[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE GENZ-BENZ NEOX-212T]

OWEN O'MALLEY: Welcome back to Gearwire.Com. I'm Owen O'Malley, and this behemoth is the Genz-Benz NEOX-212T. It's part of the NEOX Series of cabinets that came out a little less than a year ago from Genz-Benz, or it may actually be just about a year at this point. It's a kind of a unique cabinet configuration for a bass cabinet as it's two 12" speakers: A pretty common speaker configuration for a guitar, not so common for bass. You usually find 15", 10", and usually not 12s.

The 12s are a kind of an interesting compromise between a cabinet loaded with 10s and a cabinet with a 15 or two 15s in it. It's smaller than 15s but it has a sort of more extended bass range than 10" speakers are capable of providing. It kind of retains some of the articulation of the 10s. This cabinet in particular, this model, the 212T, has a tweeter that is attenuatable, so you even get more extended high end. The 12s I think have a little bit more of a scooped sound than the 10s, which you can hear here.

[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE GENZ-BENZ NEOX-212T]

But it's a pretty well-built cabinet. It's not too heavy. It does have casters on the back, little built-in wheels on the back, which is a nice addition. Let's just here what the -- whoop, hang on, hang on -- Let's just hear what the tweeter control does to the sound here. Right now, it's right about int the middle. I'm going to play and adjust it from the back of the amp here.

[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE GENZ-BENZ NEOX-212T, MAKING TWEETER ADJUSTMENTS]

So right now, it's we've got the tweeters basically off. So right now, all you're hearing is the 12" drivers.

[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE GENZ-BENZ NEOX-212T, TWEETER OFF]

Let's turn the tweeter up.

[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE GENZ-BENZ NEOX-212T, TWEETER CRANKED FULL]

So with the tweeter cranked, you get a lot more basically pick attack...

[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE GENZ-BENZ NEOX-212T, TWEETER CRANKED FULL]

...if you're playing with a pick.

[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE GENZ-BENZ NEOX-212T, TWEETER CRANKED FULL]

And if you're playing with fingers, then you kind of get more fret noise. But yeah, it's a four-ohm cabinet. It can handle up to 600 watts RMS. Being that it's 4 ohms, you can't really couple it with another cabinet because then you'll be sort of driving a 2-ohm load so it's not really a cabinet that you can kind of couple with things. It's really sort of meant to stand on its own. One additional nice thing about having this sort of vertical speaker arrangement, and this is something that Phil Lesh and the Grateful Dead's front-of-house engineer who's name I'm completely forgetting right now, but they sort of discovered that when you stack bass speakers vertically as opposed to having them sort of horizontal, it actually helps with bass dispersion in larger venues. For whatever reason, the audience gets more of the bass when you have your speakers stacked vertically like this. That's why if you'll see some pictures of the Grateful Dead touring in like the '70s and the early '80s, there's just this ridiculous, comical towers of bass speakers, but the reason they did that was because of the improved bass response that you get from that vertical array.

Well anyway, this is the Genz-Benz NEOX-212T, 4-ohm, 600-watt RMS cabinet, pretty unique cabinet layout or speaker configuration for a bass cabinet and pretty good sounding. If you're looking for a, you know, just a different sound,it's definitely worth checking out. You've been watching Gearwire.Com and I'm Owen O'Malley. See you around.