TylerDeadPine wrote: Thu Mar 12, 2026 5:32 pm

Frankie99 wrote: Thu Mar 12, 2026 2:35 pm

eephus wrote: Thu Mar 12, 2026 9:55 am

They are great.

Yamaha G100 guitar heads/combo amps
Yamaha FG Series acoustic guitars
MIM Fenders
Avatar guitar cabs

Are avatar cabs good? I see them around and always equated them with low tier modeling stuff.

they're usually ply built and you could spec the speakers so when you see them used they can have anything in them, but usually pretty good. there was a point in the 2000s where it seemed everyone had one and they were always good, looked fine. Never upset to see one on a backline

They are totally solid. I have a few of them.

Dr Tony Balls wrote: I'm kind of of the opinion that cabs is cabs. About anything is good within the following parameters:

- this only applies to cabs for guitar, not bass.
- speaker choice is crucial. a good cab with bad speakers is a bad cab.
- there are limits to the geometry. an extremely small closed back cab is probably a bad idea.

Agree 100% on all counts.
Bass--it matters a lot, especially live. A lot of bass cabs really suck at projecting low end into the room.
Guitar--speakers matter a lot. Level of damping and closed vs open has an effect, matter of taste. The rest, eh.

Dr Tony Balls wrote:

losthighway wrote: Fri Mar 13, 2026 11:26 am

Dr Tony Balls wrote: Fri Mar 13, 2026 11:16 am In an open backed cab I think dimensions make even less of a difference.

Which brings me back to my lingering suspicion that a different speaker could change my Blues Jr from "handy little guy" to amazing.

1,000,010%

Put Jensen Blackbirds in an Avatar 2x12" that was layin' around
Damped the inside of the cab with hard foam (very slightly reflective, but less than wood by a bunch)
Closed the back on it (was semi-open)

Have had a '66 Bassman since early 90s...great on bass, always a little spiky on guitar.

Through those speakers, with those cab mods?
The Bassman sounds perfect on guitar and baritone.

I'm avoiding trying Blackbirds in the other old Fenders I have ('66 Super Reverb and Vibrolux).
The speakers are expensive, and it'll just make me wanna keep 'em...I haven't used them in a year at least now that the Bassman sounds great.
I do have a 2x10" cab that I'll put Blackbirds in when I get around to it and have the dough.

Anyway, I don't think Blackbirds are underappreciated, but I like these an awful lot.

Speaking of cheap Avatar cabs and guitar speakers, I have a load of both because I figured out that I could buy a used Avatar cab already loaded with the speakers I wanted for cheaper than buying the same speakers new.

For a while I was buying them for $150 - $250
on Craigslist (at the time) or Guitar Center used (for cheap shipping) and getting Celestions (like, Blues and stuff) or Weber speakers out of the deal.

guitar through closed back amps kinda always sounds like my ears are clogged up. I think it's because I only had open back amps for guitar until I was like 30.

For most of what I do I have a couple microphones that always work for certain instruments, but for some reason I always want to use other microphones in their place. Maybe just to justify having them, but it always leads to inefficiencies.

But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve fucked around with mic after mic trying to get a vocal sound that responded like I needed and an Electro Voice RE16 ended up saving the day.

Like the RE20 is obviously a great microphone, and any time I switch it out in favor of something else it’s been purely out of boredom, but there’s something about the RE16 really kicks ass. Its low end is more tailored, so I bet it just pops more.

Honorable mention to the Beyer M69, which is just as good as the RE16. The M69 is to the M88 as the RE16 is to the RE20 and it would be difficult to do better than any of those mics without spending a bunch of money.

I started buying up RE16s when I could, but none of the others sounded as good as this one I had, so I stopped.

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2026 12:44 am Honorable mention to the Beyer M69, which is just as good as the RE16. The M69 is to the M88 as the RE16 is to the RE20 and it would be difficult to do better than any of those mics without spending a bunch of money.

This analogy gets a chef's kiss.

losthighway wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2026 12:24 pm

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2026 12:44 am Honorable mention to the Beyer M69, which is just as good as the RE16. The M69 is to the M88 as the RE16 is to the RE20 and it would be difficult to do better than any of those mics without spending a bunch of money.

This analogy gets a chef's kiss.

I have maintained for a very long time that I'd rather have a single M69 than 3 SM57's any day of the week. It weirdly gets little love because it's big brother is such a great mic, but it really should be a "you see it everywhere" mic.

EDIT: just went to check pricing on these and had no idea they had been discontinued. I think they were about $250 in the early 2000's when we bought a few at the Chicago Cultural Center. They are going for between 4-600 now used and that I can't get behind that pricing at all. I was expecting to see like $200 on the used market for a TG version. Great mics, but at that price I'd just buy more M88's. Discontinuing this mic is a huge mistake and a failure of Beyers marketing dept.

Well with the M69 and RE16 you can still get them for around $200, but you just have to wait. I mean, $400 for a mic you use all the time isn’t terrible but at that point I would still get something else. It sucks that boomers just park their old stuff for a bunch of money though.

Maybe if Reverb charged upfront for listings that didn’t sell within a given amount of time? That might encourage sellers to be more sensible. But with the way Reverb skims off of the top they totally benefit from that horseshit and would never do anything about it.