Now, setting up new equipment is always an interesting experience and this was no different. I try to temper my excitement with realism, knowing that it usually takes time to find the EQ settings I like in order to achieve my voice. So I began by plugging in an almighty Stingray5. The initial tone was very clear and pronounced, yet a little thin with the Ray's onboard EQ set flat (more on this later). It had been easy to infer from the sound of the drum machine playing earlier that the D210XST is indeed a flat cabinet with no big humps in the sound. So the Stingray, with its EQ set flat, and the amp, also with its EQ set flat, made everything sound…well, nice and flat. That's okay, but I like a little bit of growl over a deep bottom.
Before I started changing things though, I took my Gary Willis signature Ibanez GWB1 fretless off the wall and plugged it in, with the onboard EQ set flat on it as well. It has a more punchy tone than the Ray, so I immediately went for the EQ on the 550 to fill things out. For those who have heard the Willis tone, it's very aggressive with that low-mid hump being easy to hear. I thought it would be fun to try and achieve that same tone with the 210xst, so I went for it completely. I put in a couple clicks at 550hz, rolled off some highs around 2kz, and turned the bass knob up just a bit, all within a matter of about 30 seconds, and there was that tone--very fat and growly!
As excited as I was about the amp/cab at this point, the bass sounded so good that I literally forgot about my new gear and just played the fretless for about 30 minutes. I was in tone heaven, and to me this is a great place to be…where the gear fades away and the music becomes front and center. When my attention finally returned to my new equipment, I began speculating on the changes that would have to be made to go from this "bedroom" tone to a live tone, and I found them on the WT550 within a matter of seconds using the semi-parametric EQ.
Next, I rolled the settings back to the bedroom tone and plugged in the Stingray5, which had sounded thin earlier when everything was set flat. And guess what, it now sounded incredible as well. Even going from finger style to slap, I found that I didn't need to change anything on the amp to accommodate the two styles. This was something I had been somewhat worried about in choosing a single channel amplifier, but my concerns were totally unwarranted. I would be able to switch between the two styles mid-song without having to reach for the amp or a stomp box. Excellent!
Next, I wanted to see how loud the 550/210xst could get. I was able to run the gain at around 1 o'clock with no problem. I'm a soft player, preferring to have lots of headroom in my fingers for dynamics. The preamp took those dynamics without any problem. I was playing with the master set around 10 o'clock, and it was plenty loud for a small rehearsal. Then I boosted the master up to 12 o'clock, played for a few seconds, and was very impressed with the volume! I turned it back down again so that I wouldn't wake up the neighborhood. I wanted to let the cabinet break in some more anyway before creating another sonic boom.
After this, I decided to check out the tone coming from the headphone jack with a pair of Bose Triport headphones that I typically use for practice. These probably aren't the best headphones to reproduce bass with, but they're light and comfortable to wear for extended periods when practicing. I've used them with many different amps so they are a good reference tool for me. In the past I've had many decent sounding amps that sounded horrible when using headphones, especially on the lower notes. This always made late night practicing very uninspiring to say the least. However, I was pleasantly surprised with the WT550. The tone coming through the headphones was very nice, and I can see how it would be possible to use this jack to power an external amplifier without sacrificing quality. Another big plus here!
Now for my 210XST opinions. This is a great cabinet, and I'm very glad I purchased it first. In deciding on what to buy first, I was concerned that going with an XST cabinet over the XLT wouldn't give me the mid-range punch I enjoy. But again my worry was unwarranted. I found that the loss of the low-mid hump in the 210XST is very easy to compensate for on the WT550 if I choose, by simply adding it in via the EQ.
Permit me to go off on a tangent. A common theme I heard when discussing the 210XST was that it is a great cabinet to "add" to get more lows from an existing rig, even over a more traditional low-end cabinet with a 15" or 18" driver. Fair enough, but thinking back on this now, I feel like that description is not representing this cabinet well because it is so much more. While it does go low, it is not mid-shy at all. There are of course others who can attest to this, but it is a great stand-alone cabinet in its own right!
The horn on the 210XST is very aggressive and powerful. I turned it down to 9 o'clock almost immediately to help find the sound I prefer. This helped produce a tone with plenty of crisp highs without things sounding harsh or shrill. I could even turn the horn all the way down and get a nice, old-school sound, using 10" drivers!
Using the WT550, I can take things even further. I like how the frequencies of the semi-parametric EQ are overlapped, allowing one to really makes some very musical adjustments. Rolling some of the highs off around 1.5-2khz takes out a lot of excessive string and fret noise, while rolling in some low-mids around 550hz adds growl, and rolling off lows below 50hz eases the boominess of a hollow stage. The point is I have the tools right there on the head to do some major adjustments if the situation requires.
For those of you patient enough to read this far, it might seem as if I was really having to do a lot of EQ'ing to get a great sound, but that's simply not so. Any changes I made where very small and intuitive. I love the semi-parametric EQ because it's so easy to sweep across the frequency spectrum and dial a tone in fast! The plus or minus 15db amounts to fast changes with just a couple of clicks. The EQ itself is very musical, so the end result is very satisfying. The tone never sounds manufactured or coerced.
After letting the 210XST break in for a second day, I decided to turn things up a bit louder and give the rig a nice workout. Now, I've always left the onboard EQ on my Stingray set flat with other manufacturer's equipment and always felt like I had plenty of bottom end. However, initially I found that I had to turn up the bass on the WT550 to get the bottom I was used to. Somehow this didn't seem right to me. I then remembered another forum member mentioning that he was running his onboard bass knob pretty hot on his new Stingray. So I decided to set the EQ flat on the wt550 and make all my adjustments onboard the bass. I found a great tone very quickly by boosting the bass around ¾ of full. It then dawned on me what other people have always said about having to re-adjust their ears when moving to Eden gear, because they were so accustomed to a more boomy, muddy sound using other brand names. That muddy tone become the standard, and the clarity of the Eden gear seemed less powerful.
I wanted to see how far this went, so I plugged my Stingray into another manufacturer's high-powered 2x10 combo that I've had for a while. I didn't adjust the Ray's onboard EQ - it was still rolled up a bit to the sweet spot I'd found for the WT550. The result coming from the combo was horrible. The sound was very boomy and muddy. I turned my onboard EQ back to flat, and the sound was now more tolerable, but not enjoyable at all. I noticed that it had bottom, but that it wasn't clear or pronounced. In fact it was masking a lot of the subtle nuances of the instrument that create its voice.
So here I was starting to really understand with how my ears had adjusted to the poor sounds I'd fed them. I've never loved the sound of this particular combo, but I can remember being very happy with it in various situations. It's hard to fathom ever feeling that way now, for all the reasons mentioned above. It was this line of thought that produced in me the desire to try one last experiment.
I then decided to roll my Ray's bass control back up to the WT550's sweet-spot, and continue to play through my old combo for a few minutes with this horrible tone. I wanted to get that sound fixed in my head, and then see if I could make the 550/210XST sound just as bad as the combo. After all, it should be easy to create a really bad, muddy tone with using any gear, right?
Apparently not. I could not get the 550/210XST to do this! (For those of you who aren't following me, this is a good thing!) Now, I did make the 550/210XT have a very boomy tone, to the point it was rattling everything in my house even at very low volumes. (The 210XST is simply amazing, producing lows that apparently I could hardly hear but definitely feel!) But at no point did the tone ever approach the muddy sound that had emanated from my combo. Instead it just sounded ultra deep, almost unusable for anything other than a hip-hop vamp, but the bottom remained clear and tight!
The net-net is I couldn't make the combo sound warm like the Eden, and I couldn't make the Eden sound muddy like the combo. I did however manage to dial in, on the WT550, a very aggressive, rock & roll tone, with lots of bottom end, using the 210XST only. I can only imagine how much easier this sound would be to achieve with an XLT cabinet in the mix to add some additional bark. For those of you that might be afraid to leave your "rock" gear behind, have faith. Eden does rock 'n' roll, and they do it very well!
I am very pleased with my purchase in every conceivable way. I can see now why the 210 Eden cabs are often compared to 410 cabinets made by other manufacturers, and why the WT550 is all the rage. The volume this setup puts out is outstanding. The amp feels amazingly solid, "built like a tank" as my dealer told me it would be. Great job Eden! I am definitely a convert