EarCandy Buzzbomb 212 Cabinet

Here's a cab the major manufactures should be scared of. Nobody offers this type of cab, at anywhere near this price range. I like the fact that this cab is 16" deep, I'm not into heavy metal, just rock, hard rock, and jazz, and let me tell you this; that 16" of depth reallygives a great bass response for a 2-12' cab. I would put this cab against any 4-12" on the market today. I'm using a Seymour Duncan Convertible 200 head that has been modified with all Sprague "orange drop" caps in the signal path. This mod is recommended by the designer. This head is amazing, and the Buzzbomb cab compliments it perfectly. I bought mine unloaded, and installed a Celestion Sidewinder, and an EV EVM-12

I use Les Pauls, and Teles. I play everything from Jazz to Classic rock to heavy alternative rock, and this cab is perfect for everything! I use a bunch of vintage, and boutique pedals, and this cab handles everything I throw at it. Ive owned Boogie, Marshall, and Fender cabs, and this one reallt does blow all of them away.

This cab is more solid than anything I have owned in 26 years of playing!

Tim was a great guy to deal with. I ordered this cab custom with Orange Tolex, and the aluminum diamond plate. I also ordered the recessed wheels, and 3 handles. The cab arrived perfect, it was packed to withstand an H-Bomb, amazing! This cab feels more solid than anything I have ever owned

I would definitely buy this cab again, it's easily the best out there now. I think Tim has created a new cabinet category, the "Boutique Cabinet". It's really one of the only true HANDMADE in the USA cabs available.

2004 Earcandy Buzz Bomb cab: two 2" ports on the baffle, deep dish side handles (not the "top hat" angled style on most Earcandy cabinets), single locking jack (no jack plate), rubber feet, round metal grills, acid peel (orange) tolex all the way around. Birch construction instead of the standard maple. I custom ordered this so it has all the features I want.

The following review is actually pretty long and detailed. It's a "tone test report" that I sent to Tim Paulsen, the manufacturer of Earcandy cabinets, a few days after I received the Buzz Bomb. The short version goes like this: these cabinets are amazing. They do this thing that's hard to describe in that they seem to add sustain or compression and bottom end to the tone of your guitar and amp. The sound seems to just come spilling out--more like there's a little gnome in there shooting it out with a firehose--of the cab. That said, see below for how this particular Buzz Bomb works with different guitars/amps. There are a couple of caveats (which I will sum up in the overall comments section).

with my soldano hot rod 100, and with Soldano X12000 in the cabinet, the report goes like this:

1. frankenstein double cutaway tele (the wonder axe) with single SK "T-90" bridge pickup (a tele bobbin with p-90 magnet structure for more crunch and low end--my fave tele pup). maple neck, alder body with stainless steel face plate screwed on.

results here were good, but as expected. what i mean is, the soldano amp tends to not like ported cabs,esp. when using single coils. soldanos don't have that low thump that you get with a mesa boogie (esp. dual rec) or even the bassman, so the cab has to provide that. don't get me wrong, even in this setup, there was lots of thump, but the highs and mids weren't as smooth. they were less chiming and harsher than the next two setups.

2. travis bean tb 500. this is the bean with two hot single coil pups. aluminum neck-through body design, probably and alder or magnolia wood body. pups should be 9k, but this guitar suffered fire damage, and possibly for that reason, you get about 6k.

okay, now here's where things start to cook. aluminum has a wider frequency range than wood, so this guitar fills in where the wonder axe fell short. also, since the bean pups are a little anemic, i tend to use both which gives a big frequency range, though requires a turning up the mids on the amp a bit.

in any case, this guitar has a growly, chiming tone, and the buzz bomb carried that sound perfectly. with this setup, i could really feel the womf and scree of the cab. lots of bell tones, complex harmonics, sustain, and bottom end thump. still a little harsher than through my non-ported soldano 4x12, but both the buzz bomb and the soldano had, as far as i can tell, equal thump. again, i think the difference is in the high end response. the soldano 4x12 has a little more muffled quality, and therefore responds better to single coils.

3. travis bean tb 1000. this is the bean with two big humbuckers wound to 12k.
the neck and body are thicker than on the tb 500, so you get a bit more tone that way.

this is probably the setup that the buzz bomb was built for. this guitar puts out a lot of low end, and i can really get a cool palm-mute chug through the cabinet. again, the buzz bomb has this way of projecting/carrying the bass that's really cool. it almost seems to add sustain.

with the tb 1000, the highs are much smoother. very chimey and silvery without being harsh, and again, the buzz bomb loves this guitar. with this setup the sound is very fluid, the harmonics seem to just spill out of the speakers. this is what i expected, as this guitar works very well with my ported hiwatt cabinet, but gets a little too muddy with the soldano cabinet without careful eq tweaking.

also, this setup gets closest to the tone described on the website. the buzz bomb is definitely a tone tool.

Then I decided to try out my Fender silverface Bassman, which has been blackfaced, through the B-Bomb. I decided to go for a sound that I don't usually use (or have in any of my amps), which is that low, low-mid, compressed, high gain Dual Rectifier kind of sound.

For this test, I used the Soldano speakers and the Frankenstein Tele (or Wonder Axe), and a Rat 2 distortion pedal (the kind with the LED and the glow-in-the-d

Incredibly well built, IMHO. Just great artisanship. My only worry is the tolex, which, no matter what cab I use, always gets shredded when I go on tour. But, I've only had this about two weeks, so we'll see how it holds up. The tolex seems really hard.

Customer support was just great. Tim patiently answered everyone of my nit-picky emails as I fretted over making a decision on which model with what options to get. He's really passionate about his craft, and has been obsessively tweaking his cabinet designs for two years, something I can relate to.

As I was looking into Earcandy cabinets, I couldn't decide which model to get, knowing that Soldanos generally work best with non-ported cabs, but intrigued by Tim's descriptions of the Buzz Bomb. I run the Soldano and the Bassman in parallel when playing live, and I was planning on getting two Earcandies anyway, so I decided to just get a Buzz Bomb and see how it would work with both amps.

Bottom line: I think, as I expected, that the soldano would work better with a Cherry Bomb, since I like to use single coil guitars a lot. As of this writing, I've got a C. Bomb on order, which should attest to how much I dig Earcandy cabinets.

More reviews are to come, as I will review the Cherry Bomb, and I still have some tests to do with different speakers in the Buzz Bomb.


Feel free to email me with questions.

Custom made so these things are brand new. The design is very convinent. Recessed handles make them easy to carry with one hand but Tim makes them even easier to carry by adding a second handle on the back of the cabinet. Tim wires these puppies any way you want. I wanted to be able to run stereo through one cabinet (I bought two) and still be able to run stereo when I ran both cabs. No problemo as they would say out here. The look of the cabinets is powerful. the speaker grates are well made and look like they will protest the speakers forever. In addition they are made so you can change out speakers quickly (if you ever needed to). At no extra charge Tim buitl my cabs vertially and loaded them with Madison Opus speakers on the bottom and Madison symphonies on the top. Very cool look!

I am running a Les Paul, a Strat, and an LV-09 Larivee Acoustic thru a digitech 2120 with a 30 band into a Carvin DCM 1000 head. My strat is wired for the Roland Gr-33 synth. i have used the cabs for two gigs now and can honetly say I have never had such tonal quality out of anything I've ever used. Clear defined highs, punchy mids, and brutal low end. Totally blew away my ADA 2X12's in every respect and were much more efficient. I had to drop my output gain by a third to match what I was geting out of the ADA's.Can you say LOUD!

dont know yet. But Tim Paulson is the most intergral businessman I have delt with in 20 years and has lived up to every promise. This guy realy stands behind his work. My guess is that I will not have to worry about a thing, therefore the rating.

See the above. Tim new I had a gig last friday and wanted to use the cabinets. He was out of the opus speakers I had requested so he loaded the cabinets with comperable speakers and shipped them so I would have them for the gig. At his expense he is shipping me the Opus speaker with a return labelfor the speaker I used for the last two gigs. No questions asked. Seriously the best customer service I have ever received from anyone I have ever dealt with. Scarey he is so good.

I've been palying for 20+ years. I've run through twins, a hot rod deville 2X12, a mosvalve wtih ADA slant 2X12's, boogies, adn recently ran through a rivera cab. The rivera came close but was not as responsive as these cabs. Combined with Tim's customer service you can not go wrong here. I'd buy anything from this guy. He is just that good.

This cabinet has very good construction and alot of nice features. Some of these are: recessed handles on the top at the edges (nice and easy to carry, handles don't get in the way); choice of speaker impedance; choice of wiring (mono vs. stereo); you can order with or without the speakers if you want to load your own; etc...

Since these cabinets can be customized by the factory, you can get them in a bunch of color combinations, and configurations. Mine is a "fuzz" covered, closed-back, stero-wired, Madison 30W speaker-loaded model!

I am using Gibsons (Les Paul Standard, and ES 333) through a Mesa Quad preamp, Carvin Quad X preamp, TC G-Major, BBE, Carvin T100 power amp. This cabinet sounds awesome with my gear. Nice punchy lows, really sweet shimmering highs. I compared this side by side to a Laney 4x12 from a stack I used to own. This 2x12 absolutly won in every category...sound, price, weight, construction, etc...

Just got it, but it seems to be constructed very well. I don't expect any problems.

The guys at 6stringNinja (the sight where they sell these online) were very helpful when I talked to them. Go to 6stringninja.com to take a look at them.

I am really impressed with the quality and sound. Saved alot of $$ when compared to Mesa and Soldano cabs...and I think it sounds better, too.

This cab enhances the tone of your guitar and head combination like few cabs I have tried have succeeded in acheiving. It is a TONE TOOL and has the fattest bottom end you can imagine and comes with optional ports which seem to allow for highs/mids to pierce through really nicely. There is SO much 'thud' in this cab there is really NO need for a lunky 4X12. For people who dwell in urban environments where transportation on foot or public transit, this is the best solution for a great big sound in a smaller package. I have run a jcm800 through this and it is really responsive. My main rig though is a musicman rd 100 which has equally cool clean sounds as well as great distortion and this cab allows both to sing ,sing, sing. I would recommend this company to anyone and plan to purchase another cab in the future.

I use a strat with texas specials in it as well as a gibson firebird series V through it and I play anywhere from jazzy sounds to heavy rock and it works great in small studio environments as well as on stage where I have already gigged with this several times to great reviews from those who heard it. I feel like I have a new head as this cab allows such new character traits in tone to come through in performance. It elevates my playing because I am one of those players who is really tone sensitive and pushes harder when I hear on stage what I hear in my head.

Tim is more than responsive and very,very helpful. He stands behind his workmanship fully and will replace or fix anything that goes wrong(I believe)for the life of the unit. His e-mails always came promptly after I inquired about something regarding the cab's specs, construction etc.

I am 36 and have been playing since I was 15 years old. I would definately buy more cabs by Tim and EarCandy! This cab smokes and outshines anything in a comparable price range. A real custom-boutique piece of gear at a great price with super solid construction and great aesthetics.