Upward firing cabs – Views welcome!

[Gitterbug]

Disclaimer: As most followers know, I’m making – and selling – TOOB and Metro speaker cabs, as a retirement hobby rather than business. By the end of this week, there will be 730 samples bearing a serial number. On top of that, countless prototypes from 2007 onwards.

One of the hobby horses within the hobby is omnidirectionality. While my tubular, baffle-less enclosures have an unusually broad projection, I started experimenting with upward-firing cabs quite early. Recent desktop archeology reveals that erect Ur-Toobs date back to 2010: decades after Johnny Smith’s Fountain of Sound but years before Acoustic Image’s Upshot bass cab.

In 2012-2014 I was playing in a four-horn septet – a mini big band in fact. An upright cab in the middle of the band was audible to everybody and perfect for four-to-the-bar comping. For solos, I schemed a foot-switchable second cab aimed at the audience. Another orthopedic operation intervened and I had to quit the band. The idea prevailed.

Today, all my bass cabs and all open-back guitar cabs come with extra upright legs. Double bass players have always appreciated the option. Apart from big bands, intimate jazz clubs and theater pits would be a natural habitat for guitar versions. Recently, I’ve gotten positive feedback from big band guitarists, especially from the UK.

Many guitarists, Mike Stern for example, are known to be tired of the directionality of traditional cabs. I have a few such customers. For Elden Kelly, an acoustic guitar virtuoso and multi-instrumentalist now living in Memphis, I have produced an upright-only, telescopic 12” cab. It fits under an airline seat in transport mode. He played an upright Metro 6.5FR II on the 2022 NAMM main stage. Our collaboration is likely to continue. One of my projects is a sound-deflecting grill – an acoustic Fresnel lens. 3D printing makes complex, curved shapes possible. Yet, unit cost for a 12” grill is seriously three-digit. Own printer might be the solution, but would volumes ever justify the investment?

Pardon this lengthy introduction. My question is simple: is anybody with experience or opinion re. upright cabs willing to chime in? PCJazz? Pingu?

[Skip Ellis]

There was an old studio guy from Chicago wandered into my music store back in the late 70's or thereabouts with one of those Fountain of Sound deals - I seem to remember it being built by Ampeg but I may be wrong. He had an old really nasty ES175 but the dude could play.

[Tom Wright]

I love the old Fender tilt-back legs, and installed them on my large cabinet. My twin-8 cab has a support in back to lean at 45%. Even my little 8" cube has a lift to tilt somewhat.

I want to hear what I sound like.

[sgosnell]

I've used my RE cab that way, lying on a furniture-moving dolly to allow for the connector from the head. It was ok, but eventually not worth the trouble, to me. I've tried my Toob Metro 6 BG in the vertical position, but it cut the bass too much for my taste. I should try it again, just for grins.

Edit: I just tried it again, with multiple guitars, using my Quilter Superblock US. I don't care for it. There's a nasalness that I just can't get rid of, even by twisting knobs to the limit of rotation. On its side, the sound is fine, and 6.5" speakers aren't all that directional anyway. It might be different for larger speakers/cabinets, but I have no more to try.

[pcjazz]

Upright cabs rule in a big band rehearsal setting, especially when the band is seated in a hollow square. As the (mostly) rhythm guitarist I can keep the amp volume low (and the bass cut) and still be clearly heard. At first I put the Toob in the centre of the room but some commented that it was disorienting to hear the guitar coming from a location other than the guitarist, the more so when the acoustic sound of the guitar was coming from the guitar’s location, not the speaker’s. So now I put it slightly in front of me, to my right, close to the piano. In rehearsal this works for amplified solos too, but on the gig I prefer to point the speaker towards the audience if there are guitar solos in the programme. Then I will use a larger cabinet depending on the size of the room.

I was worried at first that different ceiling heights and materials might make a big difference with the upfiring speaker, but this hasn’t been a problem except once in a high school gym where the acoustics were so awful that nobody could hear anybody in another section, let alone the guitar.

i haven’t tried using the Toob upright outdoors yet and probably won’t unless there is a decent band shell. We have an outdoor gig coming up in a couple of months …

[Gitterbug]

Thanks, Paul! Without a ceiling, the sound gets lost in space. Sounds like the gym's ceiling was too high. Your experience is valuable. Mine is that if you place the cab right in front of you, you tend to turn the volume too low for the rest of the venue.

[pcjazz]

Thanks, Paul! Without a ceiling, the sound gets lost in space. Sounds like the gym's ceiling was too high. Your experience is valuable. Mine is that if you place the cab right in front of you, you tend to turn the volume too low for the rest of the venue.

If I can hear it over the piano then the rest of the band can too.

[pingu]

my experience is mainly in small
or medium sized rooms with a fairly
limited space for the 4 or 5 piece band , normal ceiling height

I had trouble with getting an even spread of guitar sound to everyone
in the band and audience

using a metro BG upfiring , placed somewhere
in the middle of the ‘stage’ has worked great witheveryone in the band hearing a similar amount of guitar ….

I think I’m basically attempting to achieve an omnidirectional pattern for the speaker , and my setup attempts to get close to this ….

I was inspired by a bose portable bluetooth speaker I use which is great a filling the room evenly

(I haven’t found it to produce any less
bottom end than a conventional arrangement BTW)

I also do a jam session in a bigger room maybe 50’ long
and for this a conventional amp
on the floor works better at getting the sound to the back of the room

so it’s ‘horses for courses’
in my experience

[marcwhy]

I've linked this before; here's some technical info from another "upward firing" cab company. I've owned a bass and PA speaker from them; great, large sounds (and you can guess the design challenge for most of us: where do I put my amp?! Easy fix: use it as an extension speaker!).

[customxke]

[Cunamara]

I have always wanted to have the sensation of being surrounded by sound, not of my sound coming from "over there." When I play acoustic jams, that's the sense I get. As soon as one is plugged into an amp, that changes. Almost all amps and cabs are designed in such a way that the sound is "over there" and directional. Often we talk about the sound on the stage needing to be bad so that the sound for the audience is good, but isn't that an admission of failure in terms of amp and cab design?

I haven't tried upfiring speakers other than plunking my amps/cabs on their backs, and since they aren't designed for that it doesn't work well. I was intrigued by the Fountain of Sound notion by Ampeg, but have never heard one. What Gitterbug is proposing falls into that; the Sonusphere is news to me. I have an AI amp, but have never tried one of their cabs. The Toob compactness is impressive and it might be useable in both orientations, unlike most other designs.

[sgosnell]

Zenith Radio offered upfiring speakers back in the '60s, much like that Teisco posted above. My father was a Zenith dealer and I had a Zenith stereo with those speakers while I was in college. ISTR they sounded rather good.

Now I recall they were called "circle of sound". Nice marketing term, I guess, and they did disperse the sound in a circle.

[Gitterbug]

I believe that some 50 years ago several HiFi brands offered up-shooters with a trumpet-shaped acoustic lens on top, to disperse the sound. They have largely disappeared, even if normal 2 x stereo only offers a fairly narrow "sweet spot." I saw something similar at the first Mannheim Guitar Summit in 2018. To me, such designs appear bulky, costly and vulnerable for life on the road. B&O have done a lot of work around smaller acoustic lenses, offer them for both home audio and car HiFi applications and, naturally, have patent protection for their findings.

[Hammertone]

Seems like down-firing speakers would do the job as well, as used by Henriksen, AI and others.

[Cunamara]

Seems like down-firing speakers would do the job as well, as used by Henriksen, AI and others.

My understanding of acoustical physics is limited; it seems like this might introduce a lot of variables. For example, it's going to sound different on carpeting versus a marble floor versus a wood floor; the structure under the floor may be resonant and emphasize certain frequencies; and would that work as well for high frequencies as for low? The amps you mentioned seem to use a down-firing woofer and horizontally firing mid-range and/or tweeters. At least in the case of AI, those amps tend to be aimed at bassists; does it work as well for guitar with its much higher fundamental frequencies? I have never tried a proper up-firing or down-firing speaker cab.

I was really interested by rpguitar's experiment with the Bose S1, in hopes of a system that could get away from the point source feeling of current amplification. However, EQ issues seemed to be significant with that system, since it's not designed specifically for electric guitar. It seems to be aimed more at busking. The Sonusphere speaker system seems to be trying to do the same thing. The Toob idea of a small canister-sized cabinet with an open back (providing some down-firing effect) combined with an up-firing orientation seems interesting, although I would wonder about phase cancellation issues in that case as well as the effects of different kinds of floors.

[jackalGreen]

Well, not an answer to the great Gitterbug's initial question, but as happy as I am with the Metro 6.5BG, I'd love to add an upward-firing cab (maybe in 12") for use on keyboards, including a Hammond clonewheel through the EH Lester-K simulator.

Failing that, I'm just a few short of pulling the trigger on a FRFR 12...so, perhaps it amounts to the same thing, since I've found Gitterb's gear works for me perfectly for my needs. A breath of fresh air from years of doing the same-old.

I don't think I would seek out 90-degree-upward-tilt angle for my guitar "playing," but that's just because I'm not a real guitar player yet....

But for Hammond clonewheel and electric pianos (real ones as well as emulations), plus acoustic piano clones, that would be just the thing.

[rpjazzguitar]

My

I was really interested by rpguitar's experiment with the Bose S1, in hopes of a system that could get away from the point source feeling of current amplification. However, EQ issues seemed to be significant with that system, since it's not designed specifically for electric guitar. It seems to be aimed more at busking. The Sonusphere speaker system seems to be trying to do the same thing. The Toob idea of a small canister-sized cabinet with an open back (providing some down-firing effect) combined with an up-firing orientation seems interesting, although I would wonder about phase cancellation issues in that case as well as the effects of different kinds of floors.

I'm currently back to my old JC55, but I have a louder gig this week and may bring the Mackie SRM350, Yamaha mixer and Little Jazz to make sure I can keep up.

As far as lack of directionality, I've done two gigs with a JBL line array system (the one with 7 inputs). My rig was Comins GCS-1 > Boss ME80 > Little Jazz > JBL line array. Some of the time, all I took from the ME80 was reverb. The LJ significantly reduced bass and slightly reduced treble.

I thought it sounded great. Hard to describe the lack of directionality. The sound seemed like it was all around - in a very comfortable way. The band was kb, bass, conga, guitar and 3 vocals (the players singing) with everybody through the PA. I mention that because I have heard that it doesn't work to have only some of the instruments through the PA. If you do that, at the back of the room the balance is off because the line array projects the sound further. Meaning, it may not work to use a line array as a guitar amp, unless everybody is in the line array.

[Danny W.]

My understanding of acoustical physics is limited; it seems like this might introduce a lot of variables. For example, it's going to sound different on carpeting versus a marble floor versus a wood floor; the structure under the floor may be resonant and emphasize certain frequencies; and would that work as well for high frequencies as for low? The amps you mentioned seem to use a down-firing woofer and horizontally firing mid-range and/or tweeters. At least in the case of AI, those amps tend to be aimed at bassists; does it work as well for guitar with its much higher fundamental frequencies? I have never tried a proper up-firing or down-firing speaker cab.

I've been using AI cabs for more than twenty years and have played through them on almost every surface imaginable. For the most part they behave no differently on hard or carpeted surfaces from any other cabinet. The only exception I've found is that they are really bad on dirt/grass/gravel--for the exactly two gigs that I've done on those surfaces in all these years I brought a 4' x 4' piece of Masonite in a lawn trash bag and had no problems. Although AI cabs have been very popular with bass players the amps are full range and will handle any instrument. The Corus model, which uses a paper cone woofer with a little less bass extension and a modified crossover for more forward projection, has been popular among jazz guitarists. AI amps are very uncolored. Since I prefer to hear my archtops without embellishment, I like this, but it causes some to label them "sterile."

One of the benefits I’ve found to the down firing speaker is that I have better stage coverage while still having good feedback control. After using a Coda awhile with a swing choir I tried a Razor’s Edge NY8, My typical stage location was somewhat in front of them; they soon were complaining they could no longer hear me. We tried a variety of fixes but the one that worked was going back to the Coda.

As for Git's OP, while I've never had an upfiring speaker, for the past couple of years I've been using an AI Doubleshot, which has a pair of opposed 10" side-firing speakers and a front-firing 5". The first time I used it with my big band the bass player did a Linda Blair, swiveling his head around to see what was going on behind him, saying “That little thing sounds terrific,” followed by the drummer giving it a big thumb’s up. At the intermission of my first concert with it the first trumpet said “Do you have a new amp—we can hear you really, really well.” He’s worked with me for twenty-three years and told me he thought it was my best on-stage sound so far. The big tradeoff with this cab is the very low sensitivity. My volume settings with the AI Clarus SL-R need to be much higher than on any other AI cab, none of which is highly sensitive. Luckily, the amp’s 500 watts into 4 ohms is adequate to make it as loud as I can stand, and I always wear earplugs.



Danny W.

[pingu]

1324013[/URL]]

One of the benefits I’ve found to the down firing speaker is that I have better stage coverage while still having good feedback control. After using a Coda awhile with a swing choir I tried a Razor’s Edge NY8, My typical stage location was somewhat in front of them; they soon were complaining they could no longer hear me. We tried a variety of fixes but the one that worked was going back to the Coda.

As for Git's OP, while I've never had an upfiring speaker, for the past couple of years I've been using an AI Doubleshot, which has a pair of opposed 10" side-firing speakers and a front-firing 5". The first time I used it with my big band the bass player did a Linda Blair, swiveling his head around to see what was going on behind him, saying “That little thing sounds terrific,” followed by the drummer giving it a big thumb’s up. At the intermission of my first concert with it the first trumpet said “Do you have a new amp—we can hear you really, really well.” He’s worked with me for twenty-three years and told me he thought it was my best on-stage sound so far.

Danny W.

interesting Danny
I believe that the wider dispersion
you get with these speakers
(and upfiring designs too)
is a very good thing to have going on stage
everyone hears the same (or very similar) sound levels/qualities which is an excellent thing

[sm80808]

i use my son's bass metro in the upright mode a lot. It helps when to be able to hear yourself clearly and not be to loud on stage.

[Jimmy blue note]

I have a bass playing friend who uses an Acoustic Image Upshot. Light. Compact and sounds natural and full. He said they were making a guitar one, but that's all I know. In a jazz situation, Harvie has a sound that fills the space and his presence is felt without being swallowed or being overwhelming. I've recorded him many times, and his amp records really easily, I get strong definition close up and far away.
It's not guitar, but as a principle, it seems to work in the bass range.

[pingu]

1324395[/URL]]I have a bass playing friend who uses an Acoustic Image Upshot. Light. Compact and sounds natural and full. He said they were making a guitar one, but that's all I know. In a jazz situation, Harvie has a sound that fills the space and his presence is felt without being swallowed or being overwhelming. I've recorded him many times, and his amp records really easily, I get strong definition close up and far away.
It's not guitar, but as a principle, it seems to work in the bass range.

I put upshot style feet on my
Metro , works great upfiring ….

[Danny W.]

I have a bass playing friend who uses an Acoustic Image Upshot. Light. Compact and sounds natural and full. He said they were making a guitar one, but that's all I know. In a jazz situation, Harvie has a sound that fills the space and his presence is felt without being swallowed or being overwhelming. I've recorded him many times, and his amp records really easily, I get strong definition close up and far away.
It's not guitar, but as a principle, it seems to work in the bass range.

Acoustic Image

My big band had a sub on bass last rehearsal playing a Doubleshot. This is the first time I've heard bass through it in person and I thought it sounded amazing.

Danny W.

[Gitterbug]

I've had a lot of positive feedback from upright Toob/Metro users recently. For example, a big band guitarist in UK (Toob 10S), and a Swiss with a Scandinavian name playing flamenco in Thailand in stereo through a pair of Metro FR II+ cabs powered by the new Milkman Stereo amp. (Music knows no borders!) Of key customers, acoustic guitarist Elden Kelly (as mentioned in my original post) and now Finnish guitar legend Peter Lerche are upright converts. Most Metro 6.5BGs (Bass & Guitar) sold lately have been "+" models with extra legs for playing upright. A British Invasion in my order book, a chaos in the workshop...

[wintermoon]