fdesalvo
Well-known member
Avatar did a phenominal job with this cab. Matches the Deuce pretty well. They use the same tolex. Only the pattern of the grill cloth was different. The corner protectors are metal, but I went with all black hardware and it looks great.
A word on this cab - I have been looking at Avatar products as a "cheaper" alternative to Boogie's offerings. After receiving this cab (2 days after I ordered) I realized how wrong my mindset was. This is a flawless cab featuring great attention to detail and assembled without shortcuts. There are no signs of a pneumatic nail gun's use - this cab was glued and screwed - just the way I'd do it.
The sound is phenominal - I had a closed back 212 Recto cab and it was very boxy and directional. With the Avatar's semi-open back design, I get a very lush and rich tone with a wide spacial spread - I moved all over the room and there was barely any "beaminess". It's actually stuffed with 2 of their H60's - broken in V30's and they sound very smooth instead of spikey. There is also a load of bottom end if you want to dial it in.
I didn't plan on this cab making it into my live rig, but I'm enjoying the tone of the Deuce so much more through this than either of my 412s.
Here's the pedalboard -
The Deuce loves OD/Fuzz pedals. The Musket is the first fuzz pedal I've ever loved - very tight clear, and focused; you can loosen up the bass for a more traditional Muff tone by rolling back the Focus pot. It produces an amazing lead tone that is very unique and highly useable. While I won't use it 100% of the time, it's good to know when I want that tone, it's right there.
The Timmy resembles an old Blues Breaker pedal in my opinion - and that's a good thing. It is perfect for a little bit of grit in your tone, giving you some serious TX styled blues action or crisp, sparkling breakup for chords.
The Mad Professor Deep Blue Delay is the PERFECT delay pedal for lead guitarists; it's almost dynamic in it's responsiveness and is tuned to play nice with distortion. Perfect for adding ambience to your tone.
The space next to the Musket is for a Green Ringer clone I'm working on - another lil bit o' seasoning for the rig.
You'll also notice the voodooman footswitch which allowed me to free up another spot on my board for another pedal. :mrgreen:
I had a snake made up to route my input, footswitch, and FX loop cables. Now I only have one cable going from my amp to the pedalboard. I color coded the jacks on the patchbay, amp head, and cables. Super fast setup! I have some clear heatshrink on its way that will over the barrel of the plugs, protecting the colored tape. I later replaced the temp duct tape on one plug/jack with yellow tape haha.
Here's what's under the deck - moving the PP2 under the mounting plates freed up serious real estate, but it forced me to come up with a solution for plugging in the power cable. I didn't want a cable coming out from beneath the mounting plates. The Line6 Relay's power supply was aggravating me because it mounts perpendicular to the power strip, meaning it ended up being too tall for the aluminum mounting plate to go back into place. I busted out the high power soldering gun and made a lil' adjustment
. I also ended up "adusting" the plug end. The straight tip was protruding too far, so I spliced in a 90* tip, allowing me to move the wireless receiver further back onto the plate.
I remembered I had an IEC outlet laying about, so I measured and whipped out the nibblers to cut the mounting plate.
Perfect! Now to connect it to the PP2 -
I used one of my unused IEC cables and it worked like a charm -
An older shot of my board before rearranging the layout - you can see the added outlet on the upper left plate.
An overview of the board before the Musket was added. The MPS boards are the only ones I've found that have a true, two-tier setup. No more angling my toes to avoid hitting other pedals like on my Pedaltrain. One caveat - the power supply on the MPS is NOISY AS HELL. It's pure junk - toss it and use a PP2 or yor favorite power brick.
A word on this cab - I have been looking at Avatar products as a "cheaper" alternative to Boogie's offerings. After receiving this cab (2 days after I ordered) I realized how wrong my mindset was. This is a flawless cab featuring great attention to detail and assembled without shortcuts. There are no signs of a pneumatic nail gun's use - this cab was glued and screwed - just the way I'd do it.
The sound is phenominal - I had a closed back 212 Recto cab and it was very boxy and directional. With the Avatar's semi-open back design, I get a very lush and rich tone with a wide spacial spread - I moved all over the room and there was barely any "beaminess". It's actually stuffed with 2 of their H60's - broken in V30's and they sound very smooth instead of spikey. There is also a load of bottom end if you want to dial it in.
I didn't plan on this cab making it into my live rig, but I'm enjoying the tone of the Deuce so much more through this than either of my 412s.
Here's the pedalboard -
The Deuce loves OD/Fuzz pedals. The Musket is the first fuzz pedal I've ever loved - very tight clear, and focused; you can loosen up the bass for a more traditional Muff tone by rolling back the Focus pot. It produces an amazing lead tone that is very unique and highly useable. While I won't use it 100% of the time, it's good to know when I want that tone, it's right there.
The Timmy resembles an old Blues Breaker pedal in my opinion - and that's a good thing. It is perfect for a little bit of grit in your tone, giving you some serious TX styled blues action or crisp, sparkling breakup for chords.
The Mad Professor Deep Blue Delay is the PERFECT delay pedal for lead guitarists; it's almost dynamic in it's responsiveness and is tuned to play nice with distortion. Perfect for adding ambience to your tone.
The space next to the Musket is for a Green Ringer clone I'm working on - another lil bit o' seasoning for the rig.
You'll also notice the voodooman footswitch which allowed me to free up another spot on my board for another pedal. :mrgreen:
I had a snake made up to route my input, footswitch, and FX loop cables. Now I only have one cable going from my amp to the pedalboard. I color coded the jacks on the patchbay, amp head, and cables. Super fast setup! I have some clear heatshrink on its way that will over the barrel of the plugs, protecting the colored tape. I later replaced the temp duct tape on one plug/jack with yellow tape haha.
Here's what's under the deck - moving the PP2 under the mounting plates freed up serious real estate, but it forced me to come up with a solution for plugging in the power cable. I didn't want a cable coming out from beneath the mounting plates. The Line6 Relay's power supply was aggravating me because it mounts perpendicular to the power strip, meaning it ended up being too tall for the aluminum mounting plate to go back into place. I busted out the high power soldering gun and made a lil' adjustment
. I also ended up "adusting" the plug end. The straight tip was protruding too far, so I spliced in a 90* tip, allowing me to move the wireless receiver further back onto the plate.
I remembered I had an IEC outlet laying about, so I measured and whipped out the nibblers to cut the mounting plate.
Perfect! Now to connect it to the PP2 -
I used one of my unused IEC cables and it worked like a charm -
An older shot of my board before rearranging the layout - you can see the added outlet on the upper left plate.
An overview of the board before the Musket was added. The MPS boards are the only ones I've found that have a true, two-tier setup. No more angling my toes to avoid hitting other pedals like on my Pedaltrain. One caveat - the power supply on the MPS is NOISY AS HELL. It's pure junk - toss it and use a PP2 or yor favorite power brick.
