The backline can be heroes, just for one day. Because Celestion has introduced the Mesa/Boogie Impulse Response (IR) Collection. Headliner discovers how this latest offering, joining the acclaimed Backline Heroes series, is designed to capture the unique tones of Mesa/Boogie's range of speaker cabinets, provided in a digital impulse response format.
The Mesa/Boogie IR collection features guitar tones from rock and metal history, commonly favoured by those seeking a heavy sound with a significant bottom end. The collection is versatile, encompassing the soulful, vintage magic of the Lone Star cabs, the low-end fullness and thump of the classic Rectifier cabinets, and the punch of the Widebody models. Celestion’s sound engineers have captured the distinctive tones of 14 distinct Mesa/Boogie cabinet types, each loaded with 43 carefully selected Celestion speakers, including factory standard and common modifications, to ensure tonal variety. The complete collection provides 108 distinct speaker and cabinet combinations, allowing users to find their preferred tonal flavour.
The impulse responses are available individually, as the complete Everything Pack, or in four curated multi-IR collections. The Fat Pack captures Mesa/Boogie’s Widebody and Thiele 1x12 cabs, created to deliver fat tones and an outsized low-end punch, while the 4x12 Pack features three 4x12 Rectifier cabinets, providing essential metal tones with thundering low-end punch and articulate high-end. The Recto Pack includes the Recto 2x12 and 2x12 extension cabs, designed for use with Rectifier and Mini Rectifier heads to deliver high-gain aggression and full-bodied Mesa/Boogie tone. Finally, the Lone Star Pack features all the Lone Star 1x12 and 2x12 extension cabs, emphasising punch and projection combined with vintage warmth, which makes it suitable for country and Americana styles.
Celestion captured these cabinets using the same recording techniques applied to their principal range of IRs. Each cabinet impulse response was recorded with studio-standard microphones, including the Royer R-121 ribbon, Shure SM57, and Sennheiser MD421. This process offers 18 distinct tones for each cabinet and speaker combination, including six microphone positions and mic mix options, while open-back cabinets were captured with an additional rear mic position. Paired with a DAW and IR loader plugin, modelling amp hardware, or load box, the collection provides an authentic tone alongside a dynamic response without introducing latency.
The introduction of authentic Celestion Impulse Responses represented the mission to make the brand’s celebrated speaker tones available as digital downloads. These IRs capture the essential behaviour of a speaker in a particular cabinet in the specific space in which it was recorded, including the frequency and phase response of single drivers as well as the interaction of multiple speakers. They offer significant benefits in both recording and live production, enabling the desired tone to be precisely and consistently reproduced regardless of the environment. Furthermore, SpeakerMix Pro provides a studio software solution that enables users to access Impulse Response technology, while the companion Dynamic Speaker Responses (DSRs) represent an advancement in speaker response emulation and digital speaker tone.
The complete Mesa/Boogie Backline Heroes collection is available now for audition and download at celestionplus.com