Choose a back style:

Getting the correct back type is one of the most important parts of picking the right cab for you. Here we have tried to demonstrate the basic difference between the four main types of backs.

The main problem with this type of test is that it is hard to truly capture the feeling of being "in the room" with a cab. To do our best we have mixed a close mic'd SM57 and OC18 along with an OC18 in the room. When playing "in the room" the speaker will interact more with your guitar (depending on the room, guitar and volume) and this is where the fun really starts to happen.

The basic guidance here would be, closed back will generally help keep the low end nice and responsive, so for higher gain and heavier styles closed back is generally more well suited. You'll tend to find more control especially in palm muted sections and an overall fuller sound. For open back you'll tend to get a more open, ambient sound. Depending on where you stand or where you place the mic you may well find more low end (although generally not standing in front of the cab), but the low end will be a bit less focussed and less controllable. Open back will tend to fill the room a bit more and add a bit more of an ambience, almost like a low level reverb.

Going a bit more in to the audio side of things here, or how we did this. For the graph, we used results from a OC18 condenser mic placed in the room, but for the audio we use some close mic SM57 and a close OC18 mixed in as well to fill the sound out a little... so the graph will probably look a bit different from what you normally see on a frequency plot for speakers, but that is because they are normally for close mic'd speakers.