# GGD STUDIO CABS: CALI OVERSIZED



## Lorcan Ward (Oct 7, 2021)

I don't really keep up with amp sims since the market has become oversaturated but this one caught my eye. Nolly is so excited to unveil it and I'm really digging the sound samples. Of course those 4 guys are going to make anything sound good so I'd be interested to hear what its like in the public. The export tool for using with fractal, line6, Kemper etc is a really cool addition. 

https://www.getgooddrums.com/collections/plugins/products/ggd-studio-cabs-cali-oversized-edition


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## thebeesknees22 (Oct 7, 2021)

If you haven't seen the Nolly interview from Kristian Kohle, I recommend checking it out. It's pretty interesting, and they go super in depth to the differences in the cabs/speakers over the years.


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## Frostbite (Oct 7, 2021)

My go to IR, the one that always has that "tone" that my ear likes is a Mesa oversized from Ownhammer. Interested to try this out


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## Lorcan Ward (Oct 7, 2021)

thebeesknees22 said:


> If you haven't seen the Nolly interview from Kristian Kohle, I recommend checking it out. It's pretty interesting, and they go super in depth to the differences in the cabs/speakers over the years.



I'll check it out. Speakers and cabs must be a never ending obsession.


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## profwoot (Oct 7, 2021)

I use GGD Studio Cabs: Zilla Edition for some stuff and wondered for a while when they'd come out with a Mesa edition.

I'll probably check this out, but the Zilla one does have quite a few quirks that I hope they've worked out for this one. It always reverts to the hugest interface size, it hogs CPU like crazy, and all the presets have the gain nudged up a little, a cheap tactic that makes them sound better than they really are in direct comparison to other IRs. On the other hand, once you settle on a sound you can export it into one's IR loader of choice, bypassing all these issues.

I agree about that Kohler interview too. I learned a lot and Nolly is a joy.


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## Drew (Oct 7, 2021)

Lorcan Ward said:


> I'll check it out. Speakers and cabs must be a never ending obsession.


You know, argubly one of the perks of using "real amps" is you spend remarkably little time thinking about this stuff.  I just bought a good-sounding Tremoverb cab and haven't looked back. 

Mics, on the other hand...


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## Ataraxia2320 (Oct 7, 2021)

I want to pull the trigger but I am sceptical at how much better these are going to be compared to the stock cabs in the neural dsp plugins. 

Anyone have any a/b clips. No demo on the Cali stuff so I'm at the mercy of people who dropped the cash sight unseen.


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## gnoll (Oct 8, 2021)

Drew said:


> Mics, on the other hand...



There's something weird about microphones. They're unexplainably awesome. If I was rich I would spend everything on microphones. Especially vintage ones.


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## Drew (Oct 8, 2021)

gnoll said:


> There's something weird about microphones. They're unexplainably awesome. If I was rich I would spend everything on microphones. Especially vintage ones.


I mean, the one thing that a cab and mic does over an impulse, as good as impulses have gotten... as you have infinite gradients of tone from making slight mic position tweaks, and while this is also their curse - slightly jostling a mic could make a significant difference to how your recorded tone sounds - it gives you a LOT of control while tracking.


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## thebeesknees22 (Oct 8, 2021)

I would argue that the curse of mic'ing a cab is that you need the space to do it without neighbors wanting to kill you lol


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## Drew (Oct 8, 2021)

thebeesknees22 said:


> I would argue that the curse of mic'ing a cab is that you need the space to do it without neighbors wanting to kill you lol


Eh, that really depends on your amp. I've gotten tones I'm really happy with out of my Mark V at very condo-friendly volumes, to the point where sometimes I have to be careful about the acoustic bleed of the strings on my guitar into the close mics.


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## kidmendel (Oct 8, 2021)

thebeesknees22 said:


> I would argue that the curse of mic'ing a cab is that you need the space to do it without neighbors wanting to kill you lol



This. I would use a cab and mic if I could, not because I think it sounds better but because I think it'd be more fun. But in an apartment building, not practical for me.

One day...

Helix and IRs in the meantime and I can keep dreaming


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## Frostbite (Oct 9, 2021)

Been messing around with mainly the presets but these sound pretty damn good


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## Andromalia (Oct 10, 2021)

thebeesknees22 said:


> I would argue that the curse of mic'ing a cab is that you need the space to do it without neighbors wanting to kill you lol


It's fine, after a few years you won't hear the neighbours any longer.


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## Flappydoodle (Oct 10, 2021)

I'm sure it sounds great. But there's no shortage of Mesa cab impulse responses in the world. I think every single IR maker has done a bunch with pretty much every combination ever. Ownhammer will sell a pack of 100+ IRs with almost every single mic you could imagine.

Nolly himself has also done Mesa cab IRs for his own NeuralDSP signature plugin, and I assume the Gojira suite is also a Mesa cab. It's just really hard to "justify" this one, to be honest.


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## profwoot (Oct 10, 2021)

I went ahead and spent the 40 bucks and yeah, I have a bunch of other Mesa/V30 IRs, but whether due to a lack of patience to wade through hundreds of them to find my favorites or because of Nolly's legwork to find the best sounding cabs & speakers, this plugin sounds better than my previous go-tos.

I still like the variety of using non-Mesa/V30 IRs sometimes, because yeah, everybody uses Mesas/V30s. But maybe I'm basic because I feel like my IR search is over (for a while, at least).


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## VESmedic (Oct 11, 2021)

Not really into these at all… incredibly dark, ridiculously dark to me. Compared to stl tonality lasse lambert suite, these sound like they have a blanket over them.


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## profwoot (Oct 11, 2021)

Make sure you're using the bright/dark knob, since that's somewhat oddly how they've characterized mic placement. If you like your mic on the speaker cap then you'll want to crank it.

(That knob causes a new IR to load every so often along the dial, made clear by turning it slowly and listening for the sound to change, or by turning it too quickly and watching your DAW crash)

Oh and that new EQ switch might not be your thing if you like a more open tone so make sure that's off.


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## CanserDYI (Oct 12, 2021)

Yeah this won't get my money this time around, bought the ownhammer Recto pack and it sounds almost identical to the real Mesa cab I had at the time if you ask me at least. So similar it didn't even matter.

I think we've kinda peaked on this type of product if you ask me. Also is this a plug in instead of a wav file? I couldn't even load this in my helix could I?


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## jruivo26 (Oct 12, 2021)

profwoot said:


> I'll probably check this out, but the Zilla one does have quite a few quirks that I hope they've worked out for this one. It always reverts to the hugest interface size, it hogs CPU like crazy, and all the presets have the gain nudged up a little, a cheap tactic that makes them sound better than they really are in direct comparison to other IRs. On the other hand, once you settle on a sound you can export it into one's IR loader of choice, bypassing all these issues.



That and the fact that I always have to export a track in realtime processing whenever I have an instance of Zilla on the project, or else Cubase crashes. Hate that.


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## Ataraxia2320 (Oct 12, 2021)

I did a quick A/B between the stock IR setting of Neural Nolly and the Stock IR of the GGD Cali. Can you guess which is which?

Not a totally apples to apples comparison although both IRs are a single sm57 so at least it's ball park. Amp sim is the Neural Nolly on default settings.
Both examples have zero post processing other than a bit of masterbus limiting to get it louder. 

Drums and bass the default pre-sets of OKW: Agressive rock and Submission Eurobass. Didnt touch anything there other than faders. Excuse the slop I threw this together in 20 mins for people who were curious like I was. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11sx2J4D9eDqBhm6RB971_IwX_Tgva6K1/view?usp=sharing


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## Ericjutsu (Oct 12, 2021)

Ataraxia2320 said:


> I did a quick A/B between the stock IR setting of Neural Nolly and the Stock IR of the GGD Cali. Can you guess which is which?
> 
> Not a totally apples to apples comparison although both IRs are a single sm57 so at least it's ball park. Amp sim is the Neural Nolly on default settings.
> Both examples have zero post processing other than a bit of masterbus limiting to get it louder.
> ...


I like B better. I also think B is GGD because it is brighter and has less lows and low mids.


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## Ataraxia2320 (Oct 13, 2021)

Ericjutsu said:


> I like B better. I also think B is GGD because it is brighter and has less lows and low mids.



You called it! Nice shout.


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## Kaura (Oct 13, 2021)

Ataraxia2320 said:


> You called it! Nice shout.



Damn, I could have sworn that B was from the Neural plugin since it's been my go-to plugin ever since it got released. I actually thought B sounded worse so looks like I'll save my money and keep trying to mess with the cab section more on Nolly.


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## Frostbite (Oct 15, 2021)




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## Ataraxia2320 (Oct 16, 2021)

Kaura said:


> Damn, I could have sworn that B was from the Neural plugin since it's been my go-to plugin ever since it got released. I actually thought B sounded worse so looks like I'll save my money and keep trying to mess with the cab section more on Nolly.



To be honest I also thought Cali cabs sounded worse in the A/B. This comparison is just the absolute default setting on both with no post processing to be fair. There are some great pre-sets in Cali and the dark/bright slider is really useful.

The plugin itself is a buggy mess though. No stereo output in reaper, caused my daw to crash multiple times windows doesnt seem to like it either.

Overall it's a nice luxury purchase. Definitely not the step up people are hyping it to be.


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## profwoot (Oct 16, 2021)

Yeah for me it really does sound awesome but anyone still thinking about it might want to hold off. This thing really needs some bugs fixed. I'll be exporting a few of my favorites combos and loading those into NadIR to overcome the hassle. Even those combos aren't really optimized to my preferences, as it's not stable enough to tweak much right now (at least in Reaper).

That thing with Rabea embedded two posts up is really worth watching, along with the Kohle interview on page 1. It's very cool the variety you can get from the plugin given that every single option is the same model of cab and the same model of speaker.

Meanwhile, I really hope GGD gets some better coders involved, since the Zilla edition is almost as buggy and it's been out for 18 months or so.


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## Ataraxia2320 (Oct 16, 2021)

profwoot said:


> Yeah for me it really does sound awesome but anyone still thinking about it might want to hold off. This thing really needs some bugs fixed. I'll be exporting a few of my favorites combos and loading those into NadIR to overcome the hassle. Even those combos aren't really optimized to my preferences, as it's not stable enough to tweak much right now (at least in Reaper).
> 
> That thing with Rabea embedded two posts up is really worth watching, along with the Kohle interview on page 1. It's very cool the variety you can get from the plugin given that every single option is the same model of cab and the same model of speaker.
> 
> Meanwhile, I really hope GGD gets some better coders involved, since the Zilla edition is almost as buggy and it's been out for 18 months or so.



Spent an hour just going through cabs today and I definitely think the more time I spend with it the more I dig it. The user interface is really great and I've gotten some of the smoothest most focussed tones I've ever gotten without even touching the amp or a post eq.

Still wouldn't call it a necessity but it was definitely worth the cash.

I'm like you though, I'm using the plugin to get the tones I like and then exporting to use with a third party IR loader for stability.

They definitely should be hiring better coders. I've had reaper crash 3 times on me today which is rare.


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## VESmedic (Oct 17, 2021)

Eh I guess I’m starting to like it a bit. Some of the cabs just seem incredibly dark compared to what I like. The nature of these cabs is that they are pretty dark in general as it is, but micing them is all preference of course.

little clip I did with real amps: not plugin amps for once.

mix of my Diezel Herbert and 5153, through two of the cabs, can’t remember which at the moment, all 57s though. 


https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/9cPeXxu8Ft4bLoVP8


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## Ataraxia2320 (Oct 17, 2021)

VESmedic said:


> Eh I guess I’m starting to like it a bit. Some of the cabs just seem incredibly dark compared to what I like. The nature of these cabs is that they are pretty dark in general as it is, but micing them is all preference of course.
> 
> little clip I did with real amps: not plugin amps for once.
> 
> ...



Weird that you find them dark, I find them really bright unless I turn the dark nob down. Nice chugs!


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## bulb (Oct 17, 2021)

I love these


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## Ataraxia2320 (Oct 17, 2021)

bulb said:


> I love these


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## VESmedic (Oct 18, 2021)

Diggin this more and more. 5150 outside tracks, my morin modded 79 Marshall on the inside for these carcass riffs. Monster tone. 


https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/kGsKrRbWHbrqybEi6


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## Ataraxia2320 (Oct 19, 2021)

VESmedic said:


> Diggin this more and more. 5150 outside tracks, my morin modded 79 Marshall on the inside for these carcass riffs. Monster tone.
> 
> 
> https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/kGsKrRbWHbrqybEi6



Sounds VERY pissed off. Love it.


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## Xaeldaren (Oct 19, 2021)

VESmedic said:


> Diggin this more and more. 5150 outside tracks, my morin modded 79 Marshall on the inside for these carcass riffs. Monster tone.
> 
> 
> https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/kGsKrRbWHbrqybEi6



That sounds fucking fantastic.


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## VESmedic (Oct 20, 2021)

Xaeldaren said:


> That sounds fucking fantastic.




All the parts here make all the difference! Best loadbox on the planet, great amps, great IR’s, it’s a for sure win!


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## BadSeed (Oct 28, 2021)

Hey guys,
For my frolick with these cab sims, I decided to take my band's studio mixed drums and bass tracks, and re-record myself and my Guitarists tracks with a 5150, aned cycle through some of the cabs in the Cali Plugin to demonstrate some of the different tones included.

Curious what you guys think. Honestly, I feel this plugin is one of the most lifelike recreations of a real cabinet that I've tried. On top of that, it has the easiest and most inuititve user interfaces. I feel like some of the other cab sim plugins, while great in their own right, make it easy to get lost in the weeds trying to get your tone just right. With the Cali plugin, everything does as it says, and you get the respected result when messing with the controls.

I don't really feel the ened to mic up a real V30 cab for my band's future recordings now that I have this, and that's the 100% honest truth! Greenbacks and Creambacks, on the other hand, are a different story


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## Ataraxia2320 (Oct 29, 2021)

BadSeed said:


> Hey guys,
> For my frolick with these cab sims, I decided to take my band's studio mixed drums and bass tracks, and re-record myself and my Guitarists tracks with a 5150, aned cycle through some of the cabs in the Cali Plugin to demonstrate some of the different tones included.
> 
> Curious what you guys think. Honestly, I feel this plugin is one of the most lifelike recreations of a real cabinet that I've tried. On top of that, it has the easiest and most inuititve user interfaces. I feel like some of the other cab sim plugins, while great in their own right, make it easy to get lost in the weeds trying to get your tone just right. With the Cali plugin, everything does as it says, and you get the respected result when messing with the controls.
> ...




THE UI is great. The Dark/Bright slider needs to become standard in every single IR product moving forward.


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## Xaeldaren (Oct 29, 2021)

I'm quite curious about these cabs now. Would anyone recommend these for someone who would literally just he exporting them to use in a Pod Go. I'm delighted with the York Audio IRs I use, but my interest is piqued in Nolly's process. I'm thinking it may be overkill, however.


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## AwakenTheSkies (Oct 29, 2021)

Xaeldaren said:


> I'm quite curious about these cabs now. Would anyone recommend these for someone who would literally just he exporting them to use in a Pod Go. I'm delighted with the York Audio IRs I use, but my interest is piqued in Nolly's process. I'm thinking it may be overkill, however.



I don't have the GGD Cali or Zilla IRs. But I have the Helix LT and Helix Native and I'm not going to buy them for this same reason, that you have to export them. It's an extra step and I already have too many IR packs as it is. At this point if I want a better sound I think that buying more IRs is not the solution.


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## redragon (Nov 4, 2021)

Holly has great ears.


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