SPL is a fairly well-known company in the audio world. Preamps, harmonizers, compressors… This company offers a thousand options, but today it takes a shot at a power soak and D.I. that goes between the head and the cabinet. Before we start poking around in the Cabulator's guts, let's think about what need leads a company to develop such a specific product.
Everyone knows how fond some musicians are of playing at more than generous volumes. We guitarists have the worst reputation in this regard, but it's well known that tube guitar amps sound better the hotter the tubes get; that heat comes from volume, so we have to turn up the master control to get the tone we're after. On the other hand, another unresolved issue for guitarists is getting a more or less decent line sound.
Here we have a product that lets you run the amp at whatever volume you like, driving the tubes to the max and getting the warmest possible tone, but without going deaf and, above all, without your bandmates ending up with the ringing in their ears caused by all our excess oomph.
Let's now look at what controls it has, what connections we can use, what our amp sounds like when we hook it up, and so on.
Construction
The Cabulator has three functions: a power soak, a speaker simulator and a direct output (D.I.).
This time we'll start backwards, that is, we'll first look at the rear panel, since it offers more options than the front:
a) Speaker In: This is the input where you connect the speaker out of your own amp. The amp output must be 8 ohms and must not exceed 100W, since tube guitar amps often have peaks that push them above 100W.
b) Soak Output: This output gives us the original sound but with the reduction we've selected on the Power Soak control (located on the front). The minimum reduction we can get is 8dB, with the knob turned fully counterclockwise (if we turn it fully clockwise, we mute the guitar).
c) D.I. Output: As the name says, this is the direct output, used to connect to the mixer, a recording input, etc.
d) DC Power: The input for the 9V adapter that powers the system. The Cabulator switches on as soon as you plug in the adapter. It also lets you use the Power Soak system without power, completely passively, which is very handy since the less gear you carry, the better.
Now let's look at the front panel:
a) Power Soak: This control sets how much reduction is applied to the guitar signal. As we just mentioned, it doesn't need power to work. Also bear in mind that it doesn't affect the simulated output. If at any point we want to use the head without connecting it to the cabinet, we can use the Cabulator, but we must turn the Power Soak control fully counterclockwise, that is, muting the signal.
b) Speaker Voicing: With this knob we can simulate whatever cabinets and configurations we see fit. As you turn the control further clockwise, the mids increase, as do level and compression, just like when you turn up the volume on a regular cabinet.
c) Cabinet Open/Close: With this option we can choose between a closed-back or an open-back cabinet. In the guitar world, whether a cab is open or closed changes everything. With an open-back cabinet we get more harmonics and therefore a more open but less compressed sound. With a closed-back cabinet, by sacrificing harmonics, we get more compression and more push, that is, attack. So if we want a more aggressive sound, we should think closed rather than open.
d) Character Vintage/Modern: The type of character we want to give the sound: Vintage gives a much smoother midrange; Modern gives much punchier lows and more open highs.
As for the size of this product, it's fair to say it's not a particularly small unit. So it could be placed neatly and conveniently even on top of the head. Even so, considering that the Cabulator's housing hides a power soak plus a D.I. box, I think the size and weight are not excessive, since if you put them together separately, they would surely take up more space.
Sound
This is a big chapter, since everything else is pointless if the system doesn't give us a sound that's up to scratch. Let's go through every sound we can get out of this little guy.
Depending on what you want to achieve, we'll consider different possibilities:
a) We only want a power soak: In that case we don't need to plug the system into the power, so we just connect the head's output to the Cabulator and from there to the cabinet. For the tests I used different amps: a Matchless, a Marshall Super Lead and a Koch Twintone (35W, 100W and 50W respectively). We can see that the more saturated sounds, when using the Power Soak, respect the original signal, and as attenuation increases, compression increases too. As you turn up the Power Soak, harmonics decrease, which also makes sense, since more information has to be squeezed into a narrower bandwidth.
b) If we want to connect the SPL's output to a monitor console, or simply to the recording input of any system, we move into much more complicated territory, since simulating a cabinet is harder. Speaker voicing is the key control for making this really work, getting a decent sound and disguising the lack of a cabinet.
c) When we bring the cabinet selector into play we have two options: Open and Close. Open gives more harmonics and a bit less push; if we want a punchier or more compressed sound, we need to engage the Close option.
d) The Vintage/Modern switch is simply an EQ setting where we can boost mids, lows or highs. They are, so to speak, two presets set by the manufacturer that can come in handy now and then.
Things to keep in mind
Being able to use a power soak and, at the same time, a line going straight to a mixer or recording input makes the Cabulator a very powerful tool that also lets us solve problems arising from using cabinets. Sometimes we have to play in venues where our amp's volume is a nuisance (such as playing in a theater production, or recording scratch tracks in the studio itself). This can lead us to use line-level simulations. However, using your own amp and adding pedals feels much closer to home; the engineer will thank you for it, since you're sending an analog signal that's much easier to work with than one that's been digitally processed, which makes it harder to mix. At low volumes it can sound fine, but as we turn the volume up it becomes more obvious that it doesn't quite blend. With a system like the Cabulator you can be sure that, even at a decent volume for playing with a band, it will sound perfect.
The other question is how it responds to the pedals and artillery we usually carry: the Cabulator is practically unaffected by anything you might use. Perhaps a fuzz can help you get a bit more saturation, especially as the volume goes up, but apart from that small point it's pretty much independent of the pedals we use. When using pedals together with the Cabulator and its line output to the monitor console, you might need to be a bit more careful with distortion, and not just pedal distortion but in general, since a decent line-level distortion is very hard to get.
Conclusion
Wrapping up this article is not easy at all, since we're getting into personal matters. Using power soaks, in general, is a very subjective choice for a musician, just like using in-ears, wedges and so on.
I'm of the opinion that if you've ever needed gadgets like this, maybe you do need one, but you have to consider how many times a year you've actually had to use one. What is clear is that if you have one, sooner or later you'll end up making it a more or less regular part of your rig.
In short, it's an option worth considering. If you get the chance, I recommend trying it out, testing it with your own gear and seeing how well it fits. Having a power soak and a D.I. in the same box makes engineers look at you differently. In any case, it's a very competitive system with good results, sturdy, with good sound quality and a price that's right on trend.
