 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuge, and I'm here today with musicteacher.com. And in this video, we're going to be taking a look at open back versus closed back cabs inside of Cab Rig. I'm working out how to choose the perfect cab for your sound. All the tones you're going to be hearing are coming from the Department 10 Dual Drive. So I'm using this as a clean and overdriven preamp with all the cab tones coming from Cab Rig. When you're dialing in your perfect guitar sound and building your dream guitar rig, it's really easy to overlook cabinet choice as a big factor in tone. But the type of guitar cabinet you choose can make a big difference. The two types that we're going to check out in this video through Cab Rig are open back and closed back cabinets. So the big difference here is how they project sound. So you could put the same speaker in both types of cabinets with the same microphone in front and the same guitar amp. And they'll sound drastically different and we're going to explore why that is. So an open back cabinet is a guitar cabinet that has a panel on the back that is not there or is removable. So you can actually see the speaker or part of the speaker from the rear of the unit. The big advantage to an open back cabinet is that sound actually spills out the rear of the cabinet, which actually fills the room slightly differently and it gives the guitar a more open and natural sound. This is especially great on stage. You can really fill out the sound with an open back cabinet. Some players prefer an open back cabinet because it doesn't overly concentrate the lows. It actually allows the guitar to breathe a little bit more, but this is also subjective to how you're EQing your guitar amp. A closed back cabinet on the other hand is a completely sealed cabinet. So you can't see the speaker from the rear. The big difference with having the rear of the cabinet sealed is that the sound becomes more directional. What this does is it actually focuses the mids a little bit more and increases the bass response. So instead of a big open sound, you have a much more directional but tight sound. So this works particularly well. If you're playing heavy music and you want the guitar to be very focused closed back cabinets in a live environment can be slightly trickier to hear because of the directional nature of the speaker and open back cabinet on stage will give you a much wider spread of your sound. A closed back cabinet will be more directional. But if you're playing with a cabinet mic'd up, this problem can be worked around. So when you're trying to decide which cabinet type is for you, it's all very subjective down to what tones you like, what gear you're using and how you EQ your amp. In my personal opinion, I prefer the sound of open back cabs. If you're playing especially with a mid heavy British rock sound, the open back cab really allows things to ring. But if you're playing heavy music with a very focused mid range, those closed back cabs can make things sound super tight closed back cabs. I think also were great for very percussive clean playing. So if you're playing funk music and you want everything to be really snappy, a closed back cab can really give you that tight sound. So as I mentioned, I'm getting all the cabinet tones from cab rigs. So if we come over now to my DAW, here's how we've got this set up. So my power amp is a 6R6 type. Got the resonance on three in the presence on four and I'm keeping the drive at minimum. I'm using a medium room in mono, but I'm keeping this very low. This is just to have a little bit of ambience. I don't want too much ambience here to take away from the obvious sound of the cabs. The master EQ section. I've got completely flat. I've got a high cut down to 12 and a half K and a low cut at about 150 Hertz just as if as if we were processing this in a studio just to kind of shape the lows and highs. Likewise, I'm using a 67 condenser. Now, obviously, mic choice is very important as well. You can experiment with different mics to your own need. The 67 condenser is quite a balanced microphone. So it's great for this test. And it's also sitting on axis. The cabinets I'm going to be using are the two by 12 classic USA Openback and the two by 12 classic USA Closedback. So all the concepts we talk about with open and closed back cabs can be applied to all the other cabs available here, such as the one by 12 Openback. That will obviously have the same characteristic as the two by 12 Openback, but with a slight different voicing because it's a one by 12. So these two cabs here are pretty much the same cab with an open and closed back. So they make for a very obvious comparison. All the tones you're going to be hearing are the dual drive. So I've got this set up with a clean and an overdrive sound. My EQ is set like this. I'm going to be tweaking this slightly as we go through the bass is going to stay where it is at 10 o'clock and the treble is going to stay where it is at two o'clock. What I am going to be doing is I'm going to be doing variations on British and American clean and drive sounds with the two cabs so you can hear the extremes. So when we do a British sound, the ISF is going to be on full and the mid is going to be set to three o'clock. When I do an American sound, I'm going to roll that mid back to 10 o'clock and put the ISF all the way down. These are the only EQ tweaks I'm going to make as we go along just to simulate British and American sounds. So I'm going to start with an American sound. I'm going to play a little bit clean and I'm going to move back and forth between the open back and the closed back cab so you can hear the difference. So now I'm going to do the same test with British voice EQ. So I'm setting that mid back to three o'clock and the ISF all the way to the British side. I'm going to play a bit more now and flip back and forth between open back and closed back. So that's the difference in sound between both American clean and British cleans with open back versus closed back cabs. Now I'm going to go back to those American voice settings and I'm actually going to go to the drive channel now and we're going to do the same thing again. So I'm just going to play a little bit and flip between the cab types. Finally, I'm going to reset the pedal now back to the British EQ settings. So the mid back up at three o'clock and the ISF all the way up on full. I'm going to play now with a British drive sound and flip back and forth between the cab types. So there you go. That is the difference between open back and closed back cabinets with British versus American voice tones. You can use this as a jumping off point when designing your own tones. Once you've realized if your voice is more British or more American, you can then choose the right cab and the right mic choice to suit that sound. As I mentioned, I have kept the EQ as flat as possible throughout this video with the exception of the obvious mid range shift that we've been doing from British to American. When you're dining in your own tone, you'll also be using some more extreme EQ shifts as well. So bear that in mind with the sounds. Let me know down below in the comments if you prefer the sound of an open back versus a closed back cab for which voice of sound and why. And don't forget to check out black star amplification on YouTube for more videos just like this. If you're looking for guitar teacher in your local area, please head to musicteacher.com. Check out the database of music teachers all around the country waiting to help you guys out. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you soon.