Workshop: Zilla Cabs
Look around any pro studio or stage set these days and you’re likely to spot a Zilla speaker cab. We tracked down the company founder, Paul Gough, to talk about the art of matching the right cab, speakers and finish to his customers’ varying musical needs
“It’s a box and some speakers, essentially. It’s just that there are a dozen different types…”
Long before he formed the company, Paul Gough’s hobbies were woodwork and playing guitar and so, in many ways, starting making speaker cabs for rock ’n’ rollers seemed a fairly obvious choice from the outset. Having gone to university to study maths and physics, he developed a keen interest in the science side of acoustics. “I thought I was going to come up with the equations to build the best cabs, you know,” he remembers. “But it turns out it’s more experience of building and knowledge of woods, that kind of stuff. There are no magic equations.”
After leaving university, Paul started working as a musician, touring with bands, but it was the down-time between tours that started him on the journey of making custom cabs. “I wanted stuff to do to earn a little bit of money when I wasn’t touring. This just made more sense than working in Tesco…”
Another thing that spurred him on was his interest in personalised finishes for his own gear. “When everyone had the black Marshall stack, I had the white Marshall stack. When someone had a white Marshall stack, I had a furry giraffe print Marshall stack. I was always that guy.”
Gradually, Paul’s customisations began to arouse interest among his fellow musicians and, although he didn’t yet realise it, stars were aligning that would light the way to him setting up shop.
At present, the company is just about to expand into new and larger premises in the Cornish countryside. But like many similar enterprises, Paul started making his cabinets in more domestic surroundings… “Mum’s garage and a mate’s shed. I was literally working out of my mate’s shed doing the woodwork stuff. I needed the two places because woodworking doesn’t go well with gluing. I used to do Tolex-ing, fitting stuff together and the testing in the garage when I lived back at home. It was one of those situations where my mate liked his tools. He did similar things to me so it was a bit of a trade really: he gets to use my tools, I get to use his shed.”
How did you formulate a method for building cabs? “I’d always tinkered with stuff. Repairing gear you’re taking stuff apart, seeing what works, seeing what doesn’t, eventually learning how those things affect the sound. It’s a box and some speakers, essentially. It’s just that there are a dozen different types. You can combine things, seeing how different companies have done different things, try to learn if they had done it for a reason or because it was cheap or cost effective or easy. I guess in a way it’s not copying, it’s just standing on the shoulders of giants, seeing what other people do, how they do it and why they do it. I mean, 15 years later I’m still learning.”
What refinements have you made to the traditional style of speaker cabinet? “It’s kind of homing in on what I like, really, that’s a large part. The big thing for me was realising first which gear I liked, then finding out why I liked it and how to improve it or mix things in. The big thing would be the woods and a big part of the woods is to do with location. In the States, they use a lot more pine. We’ve got lots of birch forests, or at least Eastern Europe going into Russia, Scandinavian countries, lots of birch. It’s all homing in and figuring things out because there are dozens of things that will affect the sound: how the baffle goes in, thickness of woods, types of woods, designs. The birch ply has certain thicknesses for certain jobs, certain designs. Getting that nice, natural EQ, like a musicality to the sound. I spend a lot of time testing gear and it’s when you realise that you’ve switched out of testing mode and you’re just playing because it sounds good to you, then you go, ‘Ooh, let’s look at this…’”
“We do most of our stuff direct as I like listening to guitarists talk about their sound and getting feedback”
How did your own tastes as a player influence your initial designs? “I’m a Marshall man. I grew up with it. All the guitarists that I loved played Marshall, so my first proper cab was a Marshall 4x12. As it goes, it’s probably just by luck, but those kind of woods they were using back then, they’re pretty good. They get you pretty close. It’s design for a purpose; every cab has its right place. That’s a big thing, I guess, learning which one of the designs suits a certain job or a certain player.
“I’ve always been into talking to guitarists. One of the reasons why we do most of our stuff direct is I like listening to guitarists talk about their sound and getting feedback. You quite quickly learn when people like things, when people love things, and when it sounds as good or better than the thing they would have picked off the shelf. When someone phones up and goes, ‘I’m playing guitar all the time now. I actually love this rig – it’s breathed new life into my playing.’ When someone says that, you think, ‘Something really went right there.’”
The Zilla range covers just about everything: single 12s, 2x12, 4x12 and everything in between. If somebody approaches you with a custom order, what sort of thing can they expect? “Usually, it’s quite rare that someone will say, ‘This is exactly what I want.’ I think the best way of approaching it is to say, ‘I’m thinking of this, this kind of size, it’s got to do this kind of job. I’ve got this kind of experience with this gear… What do you think about it?’ It’s normally a two-way street. A quick phone call. Often it will just be talking through things, throwing ideas off, seeing what sticks. Between me and a customer who knows their gear, you home in on something quite quickly – on what they really want – and something that will really work for them. I think most players that have played a sensible amount of quality gear know what they like and can explain what aspects of that gear works for them quite accurately.”
The other variable is the choice of speaker. Do you find yourself advising as far as that’s concerned as well? “Yes. Often customers will say what they’ve played in the past and what they’ve really liked or stuff that they really haven’t liked. Then you have to figure out if it was the amp or the cab that the speaker was in that they didn’t like. My favourite speakers are the Celestion H Greenbacks from the late 1970s. But you put one in the wrong cab, it’s going to sound rubbish. That doesn’t mean that the speaker is rubbish, it just means it’s in the wrong situation. If someone says, ‘I hate [Celestion] G12 T75s’, it may have just been the wrong situation for it. You stick that in a Two-Rock and you’re going to like it.
“I don’t push things that I don’t like. I’ll stock things that maybe I wouldn’t use for myself but appreciate the qualities that they have and understand it works well for
“I do a lot of experimenting. New cabs will come from me messing about with stuff for me”
certain players doing certain things. The big ones these days would be [Celestion] Vintage 30 Greenback or Creambacks, or maybe an Alnico speaker. For most people, if you just pick one of those up you’ll be able to get it sounding good. If you get it in the right situation it’s hard to get it wrong, but you’ve just got to spend a bit of time on homing in on which one of those will work best for them.”
Have you found the perfect cab formula for yourself? “To a large part. If I want something that’s going to get me close to a 4x12 but I can’t be doing with the weight – say I want a cab that I’m going to be able to go to a gig in a car, in my Mini, I’m not going to fit a 4x12 in that. So I’d design a cab that’s good for me and I’d say I’m a fairly bog standard player, really. I mean, as far as what I look for: something that’s responsive does the job. I know the speakers I like – the H Heritage speakers, which Celestion have just stopped making. They are faithful reproductions of the early Hs, the Greenbacks. That speaker, incidentally, you can use for anything. It sounds great with heavy metal. Not that I play heavy metal, I play classic rock. I like something that’s responsive, does the job, sounds cool and will give me a solid base to get my flexibility from the amp, from the guitar and from my playing. I think that’s a part of what a cab should really do. I don’t think it should be colouring too much, it should be allowing you to get to the place you want to get to.”
So it’s really down to experimentation? “Yes, I do a lot of experimenting. Often new cabs in the range will come from me messing about with stuff that’s for me, I think. A compact 4x12 is going to be like, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Often, because we get so much custom work in, sometimes stuff will just really work. You know, there’s just some magic in that design, in that speaker combination, and that kind of stuff. That will end up in the range.”
You give your customers a broad range of coverings for cabinets, from the traditional to the extreme. What’s the most outrageous request you’ve had? “It’s often mine [laughs]. Something fuelled by me. There have only ever been a few that have been more crazy than what I’d do. Sometimes things clash. Everyone is different, aren’t they? Some people would think a white cab would be too fancy, but to me a white cab is quite standard, really, quite a sensible choice. We do get some where sometimes I’ll be thinking, ‘Are you sure you want to go for that?’ I’ll be sending the customer some pictures along the way, which I probably shouldn’t do, but, you know, I want to make sure they love it when it gets there.
“I think the choices of colours and options on the cosmetic side of things should only enhance it. You don’t want to have it detract from it, because that’s actually pointless. You want to love it because it does what you want it to do with the sound you want – and you want to love it a bit more because of the colour and that kind of stuff. So, yes, sometimes I’ll send photos over, but often I end up loving that colour in the end. There is some crazy stuff, but it’s fun to do.” www.zillacabs.com