100W heads since they were new and have has zero problems with it gigging on a regular basis. Same with the two 15W versions I've owned. I Keep regular tabs on used and blown gear on eBay because I am a tech and buy units needing repair or refurb then resell them at higher costs. There may be 1 Valvestate per month that comes up and allot of those have clear signs of abuse. When you compare the Marshall to other amps, you quickly find there is easily 20 blown Fenders amps to every Marshall you find. Maybe there are fewer because the amps are worth more and therefore more profitable to repair them, but on any given day, Valvestate amps are much tougher to find.

 

From the listings I've seen I suspect the blown ones are caused by people connect extra speakers and overload the heads. The pots, jacks and switches aren't nearly as good as what you find in most tube amps of course. They are worse then any other SS amp being manufactured and even better then many of the low budget amps. You can do much worse when it comes to SS amps when it comes to tone and durability.

[WRGKMC]

 

Yes the tube was a 12AX7 preamp tube...as to SS pre and power/output tubes, that was MusicMan back in the 70's...https://www.vintageguitar.com/12887/...hd-130-reverb/

great amps, heavy to haul...I see them around on occasion, but not often.

 

I have a mint condition Music Man 65 Head form the 70's. Its even still got its chrome intact.

Heavy and durable, but it isn't one of my favorite amps. It comes close to a Fender amp, but in my opinion, they would have been better amps with a Tube front end, or even a Tube front end and SS power amp.

 

Power tubes with a SS preamp really doesn't do that much for tone. At least not with the preamp they chose. I think the biggest flaw is the preamp knob adds overdrive when you crank it up. If you dial back the master volume and turn up the channel volume it ads an overdrive which isn't that good. It doesn't sound like a tube amp and it doesn't sound like a decent overdrive pedal either. Its pretty unusable by todays standards, I'm able to use other pedals in front of the amp and run the head mostly clean but it would have been much better if they had a separate clean and driven channels instead of having the channel volume overdrive.

[WRGKMC]

So would I. The Vox Valvetronix amps use a 12AX7 as a power tube and then boost the signal with a SS circuit. That's about the best present option I know of. Clipping happens differently in tube and SS amps though. When a SS amp clips you get something like the red trace with the tops and bottoms of the waves chopped off. A tube behaves more like the yellow trace, rounding off the wave, more like compression. You'd need a circuit that creates both even harmonics and compression to get a tube-like sound.

 

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The biggest problems on early Transistor amps was the high levels of Crossover distortion in A/B amps which is composed of mainly 3rd order harmonics. A standard SS amp was NOT designed to be pushed to distort. They were designed to be run 100% clean. They later started adding overdrive circuits and drive channels where the preamp was overdriven. only some newer designs have played around trying to get the power amps to distort the way tube amps do. If you accidentally overdrove a SS amp you'd get what's called hard clipping which is musically unusable. Its very much like having a blown speaker.

 

Its also highly risky to push a SS amp that hard. Ne amps typically have voltages set where even at max volume you never reach the point where the transistors hard clip. In many vintage amps the power amps were weak enough where you could push the preamp hard enough to get the power transistors to reach the point of acting more like a switch then an amplifying device. This was typically short lived because there is such a small margin between hard clipping and blow outs, most amps didn't survive being pushed it hard clip. The power transistors would simply overheat, short out and smock the amp.

 

You can read the stories on the first SS Vox amps made by Thomas Organ were the Beatles used them on tour. They were blowing them up left and right when pushed to be loud enough for audiences to hear.

 

There were many SS amps that had drive channels which are as good as many drive pedals used today. They use the same circuits in many cases. The drive is done in the front end and the power amp runs 100% clean.

 

Tube amps typically have soft clipping which is favored by most players because it comes on as described, starting softly and becoming harder as the signal amplitude increases. They were dynamically responsive with a broad range of clip softly based on the strength of the input signal. Its has a "Wider" clip range based on playing dynamics and the player has a much broader range in how hard they can hit the notes and get the notes to clip. light attack, light clip, harder attack, harder clipping, hard slam, even harder clipping. Its a 1:1 experience which you only fully understand when using the gear.

 

Most SS, this clipping range is greatly reduced. You might be able to get something clean when playing light but by the time you get to a normal pick attack going you've already achieved maximum saturation. Digging in hard causes no additional clipping. The saturation curve is much more vertical then tubes can be.

 

A clean SS amp which goes from clean to clipping is darn near vertical. There is no ramp based on string dynamics, it goes from 100% clean to 100% square wave with nothing usable in between. Because of the unpredictable nature of the hard distortion when pushing an amp too hard, the amps were often unjustly hated by players. some had wonderful cleans but they hadn't been designed to prevent the hard clipping.

 

Most new amps on the other hand can be pushed as hard as possible, even using booster pedals and never achieve hard power amp clipping.

 

The other thing is the difference and strength of the gain stages. Tube amps typically have two or three gain stages in the preamp. 4 if there is a drive channel. The inverter is 1:1 and simply splits the signal into half waves and each power tube amplifies half the wave which combine to give the speaker a full wave.

 

A SS amp running at lower voltages and having amplification devices with smaller gain factors typically needs more gain stages in series to achieve the same loudness as a tube amp. You can easily have 4 gain stages fed into and inverter then medium power transistors feeding power transistors.

 

The gain of each stage is smaller so your dynamic range playing going from clean to full saturation is narrower.

 

Of course the more gain stages you have the more times the signal is replicated at a higher volume. The more times you make a copy of a copy the more details are lost and the more noise and distortion gets added to the signal

 

FETs have been around a long time can function nearly identical to how tubes operate except at lower volumes. They sound far less sterile and react well to the players strings. The Gate works much like a screen in a tube screen does allowing current flow. Mosfets are some of the best power transistors you can use because they produce allot of wattage, with low heat, low distortion and low noise.

 

The only thing I've seen that might wind up making a big change in amps is the NuTube technology recently introduced by Korg which is really interesting. if these can be used in series in place of transistors, and actually overdrive and compress like normal tubes do we may see an entirely new breed of low cost amps that have the power consumption and weight of a SS amp and the drive and tone of a tube amp without the need of high voltage transformers and fragile tubes.

 

Unfortunately there aren't too many amp manufacturers using them yet and I don't think i'll still be around when the patents expire where anyone can use them.

 

[daddymack]

I've had one of the 100W heads since they were new and have has zero problems with it gigging on a regular basis. Same with the two 15W versions I've owned. I Keep regular tabs on used and blown gear on eBay because I am a tech and buy units needing repair or refurb then resell them at higher costs. There may be 1 Valvestate per month that comes up and allot of those have clear signs of abuse. When you compare the Marshall to other amps, you quickly find there is easily 20 blown Fenders amps to every Marshall you find. Maybe there are fewer because the amps are worth more and therefore more profitable to repair them, but on any given day, Valvestate amps are much tougher to find.

 

From the listings I've seen I suspect the blown ones are caused by people connect extra speakers and overload the heads. The pots, jacks and switches aren't nearly as good as what you find in most tube amps of course. They are worse then any other SS amp being manufactured and even better then many of the low budget amps. You can do much worse when it comes to SS amps when it comes to tone and durability.

 

Obviously our experiences are very different. My V65R was in and out of the shop, due mainly to the circuit board's fragility, or maybe bad soldering, solder joints were the failures nearly every time. The amp apparently did not like being moved and bounced around in a car trunk...it was just too finicky for my workload. I was playing five nights a week, all over L.A. and Ventura counties, with three different bands back then, and after the fourth failure, I bought a Blues Junior and never looked back. I really liked the sound and weight of the V65R, but with the schedule I had to keep, it was not practical for me. I never ran an extension on it, and I had replaced the reverb tank [since repurposed] right before I retired it.

 

I will gladly send you the chassis, minus the tube [repurposed] if you will pay shipping and handling

[samal50]

 

Marshall did this in the 90s with their ValveState amps...they sounded great but were unreliable for extensive gigging [don't ask how I know ].

 

I have to say that Quilter has somehow figured out how to get their amps to simulate tube clipping pretty darned well... I was a skeptic for years until I spent time with one...then I bought it!

 

Which specific Quilter amp? All of them? including the one with 6" speakers or what?

[samal50]

But are the distorted or overdriven tones from such amps considered "natural" and not from a built in effect in the amp? I'm assuming everything really is an effect, right? But for the sake of argument, let's just say without the assistance of external pedals. In my case, I have the Peavey Rage 258. Its got really good distortion even without the assistance of a distortion pedal, but this distortion I would think is nothing more than a built in effect that can be controlled by twisting the knobs, just not in pedal form.

 

I'm also curious if using a solid state bass amp head (Peavey Minimax) to power up a cab "meant" for tube amps, say a Fender Bassbreaker, to use a guitar/synth with (BOSSY SY-300), could this setup work? Does a boost pedal like the Whirlwind "The Bomb" be of benefit, despite the setup isn't exactly 100% tube but more like a "hybrid" of sort lol.

 

 

Yes.

 

 

 

Some amps do have the ability to produce distorted or overdriven tones without any assistance from pedals - that includes both tube and solid state amps. You can generally get even "more" dirt from them with a boost pedal slamming the input of the amp harder, but that generally works best with tube amps and not solid state amps.

 

 

[daddymack]

 

Which specific Quilter amp? All of them? including the one with 6" speakers or what?

 

I have the Aviator head...but their technology is in all their amps. If you go with the small speaker models, there is also a direct out XLR jack so you can go to the board. I'm in the process of modding a 1x12 8ohm 120W cabinet to use with the Aviator head, may even make it into a combo amp down the road when I build a higher quality cabinet from birch ply

[Phil O'Keefe]

But are the distorted or overdriven tones from such amps considered "natural" and not from a built in effect in the amp? I'm assuming everything really is an effect' date=' right? But for the sake of argument, let's just say without the assistance of external pedals. In my case, I have the Peavey Rage 258. Its got really good distortion even without the assistance of a distortion pedal, but this distortion I would think is nothing more than a built in effect that can be controlled by twisting the knobs, just not in pedal form.[/quote']

 

The Peavey Rage is a solid-state amp through and through; there's very little difference between its onboard "distortion" and a distortion circuit mounted in a pedal. Both are going to clip the waveform (your guitar's signal) and thus cause it to sound distorted.

 

Tube amps also clip the waveform when they're driven beyond their design parameters (their clean amplification capabilities) but the onset of distortion tends to be more gradual, and is input-level dependent - which is why a boost pedal can push a tube amp into overdrive. Some tube amps are designed with an over-abundance of input gain in their preamps, which allows them to produce overdriven / distorted tones without any outside assistance. They're producing their distortion in a different way than a solid state amp or pedal does, but the end results are sonically similar.

 

There's also power amp distortion, which is something cranked-up low-wattage tube amps excel at, but that solid state amps don't really "do."

 

I'm also curious if using a solid state bass amp head (Peavey Minimax) to power up a cab "meant" for tube amps, say a Fender Bassbreaker, to use a guitar/synth with (BOSSY SY-300), could this setup work? Does a boost pedal like the Whirlwind "The Bomb" be of benefit, despite the setup isn't exactly 100% tube but more like a "hybrid" of sort lol.

 

The speaker cabinet can be a contributor to an overdriven / distorted sound, but that really depends on the speakers themselves. Some speakers start to break up "early" - with relative low power levels hitting them - while others tend to stay clean, nearly all the way up to their maximum rated power handling levels. Whether you hit them with a solid state or tube power amp doesn't really make a difference on speaker breakup. The boost pedal isn't really going to have much of an effect on the power amp; you might get a bit more volume when you engage the boost, depending on how you have everything gain-staged, but generally it's going to hit the preamp harder, and cause it to distort. That distortion will generally be more pleasing if the amp uses a tube preamp, and less so if it's a solid state preamp.

 

[WRGKMC]

 

Obviously our experiences are very different. My V65R was in and out of the shop, due mainly to the circuit board's fragility, or maybe bad soldering, solder joints were the failures nearly every time. The amp apparently did not like being moved and bounced around in a car trunk...it was just too finicky for my workload. I was playing five nights a week, all over L.A. and Ventura counties, with three different bands back then, and after the fourth failure, I bought a Blues Junior and never looked back. I really liked the sound and weight of the V65R, but with the schedule I had to keep, it was not practical for me. I never ran an extension on it, and I had replaced the reverb tank [since repurposed] right before I retired it.

 

I will gladly send you the chassis, minus the tube [repurposed] if you will pay shipping and handling

 

Yea, Maybe the fact it was a combo you had more issues. The vibrations of the speaker combined with an original solder job that wasn't so hot.

My 100W is a head so its likely protected from the vibrations. There again, I've abused the crap out of the two 15 waters I have. Hauled them around, cranked the hell out of them. One is a Valvestate and one is a newer MG. Neither have tubes so there's less circuitry there. The Reverb tank in the Valvestate hasn't held up very good. The tank is built into the chassis frame and I barely get any reverb out of it, probably from getting banged around in transport. The 8" speakers in those little amps aren't so hot either.

[WRGKMC]

But are the distorted or overdriven tones from such amps considered "natural" and not from a built in effect in the amp? I'm assuming everything really is an effect, right? But for the sake of argument, let's just say without the assistance of external pedals. In my case, I have the Peavey Rage 258. Its got really good distortion even without the assistance of a distortion pedal, but this distortion I would think is nothing more than a built in effect that can be controlled by twisting the knobs, just not in pedal form.

 

I'm also curious if using a solid state bass amp head (Peavey Minimax) to power up a cab "meant" for tube amps, say a Fender Bassbreaker, to use a guitar/synth with (BOSSY SY-300), could this setup work? Does a boost pedal like the Whirlwind "The Bomb" be of benefit, despite the setup isn't exactly 100% tube but more like a "hybrid" of sort lol.

 

 

 

 

Natural. There's nothing natural about distortion. In fact amps prior to the 60's were all pretty much designed to produce the cleanest tones possible. Then one guy decided to crank the crap out of an amp and record it. Shortly after someone heard it and built the first Fuzz pedals saying they produced a reed/sax type tone and from thee on its been a never ending quest for different types of drive tones. Prior to that you had players doing jazz, Country, rockabilly, Blues etc which were all done with really clean tones. Drive was an unwanted side effect.

 

Even all the early Fender amps, they didn't have distortion as a wanted effect they had distortion due to cost and quality factors. What happened is allot of players started pushing amps beyond their capability and peoples ears got accustomed to the hot overdriven sound. Anyone born during or after the 60's pretty much took distortion for granted and probably didn't realize it was the result of abusing an amp. Came with risks in the early days too. certain amps like the early Vox weren't built to be driven hard and often blew up in flames.

 

I owned one of the original Moserite amps that had a built in Fuzzrite distortion. The drive channels built into many amps are basically drive boxes built in, with some variations added. Many newer amps have gotten much more sophisticated and can have all kinds of amp modeling which includes different head types and cab sections. The speakers used in some of the Newer amps are full range speakers with a much flatter Hi Fi like response and all the mids and coloration come from the circuitry.

 

Older amps that have built in drive can be all over the map for quality. The oldest I currently own is probably my 1976 Sunn Concert Lead head. Its drive channel gets that drive tone Leslie West made famous overdriving a PA head at a recording session when his guitar amp blew up so he used a PA head instead, then used a channel volume to overdrive the power amp. Sunn added overdrive in later amps to get that Mississippi Queen sound from them. Sounds like garbage by todays standards. I have a Peavey Studio One amp with a distortion channel which is awful too. Maybe when the amp came out you could get some tones that sounded contemporary, but by todays standards its pretty bad. Same thing with A Fender M-80 head I have. The drive is one of the worst I've heard from a Fender amp.

 

On the other hand, the Blackface SS amps they came out right after those Red Knob series were one of the best SS drives going at that time. Very tube like in tone. Then they botched it adding Ice Pick tones to one of their earlier modeling amps in the mid 2000's only to fix the problems with their Mustang series. For some reason Fender has a really hard time getting and keeping a good formula for their SS amps. Marshall, Vox, others nail their tube counterparts extremely well. Fender, which pretty durable over all, seem to miss the mark more often then they nail it.

 

As far as bass amps go, often times they can sound pretty decent for clean rhythm or jazz guitar, but given the heavy duty speakers and circuits you wont get much drive from them unless you have one of the oddballs with Fuzz built in. (or use separate drive pedals). Some of the vintage Bass amps, like the Bassman were actually favored by guitarists as loud clean amps. You'll likely find most SS bass amps have EQ's contoured for bass guitar strings, not guitar strings.

 

The speakers often roll off at much of the high frequencies too. A typical guitar speaker will produce tones over 5Khz. A Bass speaker may be real strong on bass frequencies and produce very little over 3Khz. What highs they can produce may sound sterile and suffer from poor dynamic touch response or even have intermodulation distortion simply because the cone paper is extra heavy duty. What makes a bass guitar sound good is a tuned cab which takes advantage of the speaker resonance. Regular Guitar is mostly midrange and rolls those lows off. having too much Bass guitar resonance will interfere with a bass player and can even wind up being masked by a Bass player with a decent rig. each player in a band has to work within his own frequency ranges or risk being masked by others.

[onelife]

Still made, but they are like a grand.

 

 

[video=youtube;5sW7n8TNv1c]

These are not, but you can find one for like 4-5 hundred.

[video=youtube;WAXQKAE8Tbc]

 

 

I did a lot of recording - including bass - with a silverface Fender Champ. I cooked the original speaker and found an old Jensen 8" alnico radio speaker that just happened to be 3.6 Ohms and it sounded great for many years.

 

 

 

 

[samal50]

On 8/9/2018 at 11:16 AM, WRGKMC said:

You can find all kinds of 10's, 12's even 15" speakers for guitar but 8" are slim pickin's.

Just google and look for guitar 8's and you have maybe a dozen or so being made as replacements. The specs aren't all that impressive either. Check the specs and there isn't a clear superior speaker in the bunch.

 

I wish there was a decent one being made. My little Marshall combo I use for practice has one of those Park speakers in it (likely a branded import) and its lost its edge.

 

EV used to make a good powerful 8" replacement. Ampeg made them too long ago. Not sure about JBL.

 

Today you have a motley collection of basic replacements like Jenson Mod, Jensen Ceramic 8, Jensen Alnico, Celestion 8/15, Eminence Patriot 820H, Mojo Heritage 8, Guitar Warehouse 8" Weber 8" & Weber 8A125

 

I'm sure other manufacturers make at least one. All are between 15~25W and all have SPL levels in the low to mid 90's so they aren't overly efficient.

 

 

I have seen some amp manufacturers making some 2 X 8" and 4 X 8" speaker cabs. If the speakers had higher wattages it might be fun having something that light weight. With single speaker combo's I have two amps with 8's and they don't quite cut it for me for tone. I use them for practice but they are pretty thin sounding compared to a 12" or even an 10". A 10" can sound nearly as bold as a 12" and a 4 X 10" cab can sound amazing for driven tones. Gives you all the mid drive without Mole Bass tones muddying things up.

Randall has this 8" cab, what you think of the specs?

https://www.guitarcenter.com/Randall/RG8-35W-1x8-Guitar-Speaker-Cabinet.gc

I'm also curious if one can use powered pa speakers instead of traditional amp/cab combo if using pedals with digital modeling amps?

I don't want to complicate my self here with more gear. I do have a pair of Electro-Voice ZLX12P powered PA speakers already so would getting a "real" guitar amp/cab be out of the question for now? I actually don't even know why I had to buy the ISP Technologies Vector FS8 to begin with lol. I guess lack of knowledge for what I could use what for was the reason. 

I also have the peavey minimax bass amp and the Gallien-Krueger Neo 212 bass cab, which was mentioned that they could be used for guitar synth pedals as well. 

[samal50]

On 5/10/2019 at 11:38 AM, daddymack said:

 

I have the Aviator head...but their technology is in all their amps. If you go with the small speaker models, there is also a direct out XLR jack so you can go to the board. I'm in the process of modding a 1x12 8ohm 120W cabinet to use with the Aviator head, may even make it into a combo amp down the road when I build a higher quality cabinet from birch ply

I have no experience with Quilter but their 101 mini head is about half off today from musicians friend. Is it powerful enough? I think it's 100 watts clean but 50 watts when cranked I guess?

[daddymack]

4 hours ago, samal50 said:

I have no experience with Quilter but their 101 mini head is about half off today from musicians friend. Is it powerful enough? I think it's 100 watts clean but 50 watts when cranked I guess?

It is a 50W amp.

The amp's wattage does not 'change' when you crank it. You may not be using all the available output, but it always going to be a 50W amp.

I don't know if that model is going to get you enough power to work with a live drummer, but Quilter makes great SS amps [I have an older Aviator head...which for a 'die hard' tube guy was a leap of faith that I'm glad I took..but that amp is 100 per channel]. My experience with SS amps has been anything under 60W won't work with a drummer, and the more SS wattage you can muster, the better.

[samal50]

3 hours ago, daddymack said:

It is a 50W amp.

The amp's wattage does not 'change' when you crank it. You may not be using all the available output, but it always going to be a 50W amp.

I don't know if that model is going to get you enough power to work with a live drummer, but Quilter makes great SS amps [I have an older Aviator head...which for a 'die hard' tube guy was a leap of faith that I'm glad I took..but that amp is 100 per channel]. My experience with SS amps has been anything under 60W won't work with a drummer, and the more SS wattage you can muster, the better.

If getting a pair of the Quilter cabs, could it work? These was said to pair well with the Quilter 101 mini head:

https://www.quilterlabs.com/index.php/product/blockdock-10tc

The Quilter appealed to me compared to other heads. Was looking at the DV Mark too, but all seems to be at 50 watts for this class, as if it's the magic number lol. I guess for small to midsized venues it's fine?

[daddymack]

1st, sorry, I stand corrected, it is 100w, with the 50W setting for 'fullQ'...see my PM...

The neat thing with these is they have a 'nesting' cab, at least the only one I've seen did...Quilter/QSC make great stuff...

[spica]

funny question , awnswer is kind of TANG BAND w8 2145, in some ways it will keep up ,in some ways it will beat , in some ways it will lose.cheers.

[Mikeo]

On 11/15/2019 at 8:05 PM, daddymack said:

1st, sorry, I stand corrected, it is 100w, with the 50W setting for 'fullQ'...see my PM...

The neat thing with these is they have a 'nesting' cab, at least the only one I've seen did...Quilter/QSC make great stuff...

I'd love to own a Quilter, but I wasn't sure which one I wanted. I talked to the company and they said the 8" combo was a lot of amp.

I was thinking for like another 100-200 bucks the 10" and 12" speaker one would sound better with a deeper bass end. I definitely don't need the 12" HD one.

 

I never really played through  one either and I was gonna grab on sight unseen.

https://www.quilterlabs.com/index.php/series/micropro-mach-2/

[daddymack]

The Mach 2 Head is the way to go, IMHO...then you could use different cabs for different gigs. That said, I use my Aviator head with a 12" speaker cab, and I like it...😎

which coming from someone who has owned/owns Vox, Marshall [half stack and combo], Fenders [bF & HotRod], Blackstar, Crate [Vintage Club], Epiphones...this is the only SS amp I find that is 'gig worthy' and reasonably priced without going into the modeling thing.