Demeter Silent Speaker Chamber?

Gerald Menke · Post by **Gerald Menke** » 14 Jul 2009 7:01 am

Hello,

I have been doing a fair amount of internet sessions lately, but a number of factors are making things a bit difficult lately, one, my day job and family commitments mean I have to track in the evenings, when my baby and wife are in bed. To make matters worse, my tiny music room means on some quieter tracks the amount of racket from my feet on the pedals is unacceptable. I am considering trying one of the Demeter silent speaker chambers, basically a driver in a tuned cabinet, with a mic stand mounted in there. Any of you all tried one?

Would appreciate any feedback on this unit or any other solutions you pro home recordists have found for tracking late at night. I refuse to go direct, just cannot stand that sound...

Thanks for reading my post,

Gerald

Steve Hinson · Post by **Steve Hinson** » 14 Jul 2009 9:39 am

Gerald,I bought the Demeter cab from a guitar player friend who HATED it... there is quite a bit of room in the top of the cab for"comb filtering"...short reflections which cause kind of an ugly midrange that can't be eq'd out...he told me the whole story before I bought it...as per usual I bought it anyway,thinking I could fix it...I went to Sam Ash and bought some Auralex to put around the sides of the cab...it helped some but didn't completely fix it...that said,I keep it with my cartage stuff and have it delivered if I'm going to be working in a studio where space is at a premium...most engineers tell me the Demeter doesn't sound as good as a regular cab,but sometimes it's that or direct...in a town full of studios that used to be old houses,sometimes it's better than nothing...it has at least paid for itself...I put a D-120F in mine...Russ Pahl and Mike Johnson use old cartage trunks for their iso cabs...I don't know how they like them...I always forget to ask them...

Chris Tarrow · Post by **Chris Tarrow** » 14 Jul 2009 10:23 am

I have used it and not liked it and it is by no means silent so it may not suit your situation.

I've been having better results with a Weber Mass power soak and a Voodoo Labs Cabtone, the latter no longer made but you may be able to find one on eBay and there are other cabinet emulators out there. I also have Altiverb which makes things a lot more convincing. AudioEase just came out with a cab simulator, which I have yet to try...

Good luck!

http://www.tedweber.com/atten.htm
http://www.amptone.com/dmccabtone.htm
http://www.audioease.com

Mark van Allen · Post by **Mark van Allen** » 15 Jul 2009 11:24 am

Gerald, rather than deal with less-than-stellar speaker issues, have you thought of tracking through a good preamp? The old Peavey ProFex II or TranstubeFex do a great job for steel, though they didn't impress me for guitar. The Roland GP-100 is really sweet for both, some very good preamp sounds, very flexible, great effects and easy to track even through headphones. I take a GP-100 and TransTubeFex to all the recording sessions I do, and end up tracking Pedal Steel through the TranstubeFex maybe 90% of the time versus micing an amp.

Gerald Menke · Post by **Gerald Menke** » 16 Jul 2009 7:19 am

Thanks very much for your reply Mark, I am interested in trying to find a way to mic up my amps as I invested some bread in a Neumann and an AEA ribbon mic, as I just love the sound of air moving. But I see the writing on the wall that maybe I will have to try going direct for now. I have a Boogie V-twin and an Roger Linn Adrenalinn that I will try into my Lexicon reverb unit, stereo into the APIs, see how that sounds. I appreciate your suggestion.

Gerald